Beyond Acculturation As A Multicultural Marketing Tool – Possible or not?

Lauren Romero from Wave discusses on Engage: Hispanics the process of categorizing US Hispanics after their level of acculturation of the US culture while at the same time staying (or not) in the Hispanic.

Lauren argues that “...every bi-cultural (not necessarily bilingual) Latino in this country knows that the “acculturation” approach to Latino consumer segmentation is flawed, presenting the same challenges suffered by similar models used by marketers in the last 50 years. Designed to accommodate limitations set by the best information then available about consumers — demographic data — demographic segmentations have long been the inescapable final output of all consumer segmentations — attitudinal, psychographic, behavioral, etc.” Her solution to get out of the one sided segmentation is to instead “cross behavior and values information with situational and social context. Then, you’re more likely to ensure relevance and brand loyalty with the Latinos who matter most to your brand.”

To me, the beauty of segmentation via acculturation (or any other segmentation technique for that matter) is that due to the complexity and size of the target group, you can get a directional view of where to go for a certain group. Where to go from there is basically a question of insight and evaluation based on your knowledge at that moment. In mass consumer marketing it’s really hard to drill down to a situational level – a multicultural marketers we’re always facing the issue of not having enough market data due to the early phase and multifaceted area of multicultural marketing. For smaller groups marketing, Lauren’s recommendation is excellent – if you can get in that deep under the target group’s skin, you’ve come a long way.

Source: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=109910

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