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Marketing Still Has a Colorism Problem

• Mita Mallick

Four strategies to help the industry fight discrimination against those with darker skin.

Colorism — discrimination against those with darker skin — is a product of racism. As marketers scramble to have brands connect with and serve Black and brown communities, they first have to acknowledge that colorism not only still exists, but is systemic. We must break through our own collective biases, which inform who we choose to feature and whose stories get told in marketing. The author provides four ways marketers can fight colorism and ensure they’re on the path to building more inclusive brands. Consumers are waiting to see what rebranding and new advertising campaigns will look like from brands that made promises to stop propagating colorism and perpetuating racism. Belief-driven buyers are becoming the new normal; more consumers want their brands to represent their values and be advocates for societal change. Marketers can either risk being left behind or embrace the responsibility to uphold their promises and challenge the industry standards.

“She’s too dark,” the creative director snapped at me when I recommended the image of a dark-skinned Black woman washing her face for our hero campaign shot. “We can’t use that image for this global campaign.”

• Mita Mallick is the author of Reimagine Inclusion , a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller. She is currently the head of DEI at Carta. She is a LinkedIn Top Voice, cohost of The Brown Table Talk  podcast, and her writing has been published in Fast Company, The New York Post, and Adweek.

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Introduction

In the fall 2019 semester, the students of the Liberal Arts and Management Program class Black Markets: Supply and Demand explored many types of black markets and examined many perspectives related to such illicit markets. Through careful discussion and reading the students discovered four prevalent themes throughout the course: the role of government in creating the context for black market activity, elements of demand, elements of supply, and varying levels of social implications.

The thirteen articles in this volume provide rich takes on these themes. We placed each article with the theme we believe it most exemplifies; however, each article conveys facts and context that relate to each theme. We believe that these themes interact and work together like strands of a rope strengthening each other.

Please note that authors of a couple of the articles personally observed others engaging in illicit activities. The authors did not. And the authors have not revealed true names of the persons they observed.

Different levels of government regulation and enforcement create the context for black market activity

The world is governed by systems of laws created to maintain order. While most individuals abide by these laws, some maneuver around the system for personal gain. Black markets thrive despite governmental regulations because rules are made to be broken.

In Jacob Herbert’s paper, titled “Weed amongst the Trees: Marijuana in Bloomington,” the theme of government is prominent.  The paper shows that, despite marijuana’s strict scheduling and many layers of enforcement, it prevails relatively commonly and openly in Bloomington due to the gap between the government’s official, legal position on the drug and the opinions of the real people who break and enforce these laws.  The people who use it clearly don’t perceive marijuana as immoral and dangerous while law enforcement has not made it a top priority, despite it being categorized as a dangerous and highly illicit drug.

Aisha Green’s series of fictionalized vignettes titled “Organized Crime” depict the different kinds of legal and illegal organ markets that are created through government intervention. In countries like the US and Iran, the government seeks to take full control of the market, but often fall short in regulating the market. However in countries with little government enforcement such as India, the same problem occurs leading to growth and expansion of the organ black market.

Emma Wagner’s essay “Illegal Logging in Peru” explores the complex relationship between the Peruvian economy and the illicit logging market, following the supply chain from the depths of the Amazon Rainforest to the reaches of the international market. Due to economic dependency, the government meets the market with a general lack of regulation and lack of enforcement. Through each stage of the Peruvian logging industry a blind eye is turned, bribes are accepted, and apathy is present.

Motivations that create demand for black market goods and services come from underlying desire, greed, or needs

Social norms and desire to satisfy wants and needs drive demand. As a result, humans seek out various goods and services, whether through illegal or legal means. The following papers demonstrate how persistent demand creates opportunities to engage in black markets.

Mary Kate Ausbrook’s essay “The Persistent Market for Fake IDs and Underage Drinking” analyzes the demand side of underage drinking. The desire to engage in supposedly fun adult like activities and fit in with others drives the demand for underage consumption of alcohol. This want goes one step further as teens actively search for ways to access alcohol by purchasing fake IDs and using them to engage in underage drinking. The strong demand fueled by these motivations allows this black market to persist.

People are motivated to fulfill their demand within black markets out of desire to obtain goods they believe will improve their quality of life, even for goods as trivial as cheese. Melanie Reinhart’s essay, “Russian ‘Fromagicide’,” explores the black market cheese trade that arose after sanctions were placed on certain food imports into Russia. Black markets exist to fulfill demand that is unfulfilled within legal markets. When governments make a good or service illegal, people will find a way to access that good, no matter the regulations surrounding it.

Maria Emmanoelides’ essay “Blood Diamonds: The Ugliness of a Natural Beauty” examines how individuals within society create demand for a product or resource. Some individuals participate in the market unknowingly by purchasing smuggled diamonds and others participate to obtain wealth and control within the government, as depicted in the film Blood Diamond. Without demand for these gems from countries like the United States, the civil war rebel groups would not receive the funding that they need to continue to smuggle these gems. The demand for these ideas help this market to prosper and flourish.

Ashley Brown’s short story, “Simple Life to Secret Life: An Amish Teen’s Journey to the Black Market” portrays a typical Amish teen going through his rebellious stage, involving the use of illegal drugs. Because this rebellious stage is encouraged in Amish culture, Amish teens feel the need to partake in illegal activity. This societal pressure creates the demand for illicit drugs that exists in rural Amish communities such as Shipshewana, Indiana.

Unique motivations for black market suppliers spur economic growth

The international black market encompasses an array of demands. With each good or service, suppliers act in response to demand with unique motivations, including economic stability, better opportunities, etc. Thus, these black market suppliers are able to support markets, growing the shadow economy where licit markets fail. In the following works, the authors describe some of these motivations and their effect on the supply side of the economy.

Cheng Chui Ping, better known as Sister Ping, was a Chinese human smuggler, or Snakehead. Casey Carroll’s story, “The Mother of All Snakeheads,” describes the events that took place in Sister Ping’s life that caused her to be one of the most successful suppliers in the market, and that led to her downfall.

Stacey Tam’s essay “Making the Old New Again” investigates the global supply chain for counterfeit fountain pens. Facing an increasing demand for pens, Chinese manufacturers maximize profit through mass production of name brand counterfeits. The counterfeit pens retail at prices lower than authentic ones, but the drastically low cost of production yields high profit margins. These high profit margins motivate counterfeiters to supply the market, as other options for economic stability are limited in rural villages in China.

In Lauren Fischer’s essay, “A Market for the Digital World,” we learn that the social media market of fake followers and bots is increasingly facilitated by entrepreneurial suppliers and technology companies.  She explains how companies like Divumi create the technology that makes this market possible, how these companies operate legally and illegally and are therefore responsible for much of this gray and black market activity. As technology evolves and advances, so does this market and the organizations that supply it.

Black markets create social implications that can have long lasting effects on society and the environment

While technological developments are advantageous for countries and the global economy, they elicit a more interconnected world. Therefore, the scope of every market, legal or not, expands with the rise of globalization. As black markets increase in size and users, they affect not only people involved in transactions but also the surrounding environments both geographically and socially. Moreover, their diverse scopes result in a myriad of effects on various environmental and societal structures. The following papers address the wide perspectives, influences, and implications that black markets can offer.

Elliott Obermaier focuses on Napster’s history of innovation. His essay, “Napster: the Black Market that Publicly Dominated the Music Industry,” describes how the company set the standard for technological advancement in music streaming that is currently thriving. However, the market created a dilemma regarding how artists, streaming services, and record labels should divide the profits of this newfound means of listening to music. The outcome of the industry’s lawsuit against Napster affected all Napster’s users and those who were losing royalties.  It also opened the door for the long lasting legal, social, and economic change.

Exotic animals have been bought and sold since ancient times. Yulia Nefedova’s essay,  “Illicit Market for Animals,” analyzes the inner-workings and implications of the modern marketplace for exotic wildlife and animal body parts. With technological development, people’s desires for exotic animals has increased.  While governments and wildlife organizations try to protect animals from poaching, the black market continues to grow, negatively impacting wildlife diversity and the world’s environment.

Peter Andrews investigates the trade for human organs in “The Value of a Life.” Human organs are arguably the most valuable commodity traded in today’s society due to their exclusivity and unparalleled ability to save lives. With the significant increase in the demand for new organs in recent decades, legal organizations like UNOS are unable to assist the majority of organ donor patients. Out of desperation, many turn to the illicit industry to accommodate them. This demand among affluent individuals coupled with general apathy towards the impoverished community gave rise to the organ trafficking black market. The implications of this market are the negative physical, societal, and fiscal impacts that it has on the illicit organ donor population.

Perspectives on Black Markets v.3 Copyright © by Michael Morrone et. al. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• What is the black market?
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A black market is when people buy and sell things without informing their government or following their government’s rules . The terms ‘shadow economy’ and ‘underground economy’ mean the same thing: all three phrases are used interchangeably.

People buy from the black market because the good or service they want is difficult or impossible to get hold of legally (because, say, it’s banned in their country) or because they want to save some money (by, say, not paying any tax on it).

If you do some cash-in-hand work and don’t declare it on your tax form, you’re participating in the underground economy. Same if you buy cocaine or cannabis in the UK, whether in-person from a dealer or online from the dark web (an anonymous part of the internet where dodgy stuff often happens).

But you're not taking part in the black market if you sell your old laptop to a mate or buy a second-hand toaster at a car boot sale, even if you don’t tell the government about it. That's because the UK government only requires you to declare and pay tax on the (legal) stuff you sell if it totals more than £12,000 a year .

Because black market transactions fly under the official radar, they can make make it difficult for economists to figure out what a place’s economy really looks like. They’re often not included in GDP , which is the sum of all the goods and services a country produces each year. That can make an economy seem smaller than it really is . Or what looks like a high unemployment rate could really just be lots of people working secretly in the shadow economy.  

Black markets are theoretically examples of free markets , because transactions are influenced by supply and demand without any government interference. However, their illegality can be a big barrier to entry for sellers. Selling some black market products means risking a lengthy jail sentence and/or a turf war with an established criminal network.

The end result is that some black markets end up as monopolies (dominated by one seller) or oligopolies (dominated by a few sellers). The fewer sellers - aka the less competition - there is in any market, the higher prices tend to be (since buyers have little choice about who they buy from).

Black markets are often seen as bad things. By not paying tax, they shortchange governments who then have less money to spend on public goods like education or healthcare. They are often linked to crime, and bring stuff into a country that many people consider dangerous or immoral.

But many generally law-abiding people find the underground economy helpful and even necessary, particularly if their governments are incompetent, autocratic or corrupt. For example, for the last few years in Venezuela the government has heavily restricted the amount of food, money and other necessities available in its official shops. So desperate, hungry people have turned to the black market (and paid much higher prices) in order to meet their needs.

Even in democratic countries like the UK, plenty of people are comfortable with at least some form of black market. For example, just under half ( 44 percent ) of Brits say it’s okay for small traders, such as plumbers and cleaners, to hide some of their earnings in order to reduce their tax bill, usually by working for ‘cash in hand’.

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Black market essay.

Black markets are markets that traffic in illegal goods or services. They may exist with the connivance of local authorities. They may be hidden or underground markets found down dark alleyways or they may be openly tolerated. In the shadow economies of the world, commerce is seeking to avoid government regulations or taxes on a vast array of goods and services. The lack of economic freedom in some countries is often a stimulus to the development of black markets. In some cases shadow markets employ people who feel marginalized in a system that favors legal monopolies or has excessive taxes or regulations. Their victimization is seen as a justification for their economic behavior.

Gray markets handle goods that are produced by legitimate firms; however, they are sold through unauthorized dealers. The genuine goods are sold by dealers who are not a part of the producer’s distribution system.

Black markets have existed in earlier times as well. For example, in the early 19th century London was a center of medical training. However, there was a shortage of cadavers because many people believed that to enter heaven the body had to be intact. The supply of executed criminals was not sufficient for medical schools. Grave robbers, at times working with church wardens, dug up fresh corpses and sold them to the medical schools. These “body snatchers” were filling the demand illegally. Other types of older black markets included the smuggling of slaves, operating illegal houses of prostitution, and trafficking in drugs or other illegal goods. In general whenever anything is prohibited or priced too high an illegal market can be expected to arise to supply the demand.

Trafficking in human beings is still happening today. Babies can be adopted through back channels for a price. Sometimes the babies are the victims of kidnappings. Smuggling illegal workers into labor markets is a thriving business in the world and one that makes the news in the United States, Canada, or Europe on a frequent basis. Along the border with Mexico authorities have to contend with “coyotes” who are traffickers in humans, as well as with drug smugglers.

After the fall of communism at the end of the Cold War in 1989, criminal gangs arose, in many cases forming the Russian Mafia. They lured women into prostitution, often through deception, as thousands of young, educated women in search of work accepted jobs in western European countries. However, the jobs often were falsehoods told by gangsters to lure their victims into prostitution by force when they arrived at their destination in places such as the Czech Republic. It would have been hard for such activities to operate without the active complicity of the local police.

The demand for goods in contemporary markets evokes all manner of black markets. Pirated goods, knockoff goods, and adulterated goods have been sold in markets around the world. The sale of all of these pirated goods amounts to billions in the black markets even though they are cheap imitations. The cost to the original inventors, designers, manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers runs into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Hollywood’s sales of DVDs of first-run movies has been especially hard hit by copyright pirates in the Third World. Shanghai before 1937 and the beginning of the Japanese-Chinese War was a city with a reputation for numerous black market operations. Other Chinese cities shared in that reputation. Some of the sales were sales of information in the espionage trade. Other sales were in drugs, or other illegal commodities. Since 1989 and the enormous development of trade in China anyone, and especially foreigners, walking the streets of Shanghai can find black market sales of pirated DVDs selling for less than $1. The DVDs are good quality and are often of first-run movies. In fact they are often on sale in Shanghai and other Chinese cities before the DVDs are released in the United States. Other countries in the Third World also participate in these and many other copyright violations of printed as well as digital materials.

Shanghai is also typical of many other Chinese cities visited by foreigners by the number of street venders selling imitation Rolex watches or knockoffs of famous writing pens. The buyer who asks about the price may well be asked in return how many dozens they want to buy. The traffic in black market goods in many countries has harmed the business of many companies. In some cases the imitation goods show up in the United States or in other countries where they are sold cheaply at a variety of gray market locations. Black market goods are often sold knowingly or unknowingly at flea markets or by street vendors.

Black market pirates may sell goods or services. The goods may be imitations or they may be stolen. The burglar, hijacker, or thief operates in a different type of black market where stolen goods are sold to a middle man who in criminal slang has been called a fence. The fence takes possession of the goods and then sells them in some kind of market that may be legitimate or underground. Besides consumer goods art works are continually being stolen and sold to someone who can find a buyer.

Art And Artifacts

Many countries have had to surround their museums or traditional sites with armed security guards in order to protect ancient artifacts. The traffic in stolen artifacts is huge and does serious damage to the integrity of archeological sites around the world. The pieces of ancient art that lose their provenance (record of discovery and ownership) may have commercial value as art, but they lose value as historic pieces.

Museums, libraries, and art institutes have at times willingly purchased items that were excellent pieces but were from the underground market in artifacts. The trade has promoted grave robbing in a great many ancient sites around the world from China to Peru and from India to Arizona. The looted pieces lose archeological value, and then as they move in the underground trade their provenance is also lost. Buyers of artifacts in black markets may be indifferent to the archeological information lost when artifacts are traded in the hidden market.

The illegal trade in ancient art is matched by the traffic in stolen art. From time to time there are news accounts of dramatic robberies of famous works of art that are stolen by thieves. The buyers of such works of art participate in a criminal conspiracy to gain personal pleasure from privately viewing art that was once on public display. To this art should be added the traffic in art that was stolen during World War II by the Nazis and by others. Many of the original owners of these works of art died during the war and left little that could be used to identify the lost property to their possible heirs.

Illegal Drugs

The black market in intoxicating drugs is likely the greatest in the sums of money the trade generates. It also leads to the largest response from law enforcement agencies, many of which have been assigned or created just to deal with it. It is also the most common reason for the imprisonment of people in the United States and in many other foreign countries. However, some countries such as the Philippines and Singapore apply the death penalty to convicted traffickers.

The illegal drugs with the greatest volume are cocaine, marijuana, and opium. Other drugs that are derivatives from these are also widely distributed by the heavily armed criminal organizations that engage in supplying the demand for illicit drugs. The sums of money involved run into the billions of dollars.

Cocaine comes from South America where the Columbian drug cartels have established bases for growing and processing coca leaf into cocaine. The war on drugs has not defeated the trade. Thousands have been killed and perhaps millions imprisoned because of the trafficking in illegal drugs.

Marijuana can be grown around the world and is often grown in the United States in secret locations. These may be in patches of ground in national forests. Or clever growers have bought houses in an area and then staffed them with growers who live on site to tend the plants that are grown under artificial lights in the rooms of the house. Outwardly the house looks normal, but inside it is a pot farm that can produce tens of thousands of dollars in marijuana per year unless detected and suppressed by law enforcement.

Opium and its derivatives have been mostly grown in south Asia. The “Golden Triangle” located in northern Thailand and Burma produces huge quantities of the drug. Afghanistan has also and continues to be a center for growing opium poppies. These and other places are centers for a vast network of drug dealers who sell these toxic chemicals.

At times violence has exploded between rival drug gangs. Jamaican gangs have fought with Columbian and Mexican rivals. The violence in Columbia and Mexico between rival gangs or against the government’s efforts to control these gangs has threatened to destabilize these and other countries. Historically Italian gangs known as the Mafia handled the opium trafficking in the United States and elsewhere.

Medicine And Body Parts

The black market trade in recreational drugs is only one type of trafficking in drugs. Many legitimate pharmaceutical products have been copied and sold by illegal manufactures. In addition many cases have been exposed in recent years of companies and consumers who were victims of substitutions. As insulin or some other drug is made and distributed, opportunities for adulteration or substitution occur in the distribution system. The impact for consumers who believe that their medical supplies are secure when they are not has been to adversely affect the health of some and even resulted in deaths. This type of fraud is on a par with the adulteration of products from China or other developing countries. There have been cases where chemicals have been added to such things as baby formula or milk. The adulterant makes it appear that the protein level is higher than it actually is; however, the adulterant in some case could be dangerous for children or even adults to consume. Cases involving the deaths of animals including pets have renewed calls to stopping the trafficking these activities.

The medical field is the scene of a great many black market operations. Not only drugs and medical supplies, whether copied or stolen, enter into the illicit trade—so do body parts. The great development of organ and body part transplant technology has generated a cruel and at times deadly trafficking in body parts. Cases of people who are financially desperate selling a kidney or an eye have received media attention. But for those that make the news, there are others that do not. This is an area were the organs of the poor can be purchased by those with money. It is a trade that is likely to grow unless suppressed with severe penalties.

Plants And Animals

The medical field of modern medicine is not the only area of medicine affected by illegal drug trafficking.

Traditional medical systems in China and India have long used a variety of natural products including teas, herbs, and ointment to treat a variety of ailments. Most of these ancient remedies are supplied with legitimately produced materials. However, there are many products that continue to stimulate a trade in illegally obtained animal organs, or plants that are a threat to the survival of some species. For example, bears are often poached for their bile, which contains ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA). The chemical has been used in Chinese medicine to reduce fever, act as an anti-inflammatory, and to break down gallstones. It is also believed to protect the liver and to improve eyesight. The active drug is now manufactured from other sources, but tradition and superstition have continued the demand.

Rhinoceros horn is also in wide demand and has been supplied by poaching. In traditional medicine it is believed to be an aphrodisiac. The horn is also used to make traditional handles for knives used by men in Yemen and neighboring countries. The impact upon the rhinoceros populations of the trade has led to a significant reduction in the populations of these famous animals.

Elephant ivory has been sought for centuries for purposes of decoration, as has the ivory of narwhales and other sea mammals. The trafficking in elephant ivory has been successfully suppressed, as has the trafficking in sea mammal ivory. However, there are many other plants and animals that continue to be the victims of black marketers who seek such parts as tiger bones for aphrodisiacs.

The trafficking in animal parts is similar to the illegal trade in rare plants. Illegal logging of rare woods in a common activity in many Third World countries; however, it has been known to occur in the United States, where old Black Walnut trees on abandoned farms in places like Wisconsin are hijacked and sold in legitimate markets to unsuspecting buyers. Other types of commercially valuable trees are stolen from forests around the world in order to sell them for a hidden profit to a buyer who can move them into the legitimate stream of commerce.

Another dangerous and violent type of black market is the trade in diamonds. Most diamonds are sold through legitimate channels. A few diamonds have always been smuggled out of the mines and a few others are taken from people through robbery or by other means. These diamonds are usually smuggled into the legitimate trade. However, far more important is the trade in “blood diamonds” or “conflict diamonds.”

Conflict diamonds have developed from the collapse of governments in war-torn Africa. In Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Congo, as well as a few other places, the virtual lack of law and order has allowed criminal gangs to pose as guerrilla fighters as a cover for gross criminal conduct. The diamond gangs proceed to capture a mining area and then enslave the local people and force them to do the mining. The diamonds that are found are used to pay for guns and to prosecute more violence. The trade in blood diamonds has also at times involved known terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda seeking a source of funding.

The discovery of new diamond mines in Russia and Canada has not increased the supply enough to make the conflict diamond operations unprofitable. However, the legitimate wholesalers and retailers have adopted policies that promote selling diamonds with a detailed history of each stone.

Nuclear Technology

Nuclear technology has advanced rapidly since the Manhattan Project produced the first atomic bombs in 1945. There is now a growing fear of nuclear proliferation by many governments around the world. Their concerns about terrorist groups gaining nuclear materials for making a radiological bomb (“dirty bomb”) have grown with the piles of nuclear waste and stocks of nuclear materials available for theft or illegal sale.

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1949 left it open to having its military-grade nuclear materials stolen and sold in the Asian region or beyond. Some arrests of this type have been made; however, the sale of “yellow cake,” which is uranium ready to process into fissionable material, has been conducted legally or illegally by some Third World countries.

Black markets can be so hidden that wars occur between government agents and the black market operative. However, black markets can also be so widely tolerated that a government openly collects a black market tax on illegal sales. The State of Mississippi until the mid-1960s collected a black market tax on the sale of alcoholic beverages. A large majority of its citizens were Baptist and Fundamentalist members of churches that supported temperance policies prohibiting the sale of alcohol. While it was the case that their preachers supported prohibitions on the sale of alcoholic beverages, significant minorities of these churches did not. In fact many members consumed alcoholic beverages.

In what was a blatant compromise between drinkers of alcohol and opponents, the State of Mississippi began to allow the open sale of beer and wine, for which it collected a black market tax. Citizens could purchase beer stamped with “Mississippi black market tax paid” standing in a cooler beside milk containers. Technically it was illegal to sell the beer, but it was also tolerated. However, in one case the state seized a stock of alcoholic beverages from a bootlegger near Hattiesburg, Mississippi, who then sued to get back his property because he had paid the black market tax. He lost in court on the grounds that the state had the right to seize the contraband even if he had paid the tax. The case demonstrated the hazards of dealing in black markets even when the affected trade is almost legal.

The manufacture, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages in black markets has a long history. The Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s began a long American tradition of trafficking in illicit distilling and distributing of untaxed whiskey. During the Prohibition era of the 1920s numerous illegal stills operated, some people made “bathtub gin,” while others made home-brewed beer. In the Great Depression there were farmers who were unable to get good returns for their fruit harvests. In some places they fermented the fruit into alcoholic beverages that were sold by local bootleggers in an underground economy. Many of these farmers engaged in a black market trade but were otherwise upstanding citizens. Law enforcement in many places also accepted payments to ignore this black market trade.

In contemporary times the illegal sale of alcohol has been supplanted by drug trafficking. Those engaged in illegal drug trafficking often use weapons purchased in the black market in guns. The guns used are often more powerful than those available to the police forces because the police have to operate on a much smaller budget for weapons purchases than do the criminals.

The illegal sale of guns is widespread globally. Following the Cold War many former communist countries had large arsenals of small arms and sometimes larger weapons that were sold to nations-states in Third World countries or to guerrilla groups operating there. In many cases these weapons were stolen from poorly guarded armories, or they were sold to arms dealers who then saw that they were delivered to buyers. The market in guns has continued to be brisk because of the numerous terrorist organizations and conflicts around the world. The numerous small wars that continue to flare up make the demand for weapons virtually constant. Weapons purchased by the various criminal organizations around the world are used to attack the police, rival gangs, or to intimidate civilian populations.

In the case of the South American drug cartels, huge sums of money flow into their coffers, often making it difficult for them to launder their profits. This leads to illegal currency exchanges, quite often through hidden bank transfers drawing banks into supplying services to black market operations.

Currency transfers in currency black markets are a common feature of many developing countries. Many do not permit free markets in foreign currency exchanges. They often impose a variety of regulations to protect their balance of payments or for other reasons. The various restrictions have different forms from country to country. Among the restrictions are limits on the foreign currency that can be purchased by citizens of their country or restrictions on currency brought into the country. The restrictions often interfere with trade, causing traders to devise ways to gain the currency that is needed for business. In some countries illegal markets in currency are places that attract foreigners seeking a much better exchange rate than the official rate. Such transactions may be openly tolerated, occasionally punished or sometimes severely punished depending upon political needs.

Transportation

Transportation services are another area of underground or shadow market operations. In many places unlicensed cab drivers operate outside of the government regulated system. The unlicensed cabs may be cheaper than the licensed cabs, but riders, especially foreign visitors, may be victimized by thieves or kidnappers if they take one of these cabs. Illegal cab drivers or unlicensed guides are common in Third World countries and they may try to overcharge or to take the fare to places where they are pressured into buying goods from a “cousin.”

In many jurisdictions participation in black markets is a criminal offense whether the participant is a seller or a buyer. The illegal nature of these markets puts buyers at greater risk from criminals as well as from government sanctions.

Bibliography:

• Peter Andreas, Blue Helmets and Black Markets (Cornell University Press, 2008);
• Tihomir Bezlov, Transportation, Smuggling and Organized Crime (Center for the Study of Democracy, 2004);
• Gargi Bhattacharyya, Traffick: The Illicit Movement of People and Things (Pluto Press, 2005);
• Ben Davies and Jane Goodall, Black Market: Inside the Endangered Species Trade in Asia (Mandala Publishing, 2005);
• Gianluca Fiorentini and Stefana Zamagni, eds., Economics of Corruption and Illegal Markets (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2000);
• Alan Green, Animal Underworld: Inside America’s Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species (Public Affairs, 2006);
• James S. Henry, The Blood Bankers: Tales from the Global Underground Economy (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003);
• Lora Lumpe, ed., Running Guns: The Global Black Market in Small Arms (Zed Books, 2000);
• Moises Naim, Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy (Random House, 2006);
• Mangai Natarajan and Mike Hough, Illegal Drug Markets: From Research to Prevention Policy (Willow Tree Press, 2000);
• T. Naylor, Wages of Crime: Black Markets, Illegal Finance and the Underworld Economy (Cornell University Press, 2002);
• Ramsay M. Ravenel, Illegal Logging in the Tropics: Strategies for Cutting Crime (Taylor & Francis, 2005);
• Peter Reuter, Organization of Illegal Markets: An Economic Analysis (University Press of the Pacific, 2004);
• Friedrich Schneider and Dominik H. Enste, The Shadow Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2007);
• Paul Steege, Black Market, Cold War (Cambridge University Press, 2007);
• Kimberly L. Thachuk, Transnational Threats: Smuggling and Trafficking in Arms, Drugs, and Human Life (Praeger Security International, 2007);
• Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor (Harvard University Press, 2006);
• Sheldon Zhang, Chinese Human Smuggling Organizations: Families, Social Networks, and Cultural Imperatives (Stanford University Press, 2008).

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Black Markets Term Paper

"In Lebanon, the Hizballah has participated in drug dealing that has been at the center of the political chaos over many years" (Schweitzer and Dorsch 169). What can be done to curb drug trafficking around the world? Some experts believe a national drug policy adopted by the United States is one step in the right direction. National drug policy should aim to improve the quality of neighborhood life and the safety of the streets. It has been extensively documented that the illegality of both the use and sale of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana has contributed tragically to the decline of neighborhood quality in cities all across the country, and that the decline is due primarily to the illegality of those substances and their attendant black markets and turf wars. A relaxation of controls, along the line suggested just above, would undercut the incentives to criminal sales -- even at the risk of depriving many inner-city youth of the most lucrative youth employment program of the century (Vallance 104). Many experts believe that reducing the penalties for so called "harmless" drugs like marijuana, would help end black markets, and also cut down on inner city crime, health costs, and law enforcement costs. However, others believe that taxing and controlling the drug would be more detrimental in the end. "Less and more-focused enforcement might prove beneficial to all countries; this option has not yet been seriously explored. Such a step requires collaboration" (Smith 326). While decriminalizing marijuana could lead to less black market traffic, if the drug was controlled as to potency, and taxed heavily, a black market would probably still exist for the drug, thereby counteracting the effects of making it legal. Clearly, there are extreme societal problems that occur with illegal drug use beyond the issue of black markets. Crime increases in areas with heavy drug use, as users steal and rob to pay for more drugs. Addicts become unproductive and costly members of society, and can infect their children , as in "crack babies" who are addicted to crack cocaine at birth because of drug use by the mother . The cost to try to control illegal drugs is also extremely heavy in terms of societal support (clinics, drug abuse counseling, and medical care ), along with the high costs of policing and then prison if police catch dealers and users. The solutions are varied and all have their own set of problems involved. Ultimately, the solution with the least set of problems associated with it should be adopted for a trial period, and then put into place after a study of its problems vs. results. The legalization of marijuana in a controlled amount is the logical place to begin this process. NUCLEAR WEAPON TRAFFICKING If drug trafficking is one of the most well-known types of black markets, nuclear weapons trafficking is certainly one of the most frightening. A black market organization dealing in nuclear weapons could literally bring about the end of the world, if their weapons reached the wrong hands. While there is nuclear material available in numerous countries around the world, nuclear trafficking is most prolific in Russia, where nuclear weapons abounded during the Cold War . After the breakup of the Soviet Union , many states were left with the problem of storing and disposing of weapons, and they were unprepared. While these Russian states are attempting to dispose of their weapons, they have run into problems with the funds to destroy them. One of the most frightening ways traffickers get nuclear materials out of Russia is through military airports. These airports are not subject to customs and other scrutiny, and if enough bribes are given to the right people, the material can move right through (Schweitzer and Dorsch 65). Russian officials are quick to deny any problems with their nuclear defense, but "Many Western analysts and government officials, on the other hand, maintain that the recent seizures of HEU and plutonium are but the first wave of the long anticipated flood of nuclear contraband" (Potter 139). Black marketers are quick to see the opportunities for big dollars in the trafficking of nuclear weapons, and so are eager to work with these materials, to the danger of us all. Criminal cartels could replenish their coffers by trafficking in nuclear weapons or weapons grade materials as middlemen, even if they were not the end users themselves. Consider the increased degree of freedom for U.S. opponents in Panama (Just Cause) or in Iraq (Desert Shield and Desert Storm) if Noriega's agents in the Canal Zone or Saddam's operatives in Kuwait had had available even a small nuclear device, well timed and strategically located (Cimbala 132). Nuclear weaponry is one of the most dangerous threats facing us today. As long as the security of nuclear weapons is in question, no one on Earth is safe from nuclear destruction. The trafficking of these devices is one of the worst trafficking offenses in relation to the harm that could come to the greatest number of people. In order to contain these weapons, and guarantee the safety of all societies, measures must be taken to contain the material, keep it from being moved through countries, and get each and every country that is threatened to…

Sources Used in Documents:

Works Cited Backman, Jules. "Apparel Uptrading." Price Practices and Price Policies: Selected Writings. New York: Ronald Press Co., 1953. 633-637. Cimbala, Stephen J. Nuclear Strategy in the Twenty-First Century. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2000. Dornin, Rusty. "Group Works for end to Desperate Practice of Organ Selling." CNN.com. 14 Nov. 1999. 15 Aug. 2002. http://www.cnn.com/ASIANOW/south/9911/14/organ.selling/ Ebbe, Obi N. Ignatius, et al. "Ghana (Posttraditional Nation-State)." Crime and Crime Control: A Global View. Ed. Gregg Barak. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. 49-63. Editors. "Inter-country Adoption in an International Perspective." New South Wales Law Reform Commission. 1994. 15 Aug. 2002. http://www.angelfire.com/or/originsnsw/icadopt.html

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Edited transcript

Defining the Black consumer

The really interesting thing about Black consumers is that they’re not a monolithic group. In fact, if you do an attitudinal segmentation for the Black consumer, which we did, you find two additional segments that get muddled if you do a broader segmentation of consumers in general. So if you’re working from [the standard] five-segment view of the world, you’re missing the nuances and therefore an opportunity to better tailor your products and services to Black consumers.

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We found in our research that Black consumers are much more likely to seek out and place emphasis on brands that are trustworthy, have a clear social mission, appeal to their cultural values, and generally have credibility among the Black community. In some consumption categories, we also found that there is a real emphasis on clean and/or healthy products that are priced well for good value. Our research found that for Black consumers, key buying factors are quality, customized products or the ability to customize, and (again) the credibility of brands.

Another interesting finding is that Black consumers are more heavily weighted in the trend-setter segment, which includes around 30 percent of Black consumers. So these are folks who discover new products and services and proactively share them with their peers. This presents a real opportunity. If you can win these Black consumers as customers, they’re going help you expand the recognition of your brand through their network and beyond.

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How brands can get smarter about marketing to black consumers.

There really is a huge opportunity to leverage the data that’s out there as well as create new data as part of companies’ market research and market-insights process that’s specific to the Black consumer. The good news is that some work that we’ve done can give a bit of a head start.

We’ve spent significant time understanding the different attitudinal segments that exist in the Black-consumer market. We have a pretty granular view of the demographics at a ZIP-code level. And so there’s increasing fidelity and granularity around the Black consumer and what that opportunity is. We’ve turned some of those data into tools and assets that we think can really help accelerate opportunities to help better serve these consumers.

The good news for companies that want to get serious about serving the Black consumer is that there are some good examples of companies that have been doing it successfully for quite some time and have reaped the economic benefits of being early.

For an example, there’s an apparel brand that currently has an 85 percent satisfaction rate among Black respondents, which is significantly higher than the brand’s satisfaction rate among its broader customer base. The company has a history of publicly supporting Black cultural figures. It is actively investing in Black communities through various initiatives supporting youth in underserved communities. It’s also tying executive compensation to achievement of company workforce-diversity and inclusion goals.

The last example I’ll cite is a beauty brand. Its products were purchased by 50 percent of Black respondents that we surveyed in the past year, 30 percentage points higher than non-Black consumers. They’ve really spent time optimizing their products, really being clear about the price-to-value relationship, and thinking about what their channel strategy is. They’ve centered their social mission. The CEO of the brand is a Black woman, and they just continue to be at the forefront of committing their philanthropic dollars and their supplier-diversity spend to really make clear their commitment to this community.

Channel-specific strategies and policies companies should consider

Brands can ensure that they have a full range of products that offer good value for money. Another way to better serve the customers, to make sure you have products that resonate with them, is by stocking your shelves with products made by Black-owned and Black-led businesses.

Companies should ensure that the in-store staff is diverse and representative of the populations they wish to serve and that they can speak knowledgeably about their products because this is something that Black consumers really value.

E-commerce presents a really exciting opportunity to address some of the challenges that Black consumers face today. We know that they are disproportionately dissatisfied with the in-store experience. We also know that there are geography-based issues with respect to access and availability. Many Black consumers have concluded that online shopping is better. They are more likely than non-Black consumers to engage directly with brands online, browsing their sites, social media accounts, and even written reviews. E-commerce can be a very useful tool for companies to offer affordable products to Black-consumer markets where they don’t have a physical-store footprint, all while appealing to the segment of Black consumers that prefers to source their products and services online which, again, is a significant segment of that population.

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To authentically serve Black consumers, companies must make holistic investments in meeting their needs. They can think about this in three main ways.

One is by looking at their workforce. It’s important that the workforce is representative of and connected to the communities the company wishes to serve. More important, companies should place Black workers in decision-making roles that can influence how the organization actually serves these communities.

Two is by looking at how the company operates and instituting policies and guidelines—again, that ensure that the Black community is treated fairly and with dignity. This includes everything from how Black people appear in your advertisements to how they feel walking through your stores to working with Black-owned businesses to source culturally resonant products and services.

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Shelley Stewart III is a partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office.

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"In his now famed essay for The Atlantic, journalist, author, and essayist, Ta-Nehisi Coates traces how slavery, segregation, and discriminatory racial policies underpin ongoing and systemic economic and racial disparities," Moody-Turner said. 

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"The Idea of America" by Nikole Hannah-Jones and the "1619 Project" by The New York Times

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"In her unflinching look at the legacy of slavery and the underside of American democracy and capitalism, Hannah-Jones asks, 'what if America understood, finally, in this 400th year, that we [Black Americans] have never been the problem but the solution,'" said Moody-Turner, who recommended readers read the whole "1619 Project" as well. 

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"Baldwin's essay reminds us that in America, the very idea of Black persons conjures an amalgamation of specters, fears, threats, anxieties, guilts, and memories that must be extinguished as part of the labor to forget histories deemed too uncomfortable to remember," Worthy said.

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr.

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"King revises the perception of white racists devoted to a vehement status quo to include white moderates whose theories of inevitable racial equality and silence pertaining to racial injustice prolong discriminatory practices," Worthy said. 

"The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" by Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde, African American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist asks readers to not be silent on important issues. This short, rousing read is crucial for everyone according to Thomonique Moore, a 2016 graduate of Howard University, founder of Books&Shit book club, and an incoming Masters' candidate at Columbia University's Teacher's College. 

"In this essay, Lorde explains to readers the importance of overcoming our fears and speaking out about the injustices that are plaguing us and the people around us. She challenges us to not live our lives in silence, or we risk never changing the things around us," Moore said.  Read it here>>

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"Just Walk on By" by Brent Staples

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"I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman" by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an author, associate professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a faculty affiliate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. In this essay, Cottom shares her gut-wrenching experience of racism within the healthcare system. 

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"A Report from Occupied Territory" by James Baldwin

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"Baldwin's work remains essential to understanding the depth and breadth of anti-black racism in our society. This essay — which touches on issues of racialized violence, policing and the role of the law in reproducing inequality — is an absolute must-read for anyone who wants to understand just how much has not changed with regard to police violence and anti-Black racism in our country," Fleming told Insider.  Read it here>>

"I'm From Philly. 30 Years Later, I'm Still Trying To Make Sense Of The MOVE Bombing" by Gene Demby

On May 13, 1985, a police helicopter dropped a bomb on the MOVE compound in Philadelphia, which housed members of the MOVE, a black liberation group founded in 1972 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Eleven people, including five children, died in the airstrike. In this essay, Gene Demby, co-host and correspondent for NPR's Code Switch team, tries to wrap his head around the shocking instance of police violence against Black people. 

"I would argue that the fact that police were authorized to literally bomb Black citizens in their own homes, in their own country, is directly relevant to current conversations about militarized police and the growing movement to defund and abolish policing," Fleming said.  Read it here>>

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Crafting piles of Black Market papers is an essential part of contemporary studying, be it in high-school, college, or university. If you can do that unassisted, that's just awesome; yet, other learners might not be that fortunate, as Black Market writing can be quite challenging. The collection of free sample Black Market papers offered below was formed in order to help embattled students rise up to the challenge.

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The black market in academic papers – and why it’s spooking publishers

Senior Lecturer in Learning Technology, Bath Spa University

Disclosure statement

Dana Ruggiero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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A colleague of mine recently posted a plea on an open forum asking for someone with access to please send her a copy of a journal article. This colleague works at one of the premier research institutions in the EU which has an annual budget of over €100m, yet she had to ask her connections on Facebook for access to a scholarly article. Her university did not have access to this piece of literature that she needed to complete her research.

This story isn’t unique. Many academics have to seek other means for finding articles rather than pay the minimum US$30 that most publishers charge to access an article.

Instead, a black market of scholarly papers exists that those in the know can access as easily as using a hashtag on Twitter: #ICanHazPDF. This system relies on academics helping each other. I post a request for a paper and in ten minutes a response with an attachment may come back to me. The original tweet is then deleted.

Other disciplines have set up listservs and private sites with similar goals: those in need can ask those with access and online journal articles or books are provided free of charge. “There is a cool network of psychology students who have shared stuff by request for a couple of years, its called the European Federation of Psychology Students’ Associations and we were all friends helping friends,” Aart Franken, a recent PhD graduate from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, told me.

Enter Sci-Hub

For the last few years, there has been a new player in town. Sci-Hub , a website developed in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan , a researcher from Kazakhstan, is a repository for over 48m papers which continues to grow every day. Elbakyan has been called a modern-day Robin Hood by some.

The publishing company Elsevier is currently suing Sci-Hub and Elbakyan in New York for copyright infringement. After Elsevier won a temporary injunction against the site in January, it reopened with a new domain name. Alicia Wise, Elsevier’s director of universal access, said that for the company : “It’s as if somehow stealing content is justifiable if it’s seen as expensive … It’s not as if you’d walk into a grocery store and feel vindicated about stealing an organic chocolate bar as long as you left the Kit Kat bar on the shelf.”

But Sci-Hub has changed the way that many think of public access. Unlike previous systems, it keeps a copy of the requested paper on its server so that it doesn’t have to go looking for it when someone else asks. Now instead of asking a group of your peers or sending out a hopeful tweet, anyone can go to Sci-Hub and see whether the paper is there. Within 30 seconds the site loads a PDF version of the requested article that Sci-Hub has accessed from Libgen – a search engine for scientific articles and books, which allows free access to otherwise paywalled content – or skimmed from the publisher.

An affordability problem

As an academic who publishes within the traditional journal system, it’s worth looking at the normal scenario of scholarly publishing.

• An article is written and submitted to a journal.
• That article is accepted after revision and the author is asked to sign away copyright.
• The author is given the chance to publish “open access” which requires the author or the university to pay – in the case of Elsevier, between US$500 and US$5,000 . Other publishers have similar policies .
• If the author cannot afford this fee, or their university refuses to pay it, or the grant that funded the research does not allow payment for publishing, the article is published closed and only those with subscriptions can access it. (Green open access, or the ability to self-archive the accepted version of the article in an institutional repository, is free of charge either immediately or after an embargo period depending on the publisher.)

This last point about affordability is the norm. Not many academics can afford to publish open access with top-tier journals, but for their careers, they can’t afford not to publish in what are known as “high-impact” journals. As Katrin Becker, adjunct professor in computer science and game design at Mount Royal University, in Canada, told me:

Open access that requires authors to ‘buy’ the publication of their articles is wrought with problems, from silencing adjuncts and people without grants, to potentially influencing acceptance based on money rather than the quality of the research.

The difference between academic publishing and other types of creative work is in who owns the rights and who gets paid. Simply put, the author does not get money once the article is published in the journal, the academic editors and peer reviewers are not paid for reviewing these articles. The publisher gives nothing and gets everything.

Academics have the choice where to publish but once the article has been signed over we have no voice in the process – our only choice is to not choose specific publishers.

The pursuit of knowledge

The open access movement has come out of the idea that publicly-funded research should be available to the public. As my colleague Grainne Conole, former professor of education at Bath Spa, told me: “Research is about sharing and discussing our findings with peers, research shouldn’t be locked up in closed systems.”

There are thousands of open access journals but many of them are seen to lack the prestige that universities demand for researchers. We are stuck: academics can’t afford to read their own work but they can’t afford not to publish in these prestigious journals if they want to advance their careers.

Sci-Hub has provided a new path . It doesn’t fix the flawed system of academic publishing, but it does let those without traditional access read the scholarly articles they need to complete their degrees, work on their research projects, and keep up to date with their fields.

As Martin Weller, professor of educational technology at the Open University, told me:

Sci-Hub is a bit like distant thunder at a picnic for publishers. They ignored open access, then tried to discredit it, then tried to make extra money from it – but Sci-Hub may make them actually address the issue.

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"Black Market" comes from a time in the eighteenth century when southern Carolina slaves were encouraged to grow their goods to market. As they grew profitable, local government barred white people from buying their food, yet many continued to do so. As a result of an increase in government restrictions, black market prices, for the items most needed, will rise. Restrictions represent a decrease in supply and an increase in risk on the part of the suppliers, sellers, or any middlemen. A decrease in supply will increase prices, and also increased enforcement of restrictions will increase prices for the same reason...

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Black & Decker Marketing Strategies Essay

Introduction, problem identification, market analysis, evaluation of 4p’s, alternative solutions, recommendation.

Black & Decker (B&D) is a power-tools manufacturing company that deals with tradesmen, industrial and consumer power tools. Duncan Black and Alonzo Decker founded the company in 1910 as a machine shop situated in Towson, Maryland.

The company did not have an effective marketing strategy for its products. Therefore, it lost a sizeable market share to its competition. By 1991, the company was enjoying 9% of the market share in consumer power tools while the largest market share went to Makita.

The marketing department at Black & Decker worked tirelessly to rectify the situation. However, the management team resisted the implementation of its proposals terming it as infeasible. Joseph Galli, the vice president of the marketing department, championed the effort to rescue the company.

He came up with proposals, though he feared that the management would refuse to implement them. Eventually, he ended up altering the proposals to suit the demands of the management.

The company lost a significant market share of professional power tools to Makita and Milwaukee. Customers’ views concerning B&D’s product were discouraging. Consequently, the company required reorganizing its production and marketing strategy to address these challenges.

Majority of the tradesmen thought that the company manufactured consumer products rather than power tools. In the end, they ended up not using the company’s products as expected.

There were debates in the construction sites concerning failure of B&D’s products while Makita’s products did well in the same job. Both the company and consumers contributed to the misunderstanding of B&D’s products witnessed in the market. The company failed to sensitize constructors on the uses of its products in different jobs. On the other hand, customers used the products to carryout the wrong jobs.

Black & Decker used a poor pricing mechanism for its products relative to the mechanisms used by both Milwaukee and Makita. Both competitors priced their products on premium that averaged between 10 percent and 5 percent. However, Makita did not have a good consumer brands reputation. Majority of the consumers referred to it as dictatorial and arrogant for not having channel protection.

Internal Analysis

Various internal factors affect the company’s marketing strategy. The main one being willingness to spearhead the company to achieve competitive advantage. Galli felt a need to carryout a copycat strategy as an endeavor to enhance the performance of tradesmen products. However, he faced stiff resistance from internal players. Many players perceived the strategy as unethical and costly.

Nevertheless, the company was ready to adopt any strategy that would help its products to achieve competitive advantage in the market. Research and development department offered considerable assistance in carrying out market research concerning quality of other substitutes. The research was expensive; however, the company was willing to incur the cost for the sake of increasing its market share.

Marketing department is extremely crucial for the success of a business. Therefore, organizations ought to equip their departments with requisite resources. Galli had an idea of developing a new brand name for professional-tradesmen segment. However, he feared that majority of the stakeholders would not welcome the idea.

This indicated a failure of the company to respect the marketing department by giving it freedom to share ideas on what might help to enhance product performance.

Marketing department needs to make efforts in trying to convince the stakeholders about the importance of changing consumer perception and attitudes towards the company and its brands. Such efforts would help in changing the brand image, which plays a vital role in determining the size of the company’s market share.

Consumer Analysis

Galli noticed that consumers had a negative perception towards B&D’s products. The perception emanated from the abuse of company’s brands by professionals. They used consumer brands rather than industrial tools in industrial jobs. Black & Decker’s products were of high quality, and research proved that they were of better quality compared to those of competitors.

The company had put in place channels for consumer protection besides producing high quality products. On the other hand, in spite of Makita enjoying the largest market share, it did not establish consumer protection measures.

The pricing mechanism, which B&D applied, accelerated consumers’ negative perception towards its brands. Consumers viewed the company as focused on making profit at the expense of quality of its products. Accordingly, Galli believed that a change in pricing mechanism would go a long way towards the improvement of the B&D’s performance in the consumer power product’s market.

Results of consumer analysis found that buyers lacked willingness to purchase B&D’s products. In addition, there was negative attitude towards the company’s products, which called for a need to change the brand name as an effort to save the company’s poor market perception.

Hence, it could have been prudent for the company to adopt a new brand name that could assist in transformation of the consumers’ negative perception about the company.

Galli noticed that the company’s brand name had a poor reputation, which contributed to the decrease of the market share. Therefore, the company needed to develop strategies that would help to reverse the negative perception that consumers had about its products.

However, he had two principal ideas in mind, which were, coming up with a new brand name and developing a sub-brand name that would dominate in some products. However, his brilliant ideas were prone to serious resistance from the stakeholders, who in this case were the company’s managers and employees.

Environmental Analysis

Black &Decker needed to consider two forms of environment that affected its marketing strategies. They included internal and external business environments. To begin with, internal environment comprised of all factors that originated from within the company. They included management, control, production process and business policies.

The company’s internal environment did not give the marketing department full support that it needed to transform the poor performance of business products. Under such conditions, management ought to cooperate with the marketing department, which has sole responsibility of changing customers’ perception towards the company’s product. Hence, Galli required convincing the managers on the importance of going by his ideas.

External business environment is made up of all issues that a business has no power over them. It comprises of competitors, customers, culture and beliefs, and geographical factors. The business only requires coming up with strategies to cope with these factors.

B&D operated under stiff competition, especially from Makita and Milwaukee. Over the years, consumers had developed negative attitudes and beliefs towards the company’s products, which also contributed immensely to the poor performance of its products in the market.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT is an abbreviation for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Business organizations perform SWOT analysis to improve competitiveness by comparing their SWOTs to those of the strongest competitors. The strongest competitor, in the case of B&D is Makita, which holds the largest market share in the tradesmen tool business.

Makita has various sources of business strength. The company is a multinational whose origin is in Japan. It has various sources of capital, being a multinational company. With this, it has the ability to increase its capital strength even when business is not performing well in the U.S market.

In addition, the company concentrated more on tradesmen business than on any other businesses in the same industry. Focusing on a single business helped the company to understand the needs of the targeted customers.

Makita did not use distribution methods that were common to other businesses. It used a unique method of distribution that eliminated the intermediaries, such as the distributors. The method was effective for the company since it helped it to get direct communication with consumers. However, consumers complained of their insecurity, whereby the company was not there to address their issues whenever the tools failed.

On the other hand, B&D had its strengths. The company was a multinational with numerous subsidiaries in Europe. Hence, it had adequate capital just like Makita. It also dealt with numerous forms of businesses in the industry, which helped in risk diversification and hence, easing risk management. Unfortunately, it did not concentrate on a single line of products, as it was the case with Makita.

Instead, it drew its attention to a number of products. This led to B&D losing market share in areas that competitors gave much attention to quality of one product. Ironically, failure to concentrate on the same product was a significant strength for B&D.

Considering weaknesses, Makita’s products were of poor quality compared to those of Black &Decker. In addition, it concentrated on a single product line and ignored others, which led to decrease of its profit margin. This indicates that the company had the ability to lead in the industry but failed after concentrating on a single production line.

Makita did not give job opportunities to the distributors because it marketed its products. Distributors are essential for the business, as they understand the market better than the producer does.

In addition, they increase the market base of the company’s products by reaching to consumers that the producer could reach. This indicates that the company had the potential to reach a bigger market, but failed after declining to work with intermediaries.

B&D did a terrible business mistake by failing to sensitize the target customers on how to use its products. The company ought to have acted swiftly after realizing that consumers were using its products for the wrong jobs. It had the ability to come up with products for industrial jobs, and to increase its market share hence, retaining a good reputation in the market.

Makita had an opportunity to dominate the entire industry after B&D became incapacitated. The company ought to have produced high quality products to draw all customers close.

However, it failed to dominate the industry after opting to rely heavily on tradesmen tool, and hence, neglecting other products that could have done well in the industry. B&D also had an opportunity to dominate the market because its products were of high quality. However, it could not because it failed to correct the consumers’ mistake at the outset.

Competition is the worst threat that a business faces during its operations. Both companies were afraid of each other as each had a potential to dominate the market. The problem with the two companies lied in product development and market strategies.

Makita needed to include distributors in its marketing strategy and to improve the quality of its products to dominate the market. On the other hand, B&D required changing the consumers’ perception by sensitizing them on the uses of its products. Moreover, the company required changing the brand names.

4P’s is an abbreviation for price, product, place, and promotion. It is an essential element of the business marketing strategy. To begin with, price of a product determines its demand in the market. Moreover, it enhances the competitiveness of the business. B&D needed to set the prices of its products at a level that consumers could afford them.

Furthermore, organizational product ought to be of high standards and to satisfy the needs of the consumers. Therefore, B&D required focusing on customers needs and ensuring that its products meet those needs. Place is a crucial element of marketing strategy.

The company ought to have identified a location where customers could acquire its products without struggle. Finally, promotion is crucial in increasing the market share. Therefore, B&D could have used it to increase the market share of its products.

The most visible alternative solution to B&D’s problem was change of the management strategies. The existing strategies seemed to pose resistance to the effectiveness of the marketing department.

This posed a risk of business continuing losing the market share of its products under the watch of the stakeholders. Implementation of Galli’s ideas needed a transformation in the management structure. The existing management was a stabling block to the success of the company’s brand name.

The marketing department of B&D has no powers. Therefore, marketers fear opposition from other departments whenever they propose novel marketing strategies. It would be prudent to give it powers over other departments to ensure its effectiveness. In addition, the company ought to hire marketing experts that would contribute to the establishment of novel management strategies aimed at rescuing the company.

Black &Decker had various solutions to choose from in an effort to increase its market share. The company could drop its brand name to reduce the risk of further loss in the market share.

On the other hand, it could educate its consumers on how to make good use of its products to avoid the risk of customers using the tools in the wrong jobs out of ignorance. Therefore, the company ought to have put the interests of its consumers before others to retain a considerable market share.

In addition, the company’s management ought to focus on business’ interests and not the brand names. B&D was at risk of losing market share while the management focused on the brand name.

It is prudent for the management to consider changing the brand name whenever the business is at a risk that demands its removal. Brand name is a key factor in product promotion in the market. Hence, removal of a flawed brand name is good for the benefit of the company in regaining the market share.

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Recent Labor Market Conditions for Black   Workers

The Biden-Harris Administration has been dedicated to ensuring that the post-COVID economic recovery benefits all Americans, particularly Black Americans. A previous CEA blog highlighted strong labor market outcomes for Black Americans from early 2020 through the summer of 2022. This issue brief updates that analysis, looking at outcomes through 2023. Chapter 1 of the 2024 Economic Report of the President noted that the sustained strong labor market during this time led to sizable benefits for middle class workers, and historically strong outcomes for Black Americans. These benefits are evident in several ways, as outlined below.

Looking at unemployment, from September 2022 to February 2024, the Black unemployment rate remained at or below 6 percent for the longest period on record (highlighted in green in Figure 1). Indeed, in April 2023, the unemployment rate for Black workers dropped to 4.8 percent, the lowest since series began. The latest data shows that unemployment rate for Black workers was 5.6 percent in April 2024 continuing the trend of low unemployment rate for this group by historical standards. For context, the average unemployment rate for Black Americans was about 8 percent from 2016 to 2020 and 11 percent from 2000 to 2015.

Low unemployment rates can sometimes be attributed to potential workers not seeking jobs. However, the historically low unemployment rates for Black Americans have coincided with strong labor market participation. The 2024 Economic Report of the President , highlighted that the Black-White employment-population ratio gap, after accounting for factors like age, education, marital status, and geographic region, reached historic lows in 2023. By the end of 2023, there was little to no unexplained gap for females, and the gap for males was lower than any year on record (see Figure 2).

Wage growth is another key metric of labor market success. The CEA’s previous analysis revealed strong nominal wage growth from July 2021 to July 2022, particularly for Black workers. More recent trends show similar strength for Black workers in real wage growth (wage growth beyond inflation, as shown in Figure 3a). The year-over-year change in real median wage growth is currently positive for Black, White, and Hispanic workers (Figure 3b). Since July 2023, the average annual pace of real median wage growth has been 1.4, 1.5, and 1.3 percent for Black, White, and Hispanic workers, respectively (Figures 3a and 3b).

To compare changes from before the pandemic while accounting for seasonality, we compare the second half of 2019 to that of 2023. Between these time periods, real average wages (inflation-adjusted) increased by 9.5 percent ($2.30) for Black workers, compared to a 6.7 percent increase ($2.21) for White workers. [1] We explore the reasons for these larger relative wage gains for Black workers below.

What Led to These Larger Relative Wage Gains for Black Workers?

In principle, the stronger wage gains for Black workers can potentially be attributed to two factors: faster wage growth in industries with a high proportion of Black workers, and/or a higher likelihood of Black workers being employed in high-wage industries post-pandemic (i.e., upskilling or occupational upgrading). We find compelling evidence of the latter.

Figure 4 explores the first factor by plotting the change in real wages by industry (between July-December 2019 and July-December 2023) against the share of Black workers in each industry in the second half of 2019. While some sectors experienced larger real wage growth than others (for instance, the Information sector saw a $8 increase, while Mining saw a $1 gain), there were only small differences in wage gains across sectors that employed larger shares of Black workers in 2019. Notably, Education and Health Services, the sector with the largest share of Black workers in 2019, saw similar real wage gains as sectors with smaller shares of Black workers. Therefore, while Black workers benefited from a general increase in real wages across various sectors, this does not explain their relatively larger wage gains.

The second explanation could be occupational or sectoral upskilling among Black workers. Previous CEA analysis comparing industry shifts of Black workers between 2019 and 2022 supports this early on in the recovery. Figure 5 updates and builds on this analysis, showing the change in the share of Black workers in each industry from July-December 2019 to July-December 2023, against the average hourly real wages in that industry in the second half of 2019. Black workers were more likely to be employed in higher-wage sectors like Information, Financial Activities, and Professional and Business Services, which also saw high wage growth since 2019. Conversely, the share of Black workers in lower-wage sectors like Leisure and Hospitality and Wholesale Retail Trade decreased.

Figure 6 presents an analysis similar to Figure 5, but focuses on specific occupations. The findings align with the industry-level analysis. Comparing the latter half of 2019 with 2023, the largest increases in the share of Black employment were in generally higher-paying roles such as managers and registered nurses. Moreover, occupations like cashiers and aides in nursing, psychiatric, and home health services, which are generally lower-paying, saw the largest decreases in Black worker representation.

Table 1 quantifies the impact of occupational upgrading by showing what the nominal wages for different racial and ethnic groups would have been in 2023, using the actual changes in occupations but assuming that occupations maintained their 2019 wages. This helps quantify the effect of workers moving to higher-paying occupations. This table shows that Black Americans have maintained their stride of “occupational upgrade” or net advancement to higher-paying jobs on average after the pandemic. Specifically, the average employed Black worker in 2019 was in a job that paid $23.8 an hour, while today, the average Black worker is in a job that would have paid nearly $24.8 an hour in 2019 – a 4.2 percent increase. This is about 2 percentage points higher than the increase for all Americans.

To more formally asses how much of the wage changes over time are due to general wage changes (due to a tight overall labor market) versus upskilling (i.e., moving to higher-wage or high-wage-growth occupations) we used an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to analyze average real wage increases for Black and White workers from the latter half of 2019 to that of 2023, accounting for inflation. Consistent with Figure 5, the decomposition attributes about 41 percent (about 1 dollar) of the real wage increase for Black workers to occupational upgrading, with the remainder due to wage increases within occupations and other unobservable factors. For White workers, occupational upgrading accounts for approximately 30 percent (roughly 66 cents)– indicative of overall improvements that are more pronounced for Black workers.

Under the Biden-Harris Administration, economic disparities between Black and White Americans have been reduced. The employment rate of Black Americans has increased, leading to historically small racial employment gaps. The robust labor market, characterized by national unemployment below 4 percent for over two years and faster wage growth for the bottom 80 percent of workers, has benefited the middle and working classes, especially Black Americans. Notably, Black, White, Hispanic and Asian workers have all experienced wage increases that are faster than inflation (Figure 3b). The robust wage gains for Black workers are partly due to their occupational upskilling and increased employment in high-wage sectors. Relative to before the pandemic, Black Americans have made progress in several other key economics areas as well. Black business ownership grew at its fastest pace between 2019 and 2022 in the past three decades. The rate of homeownership has also increased for Black Americans in recent years. Despite remaining disparities, these developments are encouraging.

[1] The data for wages comes from Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) hourly wage series based on the Current Population Survey. This measures the hourly wage for non – self employed workers paid hourly or non-hourly. It includes imputed values for respondents with top-coded weekly earnings or weekly hours but does not include overtime, tips, commissions for hourly workers.

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Essay on The Black Death

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Published: Mar 14, 2024

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Gender Inequality in the WAEMU: Current Situation and Opportunities

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This paper documents the current state of gender inequalities in the WAEMU by focusing on outcomes (health, education, labor market and financial inclusion) and opportunities (economic rights). The findings show that despite significant progress toward gender equality over the last three decades, there are still prevalent gender-based disparities, which prevent women from fulfilling their economic potential. Both empirical and model-based estimates suggest that the WAEMU can reap substantial economic gains by mitigating the existing gender gaps in schooling and labor market outcomes. Hence, achieving gender equality remains a macro-critical goal for the region. Going forward, the need for specific policies supportive of gender equality may vary in each member country, but a multifaceted and holistic approach is needed to unleash the related economic potential in the WAEMU as a whole.

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Guest Essay

Let’s All Take a Deep Breath About China

By Rory Truex

Dr. Truex is an associate professor at Princeton University whose research focuses on Chinese authoritarianism.

The amygdala is a pair of neural clusters near the base of the brain that assesses danger and can help prompt a fight-or-flight response . A prolonged stress response may contribute to anxiety, which can cause people to perceive danger where there is none and obsess about worst-case scenarios.

America’s collective national body is suffering from a chronic case of China anxiety. Nearly anything with the word “Chinese” in front of it now triggers a fear response in our political system, muddling our ability to properly gauge and contextualize threats. This has led the U.S. government and American politicians to pursue policies grounded in repression and exclusion, mirroring the authoritarian system that they seek to combat.

Congress has moved to force the sale of TikTok , the Chinese-owned social media application; some states have sought restrictions on Chinese individuals or entities owning U.S. land and on Chinese researchers working in American universities ; and the federal government has barred certain Chinese technology firms from competing in our markets. These measures all have a national security rationale, and it is not my intention here to weigh the merits of every one. But collectively they are yielding a United States that is fundamentally more closed — and more like China in meaningful ways.

When you are constantly anxious, no threat is too small. In January, Rick Scott, a senator from Florida, introduced legislation that would ban imports of Chinese garlic, which he suggested could be a threat to U.S. national security , citing reports that it is fertilized with human sewage. In 2017, scientists at McGill University wrote there is no evidence that this is the case. Even if it was, it’s common practice to use human waste, known as “biosolids,” as fertilizer in many countries, including the United States.

More recently, Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Elise Stefanik introduced legislation that would bar the Department of Defense from contracting with Tutor.com, a U.S.-based tutoring company, on the grounds that it poses a threat to national security because it was purchased by Primavera Capital Group, an investment firm based in Hong Kong. Their argument is that this could give the Chinese government backdoor access to the tutoring sessions and personal information of American military personnel who use the firm’s service.

The legislation does not mention that Tutor.com’s student data is housed in the United States , that it volunteered for a security review by the federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and that it created additional levels of data security protection in coordination with the U.S. government. The bill also does not specify how exactly the Chinese government would get access to Tutor.com’s data or what use it would actually have for information on the tutoring sessions of U.S. military personnel.

Last summer, several Republican lawmakers cried foul over the “Barbie” movie because a world map briefly shown in the background of one scene included a dashed line. They took this as a reference to China’s “nine-dashed line,” which Beijing uses to buttress its disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea. According to Representative Jim Banks, this is “endangering our national security.” The map in the movie is clearly fantastical, had only eight dashes and bore no resemblance to China’s line. Even the Philippine government, which has for years been embroiled in territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, dismissed the controversy and approved the movie’s domestic release.

Of course, the United States should actively confront President Xi Jinping of China about his repression at home and aggression abroad. As a scholar of China’s political system, I worry about how Mr. Xi has made his country even more authoritarian; about increasing human rights abuses in China, particularly those directed at the Uyghur population in Xinjiang ; about Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong, its threats toward Taiwan, its increasingly cozy relationship with Russia and its support for the war in Ukraine . America must remain alert to legitimate concerns about well-documented Chinese activities such as espionage and cyberattacks.

But should our policymakers really be focusing on Tutor.com, Chinese garlic or “Barbie”? Or should they concentrate on the more serious threats posed by China’s authoritarian system, or the many other issues that meaningfully affect the day-to-day lives of Americans?

Perhaps the most worrisome effect is that China anxiety is slowly creeping toward discrimination against Chinese Americans, a new “yellow peril.” We’ve already seen how an initiative begun during the Trump administration to target Chinese espionage led to unfair scrutiny of Chinese researchers and even Asian American government employees, leading to the program being terminated in 2022. And we saw how xenophobia during the pandemic triggered threats and attacks against Asian Americans. There also have been numerous reports of law enforcement officials interrogating Chinese students and researchers traveling to and from China on the grounds that they may be agents of the Chinese state. Again, this treatment — being brought in for questioning by the police or government officials — is something foreign scholars experience in China , where it is euphemistically referred to as “being invited for tea.”

Last year, state legislators in Texas proposed a bill that initially sought to prevent Chinese (as well as Iranian, North Korean and Russian) citizens and entities from buying land, homes or other real estate, citing concerns about the security of the food supply. Putting aside the fact that Chinese citizens are not the Chinese government, the actual amount of American farmland owned by Chinese entities is negligible — never exceeding 1 percent of farmland in any given American state as of 2021. The bill ultimately failed , but only after substantial pushback from the Chinese American community.

This China panic, also stirred up by both liberal and conservative U.S. media, may be influencing how average people perceive their fellow Americans of Chinese heritage. Michael Cerny, a fellow China researcher, and I recently surveyed over 2,500 Americans on the question of whether Chinese Americans who were born in the United States should be allowed to serve in the U.S. intelligence community. Roughly 27 percent said Chinese Americans’ access to classified information should be more limited than for other U.S. citizens, and 14 percent said they should be allowed no access at all.

This is overt racism, and while not the majority opinion, it is concerning that so many Americans are blurring the line between the Chinese government and people of Chinese ethnicity, mirroring the language of our politicians.

China is a formidable geopolitical rival. But there is no world in which garlic, “Barbie” or a tutoring site poses meaningful threats to American national security. Labeling them as such reveals a certain lack of seriousness in our policy discourse.

If the United States is to properly compete with China, it’s going to require healthy, balanced policymaking that protects U.S. national security without compromising core American values.

Let’s take a deep breath.

Rory Truex (@rorytruex) is an associate professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, where he teaches courses on Chinese politics and authoritarian rule.

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Mercer County Man Charged with Communicating Threats to Attack White People

TRENTON, N.J. – A Mercer County, New Jersey, man was arrested Friday night for transmitting via the internet a post containing threats to kill white people, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger announced today.

Joshua Cobb, 23, of Trenton, New Jersey, was arrested and charged by complaint with one count of transmitting a threat in interstate and foreign commerce. He is scheduled to appear this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Rukhsanah Singh in Trenton federal court.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:

On Dec. 17, 2022, Cobb used a social media application to post a message, stating:

• I want to cause mayhem on the white community. The reason i specifically want to target white people is because as a black male, they will NEVER understand my struggles. Same way I will never understand their struggles, but I don’t care to. I want to erase them. All of them really, but in this case as many as I possibly can. As of today I have officially began planning my attack. It is going to take place in 2023 in the state of New Jersey, I have not chosen a exact date but I am going to be sure it is close to an important holiday to their race. I have a location in mind already which I have frequented for the past year and I am certain nobody there is armed to be able to stop me from spraying them to the ground. I have already acquired 2 of the 4 firearms I plan to use for my attack, and I also know my entry and exit points already after the mayhem.

Following this post, in April and May 2023, Cobb made several additional posts on another social media application, in which he discussed his hopes of progressing into a serial killer, stating:

• Imagine the rush you’d feel while shooting some sh*t up. Probably could get literally high off the adrenaline alone. I’d probably OD on my own adrenaline after the 10 th body goes down.
• 100% someday. Just not yet thought. I want to continue training and buying more ammunition.
• Tbh I hope I do progress into a serial killer because I f*cking hate life man... But one day everyone will suffer. I promise I will make everyone feel my f*ucking pain. My deep, sincere, raw, & sharp pain.
• There is no way out for me. The only way out is bloodshed.
• Just wait man. Remember [my username]. [I] will leave clues when im done.
• I’m just leaving evidence for whoever investigates my case.

Cobb joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 2023 and began basic training in June 2023. Cobb was stationed in California until his recent discharge.

In statements to law enforcement, Cobb admitted to writing the above-described posts and provided detailed information on locations he had considered as possible targets for his attack, including a Jersey Strong gym and an Aldi grocery store in Robbinsville, New Jersey. Cobb also discussed his access to guns and idolized other mass shooters.

A lawful search of Cobb’s cell phone revealed additional notes from April and May 2023 expressing Cobb’s homicidal ideations, stating:

• It’s all a f*cking game and you all are going to die. I currently lack the means necessary to kill as many as I intend to but one day I will have the available resources (finance) to purchase the appropriate weaponry for my killing(s).
• All my life I have been doubyed… Ive been taken as the joke… ive been f*cked around with… well now its my turn. I am going to kill one of you mother*ckers I f*cking hate humanity. All of you f*cking duck and I don’t give a single f*ck about any of you though I may appear I do.
• Im ready to grt to the good part of my story where I start taking you mother f*ckers out and killing you all… My rampage will soon happen… I plan to now continue accumulating the necessary equipment needed to execute. Once all equipment is in, time will then tell. You will all die.
• I hate all of this sh*t and I feel like my only way out of the pain and suffering is by exploding. So I await… I await that moment so I can make those moments final. For whomever… myself or a victim.

Cobb’s phone also contained notes on how to bring guns into New Jersey.  

The charge of transmitting a threat in interstate and foreign commerce is punishable by a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

U.S. Attorney Sellinger credited special agents and task force officers of the FBI Newark Joint Terrorism Task Force, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge James E. Dennehy, with the investigation leading to the arrest. He also thanked the Naval Criminal Investigative Service; the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, under the direction of U.S. Attorney E. Martin Estrada, agents of the FBI Field Office in Los Angeles, California, under the direction of Acting Assistant Director in Charge Mehtab Syed; the Hamilton Police Division, under the direction of Chief Kenneth R. DeBoskey; the Robbinsville Police Department, under the direction of Chief Michael K. Polaski; and the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, under the direction of Prosecutor Angelo J. Onofri.

The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Vera Varshavsky of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s National Security Unit, with assistance from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Counterterrorism Section of the National Security Division. 

The charges and allegations contained in the complaint are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

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