Results from the new survey “El Mercado 2004”, co-sponsored by ADVO, Inc., the Food Marketing Institute and New American Dimesions, LLC were presented at the Food Marketing Institute’s Advertising Marketing Executive Conference in Orlando, Florida. Joella Roy, ADVO’s Senior Marketing Research Manager says that “the results of this survey should help marketers in several retail segments better understand [the Hispanic consumer population] and, in turn, more effectively serve them and market to their needs.”
Results of the survey show that only about 20 percent of Hispanic consumers can be considered more brand loyal than the average grocery consumer. These results… may come as a surprise to many marketers who still hold the perception that Hispanic consumers as a group are more brand loyal than the average consumer.
“There still seems to be a perception that Hispanic consumers are more brand loyal than other consumers, but this survey shows that only those Hispanics who are most unacculturated — meaning they are foreign-born, have spent only a small percentage of their life in the U.S. and are less educated — display above average brand loyalty. This brand loyalty seems directly correlated with familiarity of brands they were aware of before they moved to the U.S.,” says Roy. “The fact that this audience segment only accounts for about one-fifth of the total Hispanic marketplace means marketers can’t simply rely on branding and brand identity to attract the other 80 percent of Hispanic consumers who are not inordinately brand loyal. Price, quality and packaging must be of increasing concern when trying to reach the Hispanic consumer.”
Ms. Roy hits the bulls-eye with the fact that foreign-born Hispanics will be more loyal to those brands with which they were acquainted with prior to “crossing the Rio Grande” as well as by saying that QUALITY must be an increasing concern when trying to reach the Hispanic consumer, and I add, ANY consumer.
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