Multicultural Market Insight

South Hackensack, NJ
July 6th, 2011
E-Tech July Newsletter
by Candace Kennedy candace@ethnictechnologies.com

Most U.S. banks, Financial Services and Insurance Businesses, unlike many media, retail and grocery companies, have avoided marketing their products and services specifically to the Multicultural consumers. This made sense since the majority of the 50+ million Hispanics and the 40+ million African Americans, the two largest of the groups, who live in the United States typically spend less than the average U.S. consumer on financial services but more on groceries, retail goods and media. Sidestepping the Multicultural market made sense to financial institutions, until now.

With economic recovery on a slow rebound, financial institutions could be missing out on a huge opportunity. By 2012, spending by Multicultural Consumers living in the United States will have risen to more than $2 Trillion a year, from around $1.5 Trillion, with financial services accounting for a substantial part of that increase. Industries that currently cater to the Multicultural markets benefit conspicuously from the growing population. However, some industries such as housing, health care, and financial services that target middle and upper-income consumers are likely to benefit significantly as Multicultural consumers household incomes rise.
To succeed in this diverse market, banks and insurance companies will have to do more than translate their brochures into different languages. They could benefit from the lessons learned by other consumer product marketers. In courting the Multicultural consumer, financial-services companies must not only attract a new customer segment but also change its buying behavior. Financial institutions will have to educate these consumers about such products as mortgages, investments and insurance. Companies can implement techniques such as using multicultural faces in your campaign creative in order to increase the rapport between your organization and your audience or adjusting color preferences and graphic presentation forms to increase the effectiveness of your website presentation. To achieve a competitive edge in campaigns, marketers must understand the cultural differences and lifestyle characteristics of Hispanic versus Asian versus African, etc.
The incomes and assimilation levels of Multicultural consumers vary widely. Banks should offer a choice of products at every rung of the ladder: from inexpensive services like international wire transfers and check cashing targeted at recent immigrants, to mortgages and insurance products geared toward the emerging middle class, to the full portfolio of financial services for second- and third-generation Multicultural consumers.
Clustering all Multicultural consumers in one large category is not the proper approach since many different groups compose that market. Nonetheless, there are trends that can be highlighted. For example, purchase decisions among many Hispanics are driven by familiarity or lack of familiarity with brands. The bulk of Hispanic consumers, particularly those who are Spanish dominant buy products and services that they recognize and know something about. Marketing to the Hispanic consumer has at its core the establishment of a relationship between the seller and the buyer. Hispanics are particularly sensitive to the establishment and maintenance of that relationship.
The Hispanic consumer is generally more sensitive to offers that are acceptable to family and friends as a good decision. We see both individual and external attributes that drive the decisions differently within this segment. Product and offer attributes such as price and availability and perceptual attributes such as quality, benefits, and cultural sensitivity are obviously key drivers in the purchase decision. After all, businesses cannot reap the rewards from this segment unless they understand and target it.

SAVE THE DATES!!!!

Ethnic Technologies, LLC will be exhibiting at the Bridge Conference in Washington DC July 20th till July 22nd.
The DMA National Trade show in Boston MA October 2nd till October 5th..
Visit our booths and learn more about our New Release E-Tech Version 8.0 due out late Fall 2011 and our other Multicultural Marketing products and services.

Get an additional 10% off of any African American, Asian or Hispanic Financial Related Lists!
Mention the special code: 74AAH

Financial Opportunities for the Hispanic Consumer

South Hackensack, NJ
August 24th, 2010
by Candace Kennedy candace@ethnictechnologies.com

Hispanic Heritage Month is just around the corner and being celebrated nationwide beginning on September 15, 2010, the anniversary of independence for five Latin American countries – Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Mexico achieved independence on September 16th and Chile on September 18th.

Financial Opportunities for the Hispanic Consumer

Some U.S. banks and insurance companies, unlike many media and grocery businesses have limited marketing their products and services specifically to Hispanic consumers. This may have made sense in the past, since the majority of the 45 million + Hispanics who live in the United States typically spend less than the average U.S. consumer on financial services but more on groceries and Spanish-language media. Sidestepping the Hispanic market made sense to financial institutions, until now.

Financial institutions could be missing out on a huge opportunity. By 2011, spending by Hispanics living in the United States will probably have risen to more than $975 billion a year, from around $500 billion in 2006. Financial services are projected to account for a substantial part of that increase. Industries that currently cater to the Hispanic market benefit conspicuously from the growing population. Industries such as housing, health care, and financial services that target middle and upper-income consumers are likely to benefit significantly as Hispanic household incomes rise.

To succeed in this diverse market, banks and insurance companies will have to do more than translate their brochures into Spanish. Financial institutions benefit from the lessons learned by other consumer product marketers. In courting Hispanics, financial-services companies must not only attract a new customer segment but also change its buying behavior. Financial institutions will have to educate the Hispanic consumers about such products as mortgages and insurance. Once educated, the Hispanic consumer will seek these “aspirational” products and services. For Hispanics, these financial products become part of “Living in America”.

The incomes and assimilation levels of Hispanic consumers vary widely. Banks should offer a choice of products at every rung of the ladder: from inexpensive services like international wire transfers, pre-paid cards and check cashing targeted at recent immigrants, to mortgages and insurance products geared toward the emerging middle class, to the full portfolio of financial services for second- and third-generation Hispanic consumers.

Clustering all Hispanics in one large category is not the most profitable approach since many different groups compose that market. Nonetheless, there are trends that can be highlighted. For example, purchase decisions among many Hispanics are driven by familiarity or lack of familiarity with brands. The bulk of Hispanic consumers, particularly those who are Spanish dominant buy products and services that they recognize and know something about. They strive to be “more” American. Once sold on a “brand” they will share their experiences with others in their immediate circle.

Marketing to the Hispanic consumer has at its core the establishment of a relationship between the seller and the buyer. Hispanics are particularly sensitive to the establishment and maintenance of that relationship. The Hispanic consumer is generally more sensitive to offers that are acceptable to family and friends as a good decision. We see both individual and external attributes that drive the decisions differently within this segment. Product and offer attributes such as price and availability and perceptual attributes such as quality, benefits, and cultural sensitivity are obviously key drivers in the purchase decision. Theses distinctions are important. Businesses cannot reap the rewards from this segment unless they understand and target it.

Hispanic Demographic Information Snapshot http://12.162.123.172/multicultural_information/etech_process/hispanicsdemo.html

At Ethnic Technologies we are here to help you understand and market to the Hispanic consumer with fresh, accurate and comprehensive data, modeling and analysis.

Ethnic Technologies will be exhibiting at 2 up coming venues in September and October 2010. Contact an E-Tech representative to learn more about our products, services at one of these events.
1. September 30th at the Hispanic Digital and Print Media Conference at The Scholastic Auditorium & Greenhouse with Rooftop Terrace NYC, NY. Portada’s Connecting National Brands to Local Audiences.
2. October 10th through the 12th at the DMA National Conference and Exhibition at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco CA.

Ethnic Technologies, LLC - Hispanic Insight

Ethnic Technologies, LLC is the platinum standard in multicultural marketing. The result of over 40 years of continuous ethnic, religious and language preference research, E-Tech allows clients to segment their database by ethnicity, religion, language preference and Hispanic country of origin more accurately and comprehensively than any other approach. The EthniCenter® offers an Assimilation Index, which distinguishes Hispanic individuals based on their ability to speak their Native Language or understand the language of their prevailing culture. E-Tech incorporates a unique approach for the different Hispanic Countries of Origin. After identifying their specific names, E-Tech does a neighborhood analysis using multi-sourced information compiled from our research team. From that data, E-Tech is able to accurately identify the Hispanic individuals' Country of Origin. The incorporation of Enhanced Neighborhood Analytics (ENA) technology in E-Tech Version 7.3 establishes a new and unprecedented level of granularity and completeness in the ethnic marketing industry. Clients also benefit from and acquire ethnic mailing, telemarketing and email lists for both the United States and Canada. The analytics department at E-TECH offers ethnic data appending services and mapping to provide businesses with an overview of new and existing markets.

E-Tech ® and The EthniCenter ® are registered trademarks of Ethnic Technologies, LLC

Hispanics Still Spending During These Tough Economic Times

The U.S. Hispanic market is booming. Hispanic households across the United States will sharply increase their economic clout over the next ten years. The demographic explosion has continued since 1990 and there is no let up. Go to Wal-Mart, Sears, K-Mart, to name a few stores, and you will see many Hispanic families loaded with consumer goods. The fact is, Hispanics love to buy and almost always buy in cash.

This is not a debt-ridden community. For years they learned the hard way that to have something, one has to earn it and save. Credit card companies solicit many Hispanic households.

"Our clients come into our office and want to know what to do. We try to explain how the system works and after we are finished, they take the solicitation and throw it in the trash. Being in debt is not honorable, and no one wants to have a bad name. To establish credit history we had to dissuade an individual from paying off immediately his credit card. Keep it for six months or more and pay little, very punctually and you will establish credit. He did and that person now obtained a credit history that allowed him to purchase his own home. Another individual saved up money for three years and went to the bank to pay off the loan. The loan officer's eyes widened considerably when he saw a check for $30,000. Hard earned savings of a family to purchase a home." (Wells Fargo Bank)

Hispanics send money to the families they left behind in their country of origin. And it is true that these remittances are billions of dollars. But according to the National Immigration Forum, in addition to consumer spending, "immigrants and their businesses contribute $162 billion dollars in tax revenue to federal, state and local governments." They work in key sectors, start their own businesses and in general contribute to a thriving economy.

So in order to capture the loyalty of this market segment, marketers have to target this population differently from the "general market." First, companies have to understand that the U.S. Hispanic market is not homogeneous. It is a market "comprised of subcultures from over 20 countries in Central and South America, the Caribbean and Spain, with the majority (63 percent) of Mexican heritage." Each group has its own set of values, traditions, beliefs, foods, festivals, and consumer patterns. The U.S. Hispanics are not identical. There are many differences in their countries' geographies, their indigenous ancestries and their colonial histories. So a marketer has to be creative and know that the unifying factor in this market segment is the Spanish language.

In advertising, Hispanic market research has discovered that of the Hispanics surveyed, they prefer ads to be in Spanish over English, even though the younger group is more comfortable in English. Research also shows that Hispanics like any type of media, but prefer television and radio. It is no wonder that Univision (one of the Spanish language networks) ranks 5th in the U.S., behind ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox, and Univision won the #1 Network rating in the country in overall prime time viewer share on three nights of the week among all adults ages 18-34 in June this year.

Having said this, radio is not far behind. Actually, radio is a very effective medium to reach Hispanics because it has been found that they tend to listen all day.

That leaves print, with a couple minority newspapers that cover news targeting directly to the community. The news covered specifically addresses to the needs and concerns of the Hispanic community. Marketers place ads in these newspapers selling anything from real estate to translation and interpreting services.

Direct response marketing has historically obtained little interest from the Hispanic population. Most have received the mail and trashed it. However, the recent immigrants welcome the mail if for no other reason than to become informed. If most of this direct mail is in English and reaches a large percentage of households that speak and read only Spanish a great opportunity is missed.

Unlike its U.S. counterpart, the Hispanic household is younger, with the head of household anywhere between 25 and 44 years old. Once again, the Conference Board's Research Center states that the under 44 Hispanic market is going to grow from a purchasing power of $295 billion in 2008 to $397 billion by 2010.

So to marketers everywhere, all the signs are there. The opportunity is growing, now is the time to start reaching out to Hispanic consumers with messages targeted to their lifestyles and buying habits.

Ethnic Technologies, LLC - Hispanic Insight
Ethnic Technologies, LLC is the platinum standard in multicultural marketing. The result of over 30 years of continuous ethnic, religious and language preference research, E-Tech allows clients to segment their database by ethnicity, religion, language preference and Hispanic country of origin more accurately and comprehensively than any other approach. The EthniCenter® offers an Assimilation Index, which distinguishes Hispanic individuals based on their ability to speak their Native Language or understand the language of their prevailing culture. E-Tech incorporates a unique approach for the different Hispanic Countries of Origin. After identifying their specific names, E-Tech does a neighborhood analysis using multi-sourced information compiled from our research team. From that data, E-Tech is able to accurately identify the Hispanic individuals' Country of Origin. The incorporation of Enhanced Neighborhood Analytics (ENA) technology in E-Tech Version 7.1 establishes a new and unprecedented level of granularity and completeness in the ethnic marketing industry. Clients also benefit from and acquire ethnic mailing, telemarketing and email lists for both the United States and Canada. The analytics department at E-TECH offers ethnic data appending services and mapping to provide businesses with an overview of new and existing markets.

Contact Candace M. Kennedy, Sales and Marketing Director at 866-333-8324 ext. 106 or candace@ethnictechnologies.com. Visit www.ethnictechnologies.com.

Ethnic Technologies, LLC will be exhibiting at the DMA National Show in San Diego, California on October 18th, 19th and 20th..Two new products E-Tech 7.2 and G-Tech 3.0 will be introduced at the show. Please visit us at booth # 1621 to find out more about our great products and services.. Hope to see you there!!