Hispanic Market
About two-thirds of the Hispanics
in the United States are of Mexican
origin. And they’re not just in Texas
and California; some are in the
least-expected states, from Minnesota
to North Carolina to Washington.
A Market of Many
The biggest mistake made when trying to cater to Hispanics is
the belief that they represent one homogenous market.
They are, in fact, widely fragmented. There is an enormous
difference between reaching out to, say, a Mexican
migrant worker who’s just snuck across the Arizona border and to a third-generation Miami Cuban with
a post-graduate degree and her own business.
About two-thirds of the Hispanics in the
United States are of Mexican origin. And
they’re not just in Texas and California; some
are in the least-expected states, from Minnesota to North Carolina to Washington.
While the number of new Mexican arrivals
continues to rise, there are also millions of
families of Mexican descent that have
been in the United States for multiple generations. The remaining third of the Hispanic
population is a melting pot from more than 20
countries: Caribbeans, Central and South
Americans. Roughly two-thirds of U.S. Hispanics
speak Spanish primarily in the home, and the
rest speak mostly—and in some cases only—
English.
Ariel Coro, a Cuban-born speaker, consultant and author in the information technology field, believes that the biggest challenge
for a speaker trying to break into the Hispanic
market is to identify which segment of the
community would respond to his message,
and to be attuned to its cultural level. “I need
to give a unified message so everyone understands it,” says Coro, who appears in a news
segment about once a month on Cada Día
con María Antonieta, on the international Spanish-language network Telemundo. “This is a very
tough task in technology. If you are too technical, you lose a big part of the audience, but if
you are too basic, you lose another part.”
