The Latino Entrepreneurship Instinct
One clear conclusion is that there is a LOT of room for improvement for Spanish language communications.
Latinos represent 20% of the US population yet anywhere from 25% to 36% of all new businesses in the US are founded by Latinos. What is clear is that we collectively over-index on entrepreneurship. This instinct contributes over $800 Billion to the US economy annually which is a nice complement to our $3 Trillion in annual spending power.
Having inherited this entrepreneurial instinct, here I am, celebrating the 36th anniversary of founding my company, Garcia Research, the 20th anniversary of founding our Mexican subsidiary, Garcia Research de Mexico and my third 25thbirthday. I should be relaxing on a beach somewhere, and yet here I am, passionately starting a new service called the Marketing Access Scorecard (MAS). It’s in my DNA.
I have 45 years of research experience, and I can honestly say I love the work. Consumer research is fascinating, even addictive. And on top of that, it has been painful to see our government undertake a series of vindictive assaults on my beloved community. So, I thought of a way to do some interesting social science, encourage the US economy and support our community at the same time.
The questions I seek to answer have to do with how Brands are doing with their digital marketing efforts targeting Hispanics in Spanish. The more we dug into it, the more complex it became, so we developed a multi-pronged approach that combines four distinct methodologies:
- AI – There are things AI systems can achieve in minutes that would take humans weeks to do. We used more than one AI system to again avoid any specific biases.
- Humans are the ones who buy products and services and drive our economy, so the next three approaches involve humans only – beginning with User Experience (known as UX). What is the consumer experience like?
- Mystery Shopping deploys shoppers to test systems for customer service and online shopping to see how effective they are with Spanish speakers in the US.
- Focus Groups is the capstone element, where consumers who have been evaluating brands get to talk freely about their experiences, the things they liked, the things they found confusing, the pleasant surprises and the disappointments.
Our project, therefore, has two key components – the Quantitative – objective, observable facts — and the Qualitative – the emotive side, including feelings, impressions, etc.
Our first job was to test everything several times, and as we did so we made changes to our process. The second was to build a database against which custom data gathered for a client could be compared.
We formally launched at the end of July. If you are curious, you can visit our website at www.mascorecard.com. There you can look at our executive report. As we gather more data, the automated systems will update the site, but it can give you a clear idea of what we are doing.
One clear conclusion is that there is a LOT of room for improvement for Spanish language communications. Right now, overall, the average score is a solid D (63.4 out of 100). Our goal is not to embarrass any company, but to give them specific guidance on where their digital marketing can be improved. We want to help companies grow their revenues, we want to help Hispanic consumers get the information they need, and we want to build relationships between consumers and brands.
Here are some quotes from our latest focus groups and their implications:
LATINO CONSUMERS APPRECIATED THE MAS MISSION
“I think this is good. It’s something that needs to be done. The Latino market is very big here in the USA, and sometimes they don’t have enough emphasis, or there aren’t enough resources for people who only speak Spanish.”
(Female, 35 years old, bicultural, Central American heritage, Los Angeles, CA)
OPPORTUNITIES ARE BEING LEFT ON THE TABLE
“Well, I’m a fanatic for buying online. I buy practically everything online except food, because I like going to the supermarket. It’s easy to compare prices, and you can see different options. It seems to me that if more websites had Spanish translations, more people would do the same. “
(Male, 35 years old, unacculturated, Mexican heritage, Houston, TX)
MOST ARE UNDERWHELMED BY WHAT THEY FOUND
“In general, brands do a good job of trying, but they don’t do a good job of actually doing it. “
(Female, 25 years old, bicultural, Bolivian heritage, Katy, TX)
SPANISH IS IMPORTANT TO LATINOS, EVEN TO THE BILINGUAL
“One is always going to prefer their mother tongue, Spanish. No matter how much you learn the other language — you understand everything and it’s all clear — you will still feel more comfortable in your own tongue.”
(Female, 46 years old, unacculturated, Cuban heritage, Maricopa, AZ)
If you know of a brand that could benefit from this service, please have them contact me at Carlos.Garcia@mascorecard.com. Thanks.
Related content:
The Power of Randomness from a Research Professional
Why It’s Important to Build Consumer Research Into Your Small Business Strategy
Latino Research Business Owner Insights on Intra- Hispanic Acculturation
