Guess the Quickest Way to Anger Asian American Consumers?

Can you guess the most expedient way Toys R Us could pick to turn off and anger Asian American consumers and other customers?

This is a good one: choose an Asian American for an enormous prize and then revoke the award because her mother is not a legal resident of the United States. Oh and do it a month after opening the first store in Shanghai, China which is in the same coutry where the vast majority of the chain's products are made.

As far as ethnic marketing disaster case studies go, this is one of the best.

Saturday's New York Times has the full story [here - permalink] by immigration writer Nina Bernstein. The Times report - which is accompanied by a photo from the World Journal because the Times could not reach the family - comes after the story hit the bigtime in popular Chinese-language daily The World Journal and made its way around the Internet via a e-mail notification campaign.

Can a major corporation win by being perceived as anti-immigrant? I doubt it, that's why I think this was strange business decision and applaud the Times for reporting on it. By the way, the Times says the winner was a "black American" and that another runner-up mother, whom I presume was disqualified as well, was born in El Salvador.