When Ezachia Ngcobo (Kogod ‘24) arrived on the AU campus from her native South Africa, she had no idea she’d contribute to cutting-edge research that could make a significant difference back home.
“It was a long journey to Kogod,” she now recalls, thinking back on her arrival in DC last fall.
Shortly after beginning the year-long pursuit of her MS in Marketing degree, Ngcobo joined forces with Kogod Department of Marketing professor Ron Hill to explore how racial bias fuels economic inequities.
Specifically, the duo set out to compare racial dynamics in the US and Ngcobo’s home country, South Africa, and how, in both countries, those dynamics influence key sectors of the economy, from home ownership to food insecurity and access to critical goods.
It was a natural collaboration between Ngcobo, who came to AU with a background in public health, and Hill, a longtime scholar of impoverished consumer behavior, marketing ethics, and public policy.
What started as a research concept from Hill quickly grew.
“The more we talked about how race plays out in South Africa, specifically in the marketplace, the more I really did start to see a connection and how we could go forward,” Ngcobo says. “It was a true collaboration.”
Today, Ngcobo’s name appears alongside her professor’s on their published paper, Consumption Adequacy and Racial Discrimination: An Exploration and Comparison between the US and South Africa.
The work features an in-depth analysis of consumer dynamics in both countries and examines the origins of inequality in both economies today.