HispanicTrending

Nov 15, 2013
By Michael Clinton

Hispanic business owners are becoming more sophisticated, making lenders more comfortable about giving them loans.

That is driving up the dollar value of U.S. Small Business Administration loans, although the number of loans has been relatively flat in the past few years.

In the SBA’s North Florida District, banks made 54 loans totaling more than $26 million in the last fiscal year, which closed Sept. 30. The district includes many counties stretching from Northeast Florida to Central Florida.

Eleven of those loans were in metro Jacksonville, totaling about $7 million. SunTrust Bank has the largest loan, at $2.9 million, and Florida First Capital Financial Corp. had the most loans, with three.

Wilfredo Gonzalez, director of the North Florida District office, said Hispanic business owners are taking more classes and receiving counseling and, as a result, are looking to expand. That increase of sophistication is making lenders more comfortable.

“Lenders are still gun shy about defaults; they have been more stringent in terms of demonstrating [owners] can pay loans back,” he said.

Those who can prove they will repay are able to get bigger loans, he said.
And the types of loans are changing too.

Five or six years ago, restaurants were a significant portion of SBA loans to Hispanics. Now, he said, there are a lot more medical service-related companies looking to get loans — likely a response to the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, which seeks to improve American health care delivery and patient care through an investment in health information technology.

Gonzalez said the SBA doesn’t have specific programs for Hispanics, but that it partners with organizations such as the First Coast Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Take a look at the table below to see loan data for Hispanic business owners in the past five years.

Source: Jacksonville Business Journal

November 13, 2013
Press Release

Hispanic workers born outside of the United States have the lowest retirement plan participation rate of all other workers[1] – often due to language barriers and cultural influences. A new approach to Hispanic retirement education from the Principal Financial Group® is designed to overcome the challenges and encourage Hispanic workers to take action.

The new program goes beyond being bilingual – translating materials to Spanish – to bicultural, which addresses the cultural underpinnings that may still influence how U.S. Hispanics think about their financial futures. The revamped approach is part of a new Hispanic Market Program to help financial professionals and their clients more effectively help Hispanic workers prepare for retirement.

"Our research found that simply translating materials to Spanish without considering overall cultural views falls short in encouraging U.S. Hispanic workers to save for retirement," said Greg Burrows, senior vice president, The Principal®. "Retirement plans are not universally appealing to all groups. This new program takes a holistic approach, recognizing that an employer-sponsored plan may be a new concept depending on the level of acculturation of the workforce, and incorporating culturally appropriate retirement education services."

In research focus groups and live enrollment meetings, The Principal found when exposed to the new bicultural education approach, many Hispanic workers took favorable savings actions on the spot. The Principal also found that once U.S. Hispanic workers start to participate in a company plan, they tend to embrace saving for a long-term goal.

"There was immediate interaction between the bicultural employee benefit specialist and the employees which resulted, by the end of the meeting, in increased participation," said Sheri Morgan employee benefits broker, The Unity Group. "I'd been doing meetings for this client for six years and I had never seen that happen before. I believe it was the bicultural nature of the presenter and the presentation that made the difference."

Hispanic market resources for financial professionals

Based on research and expertise of Hispanic market consultants at The Principal, the program provides retirement education built around key concepts that incorporate cultural relevance and can be tailored based on the characteristics of a given U.S. Hispanic workforce.

"Hispanics are expected to account for 75 percent of the nation's workforce growth in the next decade, " said Burrows. "Financial professionals have a significant opportunity to help employers meet the specific retirement needs of this younger, burgeoning demographic. Our program is a differentiator because it goes beyond language to address cultural influences."

The Principal offers a number of materials to help financial professionals better serve prospective or existing clients who have a Hispanic workforce including a report, U.S. Hispanic Retirement Attitudes: How Cultural Influences Can Impact Retirement Savings. The white paper explains the factors influencing the attitudes and behaviors of U.S. Hispanics toward retirement and the research used to develop the new Hispanic Market Program.

Source: 4-Traders

November 4, 2013
By Robert Grattan

Hispanic-owned businesses are continuing to drive U.S. economic growth, with more than 3.16 million companies nationwide – up nearly 40 percent since 2007 despite a tough economy, according to a study by Geoscape International Inc. and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

The West South Central region, which includes Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, saw a 43 percent expansion in the number of Hispanic-owned businesses between 2007 and 2013. The region was surpassed only by the East South Central at 59 percent growth – including the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi – and the South Atlantic – the Southeastern seaboard – at 52 percent.

The study also states that total sales receipts for Hispanic-owned businesses have increased from $254 billion in 2002 to a projected $468 billion in 2013. That's largely due to an influx of new businesses.

"The Hispanic population has been starting and growing new businesses at nearly twice the rate of the general population," the study by Miami-based Geoscape said. "This trend has continued for more than 10 years."

Some 56 percent of Hispanic business owners earn greater than $50,000 in annual income, while Hispanic business owners are 66 percent more likely than Hispanics overall to earn between $100,000 and $149,999 and three times as likely to earn more than $150,000, the study showed.

Source: Austin Business Journal

November 1, 2013
By Paul Dunay

As more and more marketers are discovering, it’s impossible to think about any digital or e-commerce strategy without acknowledging the critical importance of the overall Hispanic population on today’s electronic marketplace. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 17 percent of the U.S. population identify themselves as Hispanic or Latino, comprising more than 53.4 million, or nearly one in six Americans. What’s more, the Hispanic sector is the fastest-growing ethnic segment in the U.S., accounting for more than half the growth in U.S. population between 2000 and 2010, rising from 35.3 million in 2000 to 50.5 million in 2010. By some estimates, Hispanics will outnumber all other cultural groups in the U.S. by 2050. In fact, there are more Hispanics in the U.S. than in any other country in the world, save for Mexico.

Just as brick-and-mortar retailers have recognized the growing purchasing power, shopping preferences and influence of this vigorous and fast-growing demographic, online marketers too are beginning to see the value of personalizing and customizing every customer experience to better serve their individual needs. So then I ask myself a simple but very important question: Are CMOS acting like mobile and social “agents” for Hispanic shoppers and giving them exactly what they want (i.e., online content, messaging, images, offers) in the right way on the right channels at the right times and places? It comes down to a CMO’s willingness and ability to listen to and observe what customers are doing online, what types of sites they are visiting, what types of keywords they are searching for online, their purchasing behaviors and the like. The failure to listen can have the most negative consequences on brand engagement, loyalty and most important, online and mobile sales.

Think in experiences, not channels.

According to the Terra Third Hispanic Digital Consumer Study by comScore, Hispanics have actually outpaced non-Hispanics in the adoption of smartphones, increasing from 43 percent in 2010 to 57 percent in 2012. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), 46 percent of online Hispanics over the age of 18 regularly shop online, compared to just 43 percent of general market online users.

Even more interesting is that Hispanics tend to use their smartphones to research and make purchases more than non-Hispanic consumers in every category. In fact, Hispanics are highly likely to leverage social, mobile and other online resources in their buying decisions, and in fact, are even bypassing the traditional PC-online route in exchange for the convenience of “always on, always connected” smartphones and tablets. As Walgreens CMO Graham Atkinson stated so profoundly at the Forrester Customer Experience Forum East in New York City last month: “Omni-channel is an experience strategy, not a fulfillment strategy.” To put that in simple terms, customers don’t think in channels; they think about the experience as a whole. Does the mobile site look like a duplicate, yet shrunken, version of a brand’s online site? Do the images and pages on a brand’s mobile site take more than 7 seconds to load? Is the brand’s Checkout button large and easy to find? Does the home page feel cluttered and make it difficult to find and use the search bar? All of these questions need to be asked when a brand is looking to optimize their site to be as informative, relevant and easy to use on mobile devices. If it isn’t, you can bet consumers won’t think twice about visiting a competitor’s site or even clicking away forever from all of your digital channels.

To be sure, Hispanics are not a monolithic and homogenous market. The group actually embraces dozens of different nationalities, cultures and identities, including about three out of every five Hispanics who were actually born in the U.S. As a result, buying habits and patterns may vary significantly depending on their country of origin and local community.

Oddly enough, relatively few mainstream e-commerce marketers make specialized efforts to personalize and tailor their presence across multiple channels to better serve the needs of this hyper-connected and demanding market. Some major sites, such as insurer Progressive, are setting the bar high in terms of creating customer experiences that are authentic, engaging, relevant and useful for mobile buyers.

While your site may be well designed for full-screen viewing on a PC, it may be difficult and impractical to view on a smartphone or tablet. Is the navigation practical? Are the products and options presented meaningfully on a small screen? Should you parse and meter the content differently?

Depending on the nature of your site, it may pay to invest in a so-called “responsive design” that automatically adjusts to the viewing device, allowing for a coherent experience on anything from a 4-inch smartphone to tablet, to PC—or deploy a separate, specially built layout designed strictly for mobile devices.

In addition, it would be smart to thoroughly test and experiment with your mobile presentation to discover possible obstacles, sticking points and other issues that may affect the mobile users’ experience. In the constrained space of a mobile device, you may need different tactics and approaches to ensure a seamless and frictionless experience. What works on the PC may fail on a smartphone.

People don’t engage with brands; they engage with a purpose.

Earlier this year, Gustavo Razzetti, EVP and managing director of Lapiz, the Latino unit of digital agency Leo Burnett, wrote in Clickz: “Social media has become so big that sometimes we forget to approach it as part of the overall marketing strategy. Successful brands have a holistic approach rather than approaching social media as a stand-alone tactic. We know that Latinos show a higher engagement with brand pages versus non-Hispanics. But that doesn’t mean that they will follow any brand. People don’t engage with brands. People engage with a purpose. And the most successful case studies are precisely those that embrace this approach.”

Now consider the fact that the Pew Hispanic Center found that 68 percent of Latino Internet users say they regularly use Facebook, Twitter and other social media, compared to just 58 percent of all U.S. Internet users. Perhaps even more relevant for online marketers is that Hispanics are actually more likely to seek advice and opinion before making a purchase, including both face-to-face and mobile and social channels. This means brands need to take ownership of what social channels they are embracing, how they are communicating and interacting with these tech-savvy consumers, and what purpose they fulfill. Otherwise, counting the millions of likes a brand gets on Facebook is just an empty metric if brands don’t, in one way or another, drive consumers to click more, read more and essentially spend more across multiple channels—be it in-store, online or mobile.

With more advanced personalization and optimization strategies, it’s now possible for brands to modify and customize the customer experience across multiple channels—in terms of messaging, tone and content—based on where the visitor is coming from, be it Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or another referring site. The result can make for a smoother transition between social and commerce, a low-friction journey toward purchase.

Never stop testing and learning.

Depending on a brand’s particular offer and target market, including a Spanish-language path for customers, may be worth testing and refining. However, you might discover that a simple language translation of your site may not be optimal; messages and elements that perform well in English may not work as well when simply recast in Spanish. It may indeed call for separate optimization and refinement. Should your buttons, calls to action and checkout processes be tweaked and adjusted for different language or cultural sensibilities? Only real-world testing can provide definitive answers.

Source: Business 2 Community

October 28, 2013
By Corrie MacLaggan

The mariachi band filed onstage, stopping beside the ceremony’s centerpiece: a candle-flanked coffin on display before an audience of funeral experts.

At the Service of Remembrance on Tuesday at the National Funeral Directors Association convention, the coffin symbolized directors who had died; the event at the Austin Convention Center allowed visitors to honor them.

The annual service is also a chance for funeral directors to learn about funeral traditions of specific cultures. This year, the focus was Mexico, where mourners incorporate food into the grieving process, hold an extended visitation and bring children to services.

“One of the hallmarks of our industry is the opportunity to learn about cultures other than your own,” said Michael Watkins, senior vice president of the 19,000-member organization, which is based in Wisconsin.

Indeed, for many of the funeral directors at the convention, which ended Wednesday with a Boot Scootin' Bash, Hispanic culture was not their own.

Just 5 percent of the 1,589 U.S. mortuary school graduates in 2012 were Hispanic, according to the American Board of Funeral Service Education. By contrast, 17 percent of Americans are Hispanic.

“The growth in the Hispanic population overall and the underrepresentation of Hispanics in the profession means there are super opportunities for Hispanics,” said Michael Smith, executive director of the education board.

The situation is somewhat different in Texas. At the Dallas Institute of Funeral Service, one of the state's four mortuary schools, 17 percent of the 2012 graduates were Hispanic, according to the school.

But even in Texas, where 38 percent of residents are Hispanic, Latinos are underrepresented.

“In the Latino community, one of the things we don’t tell our children is, ‘You should grow up to be a funeral director,’” said Francisco Solis, a mortuary science professor at San Antonio College and the first Hispanic president of the national education board.

Solis said he regularly fielded inquiries from funeral homes across the country seeking Spanish-speaking graduates.

He said it was not necessary for a funeral director to be Latino to serve Latino families.

“But you do have to have an awareness of the culture,” he said. “A family is really looking not to have to explain their culture at the time of a funeral.”

Hispanic traditions vary depending on the country of origin. And even Hispanic students may be unfamiliar with traditions because of generational differences, said Felix Gonzales, chairman of San Antonio College's mortuary science department. He said he had recently told a class that after a death, many Hispanic families cover mirrors and avoid turning on the television.

“My Hispanic students were like: ‘What? I’ve never heard of that,’” said Gonzales, 66.

Watkins said that when he entered mortuary school in 1983, the typical student was a white male. That has evolved, but the demographics of funeral home ownership mostly have not, he said.

Few funeral homes are owned by Hispanics, Solis said.

One exception is Memorial Funeral Home in the Rio Grande Valley. Jason De Leon, 25, is a third-generation funeral director whose family owns the business.

“I would not have thought of it if I was not in this family,” he said of his field, which he promotes in his largely Hispanic community via high school career days.

At the sprawling convention, funeral directors saw coffins with Texas Rangers logos, synthetic gemstones made from ashes, sleek new hearses and biodegradable urns for water burials.

One visitor, Joel Roldan, 25, a Mexican-American funeral director from El Paso, said that as a child he would see hearses and wonder where they were going.

“I always wanted to work with dead people,” he said.

Source: The Texas Tribune

October 27, 2013
By Virginia Bridges

Iris Ramirez Reese made a promise to right a wrong after she asked a Food Lion employee where she could find traditional Puerto Rican seasoning and sodas.

“They directed me to the Taco Bell box, and they were calling it the Spanish food section,” said Ramirez Reese, who owns Fusion Multicultural Marketing & Communications, a Durham, N.C., firm that focuses on the changing cultural marketing landscape. “So I made a conscious decision that I need to help this company to bring my food here, my products here.”

That was 1998, a year after Ramirez Reese, who was the first in her Puerto Rican family born on the U.S. mainland, and her husband moved to Durham from New York, where she was raised by her parents and grandparents.

In 1999, Ramirez Reese, who at the time owned La Conexion Latina, an interpretation and translation services company, shared her concerns with local Food Lion officials, who then contracted with her to help bring in authentic products, create internal procedures and take other steps to attract and retain the local Hispanic market.

“We did 16 cities in 16 weeks,” Ramirez Reese said. “Then they contracted me again to come in and help them train their associates.”

She then went to Food Lions from North Carolina up the East Coast to help stores match their demographics with its food.

Ramirez Reese’s company and efforts highlight two important markets – Latino consumers and Hispanic-owned businesses – that communities and small-business owners need to pay attention to, she and other experts said.

Latino consumers are part of the fastest-growing ethnic segment, according to a 2012 report on Hispanic consumers from Nielsen, which provides information and insight on consumer activity. According to the report, the Hispanic segment is expected to increase 167 percent from 2010 to 2050, compared to 42 percent for the total population.

“The Hispanic market’s size, growing clout, and buying power of $1 trillion in 2010 and $1.5 trillion by 2015 require thoughtful understanding about what the market represents to a company’s bottom line,” the report states.

The number of Hispanic-owned businesses is also rapidly increasing, providing jobs and driving economies in communities across the nation.

From 2002 to 2007, the number of Hispanic-owned businesses grew from 1.57 million to more than 2.26 million with more than $350 billion in revenue, according to a report from Geoscape, which provides multicultural intelligence to companies, and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. The number of U.S. Hispanic-owned businesses is projected to grow to more than 3.16 million this year, the report states.

To understand the purchasing habits of the Latino demographic, owners need to do research, attend related conferences and connect with consulting companies, said Casey Steinbacher, president and CEO of the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce.

“There are consumer spending habits by the Hispanic community in every aspect of daily consumption,” Steinbacher said. “You just have to know and understand the cultural differences, and the product differences, and the buying-purchasing difference that they bring to the marketplace so that you take the best advantage of that.”

Roberto Cardoso, 48, opened Havana Grill in Cary, N.C., in June 2007. Cardoso was born in Cuba and moved to Miami with his parents when he was 10. After nearly 30 years of owning or working for restaurants in Miami, Cardoso moved his family to North Carolina in 2005.

He’s built a healthy business over the years, he said, by treating his employees well, providing good products and service, and making everyone feel welcome.

“We keep our culture. We keep our stuff, but everything is pretty much in English, or my menu is in Spanish and English,” Cardoso said. “I am not saying you have to change your roots or change your tradition, but you need to adjust, and everybody has got to feel welcome.”

Source: Albuquerque Journal

October 23, 2013
By Tree Treacy

The crowd funding market is, well, crowded. But new and innovative ways of getting the word out are cropping up in all kinds of places – like the brand new Hispanic startup site Crowdismo.

The Need for a Hispanic Crowd Funding Platform

José Huitron, one of the founders of Crowdismo, describes the current state of the Hispanic market as full of “opportunity, motivation, aspiration, altruism, and hustle” – with an added note that the market itself has spend power of $1.2 trillion.

The belief is that Crowdismo will have an enormous impact on the Central Coast, among other communities with thriving [email protected] populations. Huitron believes that not only tech companies but also the entirety of the Hispanic creative economy deserve funding, and that Crowdismo could be the way to do it by creating jobs, tax revenue, and even reshape the identity of the entire [email protected] community.

How Crowdismo Works

Like any other crowdfunding site, Crowdismo depends not only on people creating projects, but also on other people funding these projects. Huitron himself is very excited about Hispanic philanthropy statistics; according to Experian Simmons data, 47% of Hispanics living in the United States donated to a charity or nonprofit philanthropic organization in 2011. According to a Forbes study released last year, 69% of Hispanic survey respondents ranked the importance of helping people in need very highly.

Crowdismo capitalizes on the philanthropic attitudes and creative energy of the Hispanic community, and it’s already showing. The site boasts a couple of different pilot projects, one an international folk art support program that has already been funded.

Not yet up and running at quite the level of Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, Crowdismo is, however, definitely one to watch – with many of the tips and tricks for getting noticed on larger-scale crowd funding sites definitely useful at this scale as well.

Source: Business 2 Community

October 21, 2013
By Carolyn Salazar

There are 52 million Latinos in the United States. About 1.1 million Hispanics are born every year, 131 born every hour.

That much is known. Here’s what is not:

“Companies continue to try and figure out how Latinos can influence their brand,” said Mónica Gil, senior vice president of public affairs for Nielsen.

Companies, both private and public, continue to grapple with how to tap into the Latino market – and how to capture a slice of their growing purchasing power, which last year was estimated at $1.2 trillion. To try and find some answers, market research firm Nielsen and the Hispanic Federation closely studied the Latino market in the New York metropolitan area.

The report, months in the making, looked at Census, geographical and demographical data in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, was released Monday.

The results were not surprising – Latinos continue to be on the lower rung of both the local and national economies. About 19 percent of Latino households in the New York region earn less than $15,000 a year. The average income for Latinos is $30,000 less than other groups as a whole. And Latinos continue to lag behind other groups in educational attainment.

But the study showed Latinos are making great gains in both educational attainment and income – a growing number are graduating college and earning over six figures.

“Although we continue to be disproportionately on the lower rung of the economy, that’s changing,” José Calderón, president of the Hispanic Federation, said Monday during a panel discussion of the report in New York City.

But how do you attract that segment of the population? One that is racially and economically diverse, often speaks two languages, and embraces two cultures? While the answer remains elusive, the report broke Latinos down into subgroups – from the urban "abuelitos: (older, lower-income grandparents who live in the city) to the "Lat(te)inos," middle-aged, upper middle class families who live in the suburbs.

By breaking it down to lifestyles, the report said, it showed Latinos were more than statistics and figures but a unique community that is rarely understood. They are, the study says, "discerning consumers deeply engaged with technology and attracted to a wide range of content."

“You can’t just say ‘Let’s take out a Spanish-language ad,’ and think you’ve done a good job reaching the Hispanic market,” said Juan Carlos Dávila, who heads Nielsen’s Hispanic Market Center of Excellence. “It has to be a more nuanced approach.”

Source: Fox News Latino

October 21, 2013
Via eMarketer

The US automotive market is mature, which makes any demographic primed for growth an important component for volume brands. The US Hispanic automobile shopper is very much in play, considering more brands while outpacing the industry and other minority groups in terms of year-over-year sales volume growth, according to a new eMarketer report, “US Hispanics and Autos: The Next Generation of Growth.”

For an industry that has treated minority marketing as a box to check off, the numbers amount to a clarion call: To remain relevant into the next decade, brands must appeal to Hispanics. This is a direct challenge to marketing strategists, who must coordinate campaigns at the local, regional and national levels while using traditional and digital channels in two languages.

While overall sales to ethnic groups across the board have risen strongly since the 2008 financial downturn, US Hispanics have led the way. According to Polk sales figures, the overall market for new-vehicle sales in the US grew 9% between H1 2012 and H1 2013, while Hispanic sales grew 16% during the same period. All told, Hispanics spent $32.7 billion on new vehicles and leases in 2012.




“During 2009 to 2011, we saw Hispanic share of sales drop to some of the lowest levels since the early 2000s, but since that time, the market has seen an incredible increase in share,” said Art Spinella, president of CNW Research, an automotive-focused consultancy. “Thus far, this segment has accounted for a 11.25% share of new vehicles, and by 2016, we’ll see that number at 13.25%,” with volume rising from 1.76 million to 2.23 million, he said.

These increases in Hispanic auto sales will be driven, in part, by incentives, price, need and stronger job markets. In a July 2013 survey by CNW, the top three reasons why US Hispanic shoppers decided to shop for a new vehicle were compelling incentives, the need for a new vehicle and low monthly payments. For most answers, Hispanics mirrored the overall market. However, while 65.4% of Hispanics cited “needed a new vehicle,” only 54.1% of all new-vehicle buyers did so. Further down the list, reasons such as a new job and higher pay also overindexed among Hispanics compared with the overall market—25.5% to 19.1%, respectively.




Hispanics’ purchase decisions notably underindexed on reasons such as “new model was compelling” and “lease completed.”

From this recent trend, the top three winners by share of volume among US Hispanics in 2013 were Toyota (16% of all sales), Honda (13%) and Nissan (12%). This differs significantly from the overall market’s top three brands, namely Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota, according to industry releases.

One major reason for this difference is geography. The largest market for US Hispanics, accounting for 16% of all sales year to date, is Los Angeles—a traditional US stronghold for Toyota, Honda and Nissan. New York, Miami, Houston and San Antonio rounded out the top five markets for Hispanic vehicle sales in H1 2013, according to Polk data. A total 42% of all Hispanic sales year to date happened in these markets.