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Check out our newest Newsletter on "MULTICULTURAL MAGIC: B2B GROWTH"

Entrepreneurship is important; it spurs innovation, employment and economic growth. It is estimated that immigrants/multiculturals, create businesses at 2-3 times the average rate. Some start as SOHO (small office, home office) and grow into larger businesses which can be categorized by SIC codes, with many employees and sizable sales volumes.

A study by Duke University, University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University found that immigrants founded almost 52 % of Silicon Valley startups launched from 1995 to 2005. A quarter of the patents filed during the same period came from immigrants.

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Hyphens and Other Changes

by Lisa Radding lradding@ethnictechnologies.com

It’s not uncommon for a married couple to give their children a hyphenated last name, a combination of their two names. Personally, I’m happy to have just one last name, but I guess I can see the appeal… no favoritism, embracing multiple heritages, uniqueness, etc. In American society, however, while hyphenated names are prevalent, it’s most common for the woman to take the man’s name.

Yesterday a male friend suggested to me that when two people marry, they should just take the better of the two names. Loving the essence of the name, I, of course, have always felt this way. I was surprised to hear it from someone else, particularly a guy. People tend to feel very connected to their names. That’s one reason to hyphenate children’s names and for women to keep their original last names. On the one hand, we feel connected to our names because they are a basic part of our identity. But conversely, they are something our parents bestowed upon us, over which we had no control. Thus, we shouldn’t be offended if someone doesn’t like our name, or if the woman in a marriage has a “better” last name.

Would I give mine up? Sure, but I’d hope his (the future husband I have yet to meet) name is better than mine. There are a lot of considerations at stake in deciding what makes a name better. For example, I like “Radding” because it’s relatively unique. Any Radding is related to me. That’s pretty cool. One point for Radding. But “Radding” is annoying in my signature. It has a lot of “clock-climber letters,” as my third grade teacher called them, which are painstakingly slow to write in cursive. Minus one point for Radding. Regardless of whether or not I give up “Radding” later in life, I’m still connected to the family. I’m not giving up an identity.

Most couples don’t weigh the pros and cons of two names and pick the better one. For those looking to compromise, the most prevalent solution seems to be sticking the two names together, for the kids at least. Yet what happens when Jones-Smith marries Adams-Brown? Should the kids be Jones-Smith-Adams-Brown? Enough is enough. Plus, while it feels fine to adopt a partner’s name when it’s a single name, would I really want to adopt someone else’s hyphenated name? For some reason adopting someone else’s hyphenated name feels more like adopting someone else’s identity than just adopting their single name. It may be one thing to carry around both your own parents’ heritages, but to carry someone else’s? I think not.

Regardless of my feelings about changing last names, the plausibility of them boggles my mind… the infinite number of combinations out there to capture and analyze. But I must say that I haven’t yet come across a Jones-Smith-Adams-Brown, or anyone with more than two names connected by a hyphen.

Multicultural Name Identification

by Candace candace@ethnictechnologies.com

Conventional wisdom says that America is a melting pot of many different cultures. Try mixing up six different cheeses in a pot then try to find the different taste values of each. It is very difficult to do. The same idea applies to identifying the different cultures that make up our nation. The segmentation system that we habitually use simply divides the population into color or racial categories: White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian. Using this type of approach or methodology has its downfalls and in most cases antiquated census information is used, as it's sole input for development. A better approach is to see the diversity in America as a mixed salad, where each ethnicity is a different ingredient and can be identified. This method, if used properly applies to the many ethnicities and different cultures in our nation and each can be identified.

Marketers, researchers, advertising agencies and the media often market to Hispanics as a separate group from Whites, Blacks and Asians. When you take an in-depth look at the Hispanic population in the Untied States they often associate with one or more of the aforementioned racial groups and those racial groups can be correlated to their country of origin or cultural identity. An individual or family from Puerto Rico does not exhibit the same cultural identity or buying habits as those of a family that has immigrated to the US from Mexico. If that is the case then why do marketers, researchers, advertising agencies and the media often approach Hispanic's as a whole with the same exact offers, disregard their country of origin and then complain that their campaigns were not successful. Even the dialect of the Spanish language they speak differs.

The same issues arise and in greater depth when attempting to target the Asian community, the "One Size Fits All" mentality is often the method used and low response rates and product interests are the norm. With so many different Asian countries of origin and Asian languages of preference currently residing in the US, it is the smart marketer that embraces technology that allows them to identify all ethnicities, countries of origin and languages that are available. An offer tailored to a Chinese American living in San Francisco CA should differentiate from one being tailored to a Korean American living in Fort Lee NJ or a Vietnamese American living in Houston TX. Now if you add into the mix the different levels of assimilation and acculturation, the buying habits and traditional cultural customs the individual embraces are all over the chart.

An individual's ethnicity is not in all circumstances related to ones "Country of Origin". A Deepak Banerjee may have been born in England and then came to our country, but his ethnicity and cultural identity is Indian and in most cases his religion would be Hindu.

Many ethnic and religious groups in the United States maintain a strong cultural identity. They are often attracted to communities with their same ethnicity, communities in which many traditional cultural customs are maintained. Given that the ethnic diversity in the US is far more reflective of a global landscape, it is even more important for marketers to fully understand cultural differences, language preference, purchasing habits and other socioeconomic information and integrate those variations into their everyday marketing strategies and tactics. The time for the" One Size Fits All" methodology is gone that way of the dinosaur.