| 2001 News & Magazine
Articles
Peeling
Back The Onion. (The business community's growing
knowledge of the Hispanic market can be likened to
peeling an onion)
By
KEN GREENBERG
10/08/2001
Brandweek
4
Copyright 2001 Gale Group Inc. All rights reserved.
COPYRIGHT 2001 VNU Business Media
Marketers
get closer to understanding the segment with each
layer.
When
Isabel Valdes came to the United States in
1974, her first trip to a grocery store proved overwhelming
and potentially problematic. She saw numerous products
that she didn't recognize, including salad dressing.
"It looked like 'gomina,' a type of gel I would
see people using on their hair back home, so I thought
it was some type of hair product," she said.
In her native Chile, salad is a popular dish, but
dressing is virtually unheard of--oil and vinegar
or lemon are more customary toppings. Today, Valdes
and her family have become frequent salad dressing
users and she's become a much sought-after consultant
to companies trying to understand and serve the Hispanic
market.
The
business community's growing knowledge of the Hispanic
market can be likened to peeling an onion. The first
layer, recognition as a whole, was peeled for it.
The sheer size of the market has grown too large for
anyone to miss the significance of this group. Especially
with all the news stories this year detailing the
figures reported by the Census Bureau, which pegged
the Hispanic community as the largest ethnic group
in the United States with 34.7 million constituents.
Some suggest that the actual number is even higher.
The
next layer of understanding was the realization that,
despite many cultural similarities, Hispanics residing
in various regions of the United States are distinct
from each other. Consumers in Los Angeles are different
from those in Chicago, who aren't the same as those
in New York. This is primarily because immigrants
from each country tend to cluster in specific geographic
areas--such as Mexicans in Southern California or
Cubans in Miami--and some Hispanic communities are
more acculturated than others because residents migrated
to the U.S. earlier. Marketers soon discovered that
their product preferences differed as well.
ACNielsen
tracks those differences with our Scantrack Ethnic
Service, which compares product purchasing in large
supermarkets located in metros with heavy concentrations
of Hispanic residents-Los Angeles, Miami, New York,
Chicago, Houston and San Antonio--to those in the
general market. Some products are big sellers for
the Hispanic community across all six markets. Lard,
for instance, because it's used in preparing traditional
foods such as Mexican enchiladas and tamales. But
each market also shows many unique product preferences.
Such
as for shortening and oil purchases. Overall, the
category indexes high in the Hispanic community in
all six cities monitored by Scantrack, especially
Houston, where the index is 184. But as we drill into
the category, which is comprised of cooking sprays,
salad and cooking oil, olive oil, shortening and lard,
we see several important distinctions and preferences.
While
cooking sprays tend to under-index across all six
markets, lard over-indexes in each. Olive oil, on
the other hand, only indexes high with the Hispanic
community in Miami, home to immigrants from Puerto
Rico, Cuba and other Caribbean islands. This is because
the Spanish brought olive oil to the Americas, Valdes
explains, and its use is particularly strong in the
Caribbean because of that region's ongoing ties to
Spain. These findings are helping marketers determine
where to offer various products and how to best promote
them.
Today,
marketers are in the process of peeling back the third
layer--they are exploring nuances that exist within
the Hispanic community in a given market. Since January
1999, ACNielsen has been running a consumer panel
in the Los Angeles area consisting of Hispanic households
across the spectrum of language preferences, a proxy
for acculturation. For a portion of the 1,500 households,
Spanish is either the preferred or only language spoken,
other households are bilingual and the rest use English
as their preferred tongue. Each segment is represented
on the panel according to its size in the population
of the four-county Los Angeles area: Spanish only/preferred,
47%; bilingual, 37%; English only/preferred, 16%.
Again, when one digs deeper, more telling buying trends
emerge.
When
shortening/oil purchases are compared, it appears
that the category is only slightly more important
to Hispanic households-88% purchase the category compared
to 79% of non-Hispanic households. But when the data
is broken down by language preference, we see that
the least acculturated households are a bit more likely
to purchase the category than the more acculturated
households: 92% vs. 82%.
The
difference is even much more dramatic with lard. Only
3% of the most acculturated households purchase it,
but more than three times as many Spanish only/preferred
households (11%) do. Similar results are observed
in many categories. These findings have significant
ramifications for the marketing efforts and strategies
of manufacturers, both in terms of whom they target
with their messages and how they communicate.
The
findings also have ramifications for retailers. A
separate ACNielsen Homescan study found that the least
acculturated Hispanic households in Los Angeles are
less likely to have easy access to transportation,
making it more difficult to get to large supermarkets.
They are therefore more likely to utilize smaller
and closer shopping outlets, such as neighborhood
bodegas rather than large supermarkets. At least one
innovative grocery retailer is aware of this conundrum--it
now offers bus service to deliver Hispanic shoppers
to its doorstep.
It
is doubtful that many Hispanics are confusing salad
dressing with hair gel today. However, data from the
ACNielsen Homescan LA Hispanic panel shows that the
least acculturated Hispanics are still much less likely
to purchase salad dressing than their more acculturated
counterparts. And herein lies an important lesson
for marketers. It is much easier to learn about and
cater to the food preferences recent immigrants brought
from their home countries than to educate them about
products that sell well to Americans and convince
them that they should buy those products as well.
Ken
Greenberg is vice president, consumer marketing services,
for ACNielsen Homescan, ACNielsen 's consumer panel
consisting of 67,000 North American households. ACNielsen
(http://acnielsen.com) is headquartered in Schaumburg,
Ill.
Hispanic Shopping Index for Six Major Markets
To determine the dollar volume index, ACNielsen takes the total dollar
sales of Hispanic-area stores to determine what percentage of the total
a specific item comprises, then compares that figure With the figurefor
the general market. For example, if three-tenths of a percent of sales
comes from table salt in the Hispanic area stores compared with two-
tenths of a percent in the general market, Hispanic-area stores would
have an index of 150.
DOLLAR VOLUME INDEX
Los
Chicago Houston Angeles Miami
Total Shortening/Oil 117 184 150 136
Cooking Sprays 68 46 43 68
Salad/Cooking Oil 160 227 189 137
Olive Oil 75 72 56 159
Shortening 12 23 47 240
Lard 270 521 245 205
New San
York Antonio
Total Shortening/Oil 144 159
Cooking Sprays 65 74
Salad/Cooking Oil 229 178
Olive Oil 94 56
Shortening 90 206
Lard 505 302
Source: ACNielsen
Top Five Category Indexes by
Geographic Area
Dollar
SAN ANTONIO Volume Index
Toilet Bowl Deodorizors 439
Lard 302
Mexican Foods (Canned) 232
Orange Juice (Shelf Stable) 230
Infant Formulas 226
LOS ANGELES
Vitamins/Tonics (Liquid, Powders) 302
Lard 245
Ham (Canned, Refrigerated) 240
Dry Beans 232
Bouillon 228
Dollar
CHICAGO Volume Index
Malt Liquor 294
Lard 270
Flea Collars 233
Glazes 231
Cranberry Juice (Refrigerated) 231
MIAMI
Children's Cologne 449
Cooking Wine&Sherry 324
Colognes and Perfumes 263
Rem. Chilies (Canned Pimentos) 256
Flaked Soda Crackers 237
Dollar
HOUSTON Volume Index
Toilet Bowl Deodorizors 577
Lard 521
Battery Chargers 478
Flour(-All Purpose-Remaining) 465
Cameras 446
NEW YORK
Children's Cologne 566
Lard 505
Near Beer 448
Deodorant (Cologne Type) 439
Rem. Packaged Meat (Refriger) 407
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