American businesses unsure of how to sell to Hispanics

Following is a summary of an interview with marketing guru Felipe Korzenny published on February 2004 by AmericaEconomia. In spanish in the original.

Felipe Korzenny, who received his PhD in communications from the University of Michigan, says that very few businesses know how to sell their products and services to Hispanics. This market is comprised of 37 million people, with an estimated buying power of $600 million dollars, the equivalent to the GDP of Brazil or Mexico. However, most American companies don't realize this.

Marketing to the Hispanic Market

Korzenny, together with a group of market researchers, decided to create a Administrative Marketing Center en the University of Florida to focus on the Hispanic market.

In the last few years, Latin culture has become something of a “hot” thing. Now days, Americans eat more salsa than ketchup, and companies like Häagan Dazs and M&M sell special products with the popular Latin flavor of “dulce de leche,” which looks and tastes like a sweet caramel.

Besides the language, market studies by experts indicate that when Hispanics look for information through the radio and television, they usually get half of it in English and half in Spanish.

You can read the complete article at AmericaEconomia