Multicultural Marketing

Consider These Facts

• Today, ethnic Americans--African-Americans, Asian-Pacific-Americans, and Hispanic-Americans--make up 25 percent of the U.S. population. By 2010 this figure will be 33 percent; by 2040, it will be 53 percent.
• Ethnic Americans are increasing in population seven times as fast as nonethnic Americans.
• The spending power of ethnic Americans has doubled over the past decade--to well over $1 trillion.

But Then Consider This Fact:

• As recently as 1997, only 1 percent of American marketing dollars was spent for advertising directly to ethnic Americans.

Is There a Message Here? You Bet. If your company is not marketing directly to--and hiring--ethnic Americans, you are losing access to an emerging market whose size rivals that of Latin America or Eastern Europe . . . The time to start investing in targeted ethnic and minority marketing--in selling to the new America--is now. "Significant demographic shifts have taken place in America in the last twenty years. These changes will continue until, by midcentury, multicultural Americans will for the first time constitute a statistical majority. Every marketer, regardless of product or service, needs to reexamine his or her marketing programs to make sure they are addressing the specific needs of this burgeoning class of multicultural consumers. "With each passing year, this is becoming more and more of a business imperative, one that a number of well-known companies have begun to successfully address. AT&T is appealing to specific calling groups in their own languages. Chrysler saw its sales to African-Americans rise significantly once it began its culturally related television campaigns. These are just two of the scores of examples we discuss in Multicultural Marketing that underscore the quick success many marketers have enjoyed once they embraced culturally related ethnic marketing." -- Alfred L. Schreiber