Posted by Elena del Valle on June 24, 2009
Hispanics
For companies targeting online audiences Latinos represent a booming market with continued potential for growth. As of February 2009 there were 20.3 million Hispanics or 11 percent of the total United States online population and a record number, according to comScore, Inc., a company that measures the digital world. As a greater number of Hispanics went online in the past year, the U.S Hispanic Internet audience grew faster than the total U.S. online population in terms of number of visitors, time spent and pages consumed.
At the same time, some believe effective targeting of the Latino online market requires knowledge and finesse to push the hot buttons that will prompt loyalty and purchasing responses from the highly diverse and demographically young audience. The days of viewing ethnic markets through a uni dimensional single scope are past. Just as translating materials as the sole method of addressing the highly desirable Hispanic market, online and offline, is no longer considered sufficient or in some cases even appropriate (when targeting English dominant Latinos for example).
“It’s well known that the Hispanic market is a growing and increasingly important segment to advertisers and marketers,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. “However, any business attempting to effectively reach this segment needs to understand the behavior of the U.S. Hispanic online consumer as a fundamental component of their marketing and media strategies.”
Some are convinced the Hispanic market is diverse and distinct from the general market. Given the increasing number of new Latin consumers and their desirable purchasing habits even if that market segment requires extra attention, dedicated or customized campaigns it may prove a worthwhile investment for savvy businesses in the long term.
“As most people know, US-H (US Hispanics) currently represents 15 percent of the total US population and it is estimated to grow up to 20 percent within the next 10 years, half of them are online and this number will only grow. The fact is that even thought we are still a minority, we are definitely a minority that can not be underestimated, not only because of the massive number of potential costumers that we represent, but because our habits significantly differ from those of the US General market users, and more importantly, because our purchase behavior is way more apealing than the US General market users,” said Joel Bary, chief executive officer, Latin Medios.
“We, the online Latinos, have a higher household income than any other online users group in the US, and simply put, we buy more than any other group, so we make a very interesting and potential costumer base that can not be ignored. The marketplace is no longer a single group one, it is now composed of several major groups that will need to be addressed in a special and direct way, other ways, a segment of this marketplace will not respond to the message and will be left araw to be picked up by the competition.”
In 2009, Hispanics’ time online increased 6.9 percent (3.9 times faster than the total U.S. online population), while total pages consumed grew 6 percent (3.6 times faster than the total U.S. Population).
“The Hispanic online market is growing faster than the general market, not just in terms of gross number of users but also in other measures that are important to marketers like time spent online. Advertisers are taking notice too: While categories like Automotive, Wireless, and Credit Cards have been on board since the early days of Hispanic internet, more recently we’ve noticed growth coming from other important categories like Food, Retail, Insurance, and Personal Care Products. That’s especially important now that the automotive and credit card categories are down,” said Carlos Pelay, president, Media Economics Group.
“Just in the Food category, for example, we’ve seen some major companies making their first forays into the Hispanic online market in 2009. Companies like Birds Eye Foods (BirdsEyeenEspanol.com), General Mills (“Nature Valley”), Hershey (“Hershey’s Kisses” sweepstakes on Univision.com) have advertised on Hispanic sites for the first time this year. Significantly, these three companies are running Spanish-language campaigns on Spanish-language Hispanic websites.”
Researchers looked at the site categories where Hispanics spent an above average share of their online time. The most popular categories were Community – Teens, where U.S. Hispanics accounted for 18 percent of total time spent in the category; Gaming Information at 13 percent; entertainment and leisure including Radio (13 percent), Multimedia (12 percent), Discussion/Chat, Instant Messengers (11 percent) and Music (11 percent).
Reach Hispanics online today with
“Marketing to Hispanics Online” audio recording
Identifying and characterizing the booming Hispanic online market
Joel Bary, Alex Carvallo and Matias Perel
Find out about
• The 16 million Latino online users
• Latino online users by gender
• What they do online
• Their language preferences
• How to reach Hispanic urban youth online
• What affects their online behavior
• What influences their purchases
Click here for information about “Marketing to Hispanics Online”
Posted by Elena del Valle on June 17, 2009
Sticky buns prepared at home
Photo: Simon and Baker
In the last two years sugar consumption has increased 20 percent. This is important because sugar is the most popular product in the $4.3 billion sweetener industry in the United States. The industry is divided into three main segments: sugar, sugar substitutes, and liquid sweeteners for tabletop use and as ingredients in baking. There are also presweetened products competing for space in supermarket shopping carts. Ultimately it’s the buyer who decides whether to opt for sugar-based, presweetened or sugar-free products.
While most American households, 89 percent, use sugar, 48 percent of households rely on sugar substitutes. At the same time, while sugar is equally popular across most demographic groups older adults favor sugar substitutes
It is interesting to note that in spite of the popularity of sugar, those consumers have the lowest brand loyalty. Some 47 percent of homes that bought granulated sugar picked the store brand; 39 percent of homes bought Domino, and 26 percent chose C & H, according to a recent study conducted by Mintel, a supplier of consumer, media and market research. A Mintel spokesperson responded by email that demographic breakdown by gender, age, ethnic group or geographic location was available.
In 2008, consumers used an average of 2.4 pounds of sugar each month compared to 2 pounds in 2006. Households using sugar substitutes consumed an average of three packets per day, and 60 percent of them selected Splenda.
On the other hand, users of sugar substitutes are brand loyal and prefer substitutes to sugar because of the calorie savings. One third of sugar substitute consumers like the products because of the way they dissolve and 27 percent believe they are better for dental health. Consumers of liquid sweeteners like honey, molasses, and pancake syrup are also brand loyal.
Economic climate changes have driven consumers to dine at home more often, resulting in an increase in consumption of sugar and sugar like products. Changes in sugar markets such as the use of sugar for biofuel, man made and natural disasters that impact the industry may affect availability and prices. At the same time, the sugar substitute market has seen promising developments thanks to the availability of natural sugar free sweeteners like stevia and agave.
Health related issues affecting America’s aging population, especially obesity and diabetes, also impact the consumption and selection of sugar industry products. Obesity and diabetes are exacerbated by excessive sugar consumption, driving sufferers to purchase sugar substitutes instead of sugar. Older consumers are most likely to have these conditions which is why they are more inclined than younger consumers to purchase sugar substitutes.
Posted by Elena del Valle on June 15, 2009
VidaySalud.com homepage
Photos: VidaySalud.com
In early June, Aliza Lifshitz, M.D., known to some Spanish speakers in the United States as la Doctora Aliza, launched VidaySalud.com, a Spanish-language health oriented website. About 20 percent of the content of the website, the Salud de A a Z section, is Spanish language translations from Harvard Health Publications. The remaining 80 percent is original content.
Editor Ana María Hanssen is responsible, with the help of five contributors, Carolina Dueñas, Natalia Jaramillo, Vanina Lombardi, Adriana Lozada and Francisco Stohr, for the editorial content of the portal. The publisher, Carl J. Kravetz, expects that over time the percent of original content will increase as daily articles are added to the website.
Kravetz, Lifshitz’ husband, also serves as the new website’s executive director. The two of them own the portal and portal copyrights are reserved to Cultural Asset Management Inc. The target audience is Latino mothers who are commonly considered the keepers of the health in Hispanic families. So far 60 percent of the registrations on the new website are from women. Sign ups have arrived from the United States as well as every country in Latin America and Spain.
“VidaySalud.com(TM) is the largest source of health information and wellness tools in Spanish on the web. It includes Health A to Z, the Harvard Medical School’s searchable database of symptoms, diseases and treatments, as well as original content, updated daily and created especially with the U.S. Hispanic community in mind,” said Lifshitz. “Our goal is to enhance the relationships between Latino patients and their physicians by giving Hispanics the information, tools and skills they need to better communicate with their doctors, to ensure better compliance with physician instructions and to deliver better health outcomes.”
VidaySalud.com includes channels on kids’, teens’, men’s and women’s health, diet and nutrition, exercise, pregnancy, diabetes, heart health, cancer, stress and mental health, sexual health, health insurance, health and beauty and healthy living. There is also a section on Quackery to inform users about how to protect themselves from unscrupulous promoters of unproven cures, remedies, diets and nutritional supplements. Eleven biweekly email newsletters on a variety of health topics are available through free registration.
“No one is more trusted on health by the Latino community than la Doctora Aliza,” said Kravetz. “With her as editor in chief and with science-based content delivered in the warm, caring style she is known for, VidaySalud.com will be an invaluable resource for Latino families.”
Promotion of the portal, including an active public relations program, will be focused on the site’s main target audience, Spanish speakers living in the United States. The company plans to announce joint initiatives with Ser Padres, People en Español, impreMedia and Univision. Doctora Aliza blogs’ on AOL Latino and Univision Radio link to the new website. The portal has co-branded its Niños (children) and Embarazo (pregnancy) pages with Ser Padres and the two publications will promote them together.
There are also plans for periodic health campaigns in partnership with the traditional media that Dra. Aliza works with. Her articles in impreMedia, People en Español and Ser Padres refer readers to the site. In addition, a partnership for the portal to become a resource for doctors and their Latino patients is in the works.
Aliza Lifshitz, M.D.
Lifshitz, a physician, author and health reporter, is involved with the Univision television network’s Peabody Award-winning health initiative Enterate: Salud es Vida. She also appears on the network’s Primer Impacto program. Her live call-in program, El Consultorio de la Dra. Aliza, airs weekly on the Univision Radio network.
She writes regular monthly columns for People en Espanol and for Ser Padres, and her weekly column is syndicated in Spanish-language newspapers nationwide. Her monthly column in the Vista bilingual supplement runs in 29 newspapers nationwide. In addition to her activities in the media, Dr. Lifshitz maintains a full-time private practice in internal medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
“Latino Family Dynamics” audio recording
Brenda Hurley and Liria Barbosa
Discuss
- Latino purchasing habits and products they favor
- Latino family characteristics
- Latinos and extended families
- Division of duties, responsibilities within the family
- Who is the decision maker in the Latino family
- Who is the information provider in the Latino family
Click here to find out about Latino purchasing habits and “Latino Family Dynamics”
Posted by Elena del Valle on June 10, 2009
Michael Zuccato, General Manager of Cuba Travel Services, Inc.
Photo: Cuba Travel Services
Cuba Travel Services, Inc., a Long Beach, California company owned by “a group of Los Angeles business people” will launch a non-stop weekly flight from Los Angeles to Havana, Cuba starting June 30, 2009. The inaugural flight is 50 percent sold as of this writing. Havana bound departures will be Tuesdays at 11 a.m. and returns to Los Angeles will be at 8:25 p.m. the same day.
The company will be utilizing aircraft operated by Continental Airlines with space for up to 150 passengers, 12 First Class and 138 Coach. The five-hour flights will cost $889 and include up to 60 pounds of Licensed Passenger Check Baggage. First Class tickets will cost $1,395.
“We are excited to resume the non-stop flights out of LAX to Havana that were in such high demand prior to the Bush Administration’s restrictions imposed on Cuban Americans that limited their ability to visit with their families in Cuba,” said Michael Zuccato, general manager of Cuba Travel Services, Inc.
Company executives expect the recent policy changes allowing easier travel to Cuba for Cuban Americans brought on by the Obama Administration will drive demand for travel to the island from the West Coast. Cuba Travel Services, Inc. also hopes to serve the travel needs of journalists, government officials and researchers that qualify under a general license; and sports teams, religious organizations, educational facilities and other organizations or individuals who qualify for and are issued a specific license to travel.
Cuba Travel Services, Inc. has been offering direct charter flights from Los Angeles to Havana since 2000. According to the data supplied by them, in 2003, the United States ranked eighth in visitors per country of origin to Cuba with 84,529 visitors; by 2005 only 37,233 travelers were visiting the island.
Cuba Travel Services Inc. was formed to “facilitate a better understanding between the U.S and Cuba” by providing flights to U.S. citizens who qualify under the current U.S. Treasury regulations. Cuba Travel Services Inc has offices in Doral and Hialeah, Florida and Hato Rey, Puerto Rico. The company has more than 20 employees.
“Latino Family Dynamics” audio recording
Brenda Hurley and Liria Barbosa
Discuss
- Latino purchasing habits and products they favor
- Latino family characteristics
- Latinos and extended families
- Division of duties, responsibilities within the family
- Who is the decision maker in the Latino family
- Who is the information provider in the Latino family
Click here to find out about Latino purchasing habits and “Latino Family Dynamics”
Posted by Elena del Valle on June 8, 2009
Videos Viewed Online April 2009 - click to enlarge
An epidemic is sweeping the country. No, not the flu. It’s videos. Online. Now that broadband Internet is widely available Americans seem to have fallen in love with videos. Although these are mostly short clips, 3.5 minutes on average, billions of videos were viewed around the country in the past months. In April 2009, for example, Americans viewed 16.8 billion videos online, including 6.8 billion videos viewed on Google. The average U.S. viewer watched 6.4 Hours video online that month, according to comScore Video Metrix. This represents a 16 percent increase compared to March 2009. ComScore analysts believe the increase was driven by a surge in viewing on YouTube.
YouTube.com accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 513 million videos (3.1 percent), followed by Hulu with 397 million (2.4 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 355 million (2.1 percent).
In the United States, 152 million Internet users watched an average of 111 videos per viewer in April 2009. Google Sites reached an all-time high of 107.9 million video viewers during the month. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 58.8 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites (45.4 million) and Hulu (40.1 million).
ComScore researchers concluded that 78.6 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed videos online. A closer look reveals that 107.1 million viewers watched 6.8 billion videos on YouTube.com or about 63.5 videos per viewer; 49 million viewers watched 387 million videos on MySpace.com or 7.9 videos per viewer. Hulu accounted for 2.4 percent of videos viewed and 4.2 percent of all minutes of online video viewing.
A Virginia based company, comScore measures digital media usage. The company’s capabilities are based on a large international cross-section of 2 million Internet users who allow comScore to confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behavior, including online and offline purchasing.
“Moving Beyond Traditional Media Measurement: measuring conversations and social media” audio recording
Presenter Katie Delahaye Paine, founder, KDPaine & Partners
Find out about
- Issues affecting online public relationships today
- Testing relationships as part of a survey
- Measuring ethnic group relationships
- Measuring foreign language communications in a similar ways to English
- Biggest challenges measuring conversations and social media
- Measuring online relationships with little or no money
Click here for information on “Moving Beyond Traditional Media Measurement”
Posted by Elena del Valle on June 3, 2009
Would you like to be more creative? Try spending some time in another country. It seems living abroad might enhance your creativity. Really. Rudyard Kipling, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Gauguin, and Samuel Beckett all did it and look at what happened to their careers. According to two psychologists relying on anecdotal evidence, experience living outside a person’s home country made them more likely to solve a creativity problem compared to colleagues who had not lived abroad.
According to an article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, two researchers William Maddux of INSEAD, a business school in Fontainebleau, France, and Adam Galinsky, of the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, gave 155 American business students and 55 foreign ones studying in America a creativity test. Each subject received a candle, some matches and a box of drawing pins, and was asked to attach the candle to a cardboard wall without allowing any wax to drip on the floor when the candle was lit.
Those who used the box as a candleholder and fixed it to the wall with the pins solved the problem. In the end, 60 percent of students who were either living abroad or had spent some time doing so solved the problem while only 42 percent of those who had not lived abroad did so.
They conducted another study in which 72 Americans and 36 foreigners tested their creative negotiating skills. As part of the exercise, students in pairs were assigned a negotiation in which each side was provided instructions that were contrary to an agreement. Seventy percent of the pairs of negotiators where both had lived outside their countries were able to reach an agreement. In contrast, when neither negotiator had lived abroad they were unable to reach a deal.
Could it be simply that creative people are more likely to choose to live abroad? To find out the researchers looked at traits like openness to new experiences, relying on statistical methods to eliminate the possibility that it was just creativity driving people to live abroad. In the end, they concluded that the experience of living abroad fostered creativity.
“Moving Beyond Traditional Media Measurement: measuring conversations and social media” audio recording
Presenter Katie Delahaye Paine, founder, KDPaine & Partners
Find out about
- Issues affecting online public relationships today
- Testing relationships as part of a survey
- Measuring ethnic group relationships
- Measuring foreign language communications in a similar ways to English
- Biggest challenges measuring conversations and social media
- Measuring online relationships with little or no money
Click here for information on “Moving Beyond Traditional Media Measurement”
Posted by Elena del Valle on June 1, 2009
Click to enlarge
Do you think men and women share equally in the household duties? Do you think they both have the same amount of time free to enjoy activities of their choice? If you said yes you might be surprised by the results of a recent survey of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conducted in 18 industrialized countries including the United States. According to researchers, men have more leisure time than women in all of the countries they examined.
The gap between the genders seems to be strongest in Catholic countries. For example, Italian men have 80 minutes more of leisure time than women in their country. Norway, on the other hand, seems to have the greatest gender equality when it comes to leisure time. In that country, men only have a few more minutes of leisure than women. American men have 40 minutes more leisure time per day than women.
What do people do when they have free time? In Mexico and Japan, they spend almost half their leisure time watching TV. People in New Zealand spend less than 25 percent of their leisure time watching the tube. People in Turkey, the most sociable nation, spend 35 percent of their leisure time entertaining friends. In Spain, people spend 13 percent of their time off doing physical activities, making that nation the most active one in that category.
The information was published in the latest edition of Society at a Glance, a publication of the OECD that features an overview of social trends and policy developments in OECD countries relying on indicators from OECD studies and other sources. One of the chapters in the report was dedicated to leisure time in the 18 OECD countries for which up-to-date time-use surveys are available from 2006, and based on nationally representative samples of between 4,000 and 200,000 people.
OECD provides a forum for member governments to compare policy experiences, “seek answers to common problems, identify good practice and coordinate domestic and international policies.”
“Happy for No Reason” audio recording
Presenter Marci Shimoff, author, Happy for No Reason
What: An audio presentation by Marci Shimoff and Q&A with Marci Shimoff and HispanicMPR.com audio program host Elena del Valle about finding happiness.
Available exclusively on HispanicMPR.com!
Click here to listen to a short interview with Marci
Click here for more information on “Happy for No Reason” audio recording with Marci Shimoff
Posted by Elena del Valle on May 27, 2009
Americans Happiness vs Income 2009 - click to enlarge
How many Americans are happy today and what makes them happy? Good jobs? A high income? Family and friends? Researchers set out to find the answers to these questions by polling 2,401 adults in the United States online between April 13 and April 21, 2009. The results were a little surprising given the current state of the economy and the popular belief that money is the greatest source of happiness of all.
A little more than one third, 35 percent, of Americans said, last year and this year, that they are very happy in response to a Happiness Index online poll. Surprisingly, income did not equate to happiness among survey respondents. The group with the highest happiness index (39 percent) had an income between $50,000 and $74,999. The next group, with a 36 percent happiness index, earned $75,000 and higher.
In spite of the economic slump, African Americans and Hispanics who responded this year were happier than last year’s respondents. Last year, 35 percent of African Americans were happy as were 32 percent of Hispanics. This year, 41 percent of African Americans said they are happy and 36 percent of Latino respondents said they are happy. According to a Harris Interactive spokesperson no further information was gathered about emerging minorities in the polling process.
The poll also revealed that women who responded are slightly happier than men (36 percent versus 34 percent); and married women respondents are happier than single women (38 percent versus 34 percent). The survey also indicates that those with a high educational level tend to be happiest: while 33 percent of individuals with a high school or lower education said they are happy, 36 percent of respondents with some college and college graduates are happy, and 39 percent of those with a post graduate education are happy.
More Democrats were happy this year (from 33 percent to 36 percent) and fewer Republicans (39 percent to 37 percent). The researchers believe the changes may be related to the election of President Obama.
Harris Interactive conducts custom market research in North American, European and Asian offices and with the help of a network of independent market research firms.
“Happy for No Reason” audio recording
Presenter Marci Shimoff, author, Happy for No Reason
What: An audio presentation by Marci Shimoff and Q&A with Marci Shimoff and HispanicMPR.com audio program host Elena del Valle about finding happiness.
Available exclusively on HispanicMPR.com!
Click here to listen to a short interview with Marci
Click here for more information on “Happy for No Reason” audio recording with Marci Shimoff
Posted by Elena del Valle on May 22, 2009
Get Noticed Get Referrals
Jill Lublin has made a career of getting people to notice her. For 20 years she has found a way to make herself stand out. In her third book Get noticed Get Referrals: Build Your Client Base and Your Business by Making a Name for Yourself (McGraw-Hill, $16.95), she discusses her approach and shares tips on how publicists and brand managers might gain attention for their products and brands.
Her goal in writing the book, published last year, was to show readers how to develop relationships by using the same principles publicists and brand managers rely on to procure attention for their and their client’s brands. She shares insights on how to create a sound bite, an introductory and a message to promote connections or generate business. She also addresses myths and misconceptions, getting started, being flexible and keeping options open.
The 217-page paperback book is divided into 17 chapters: Starting Points; Getting It Straight; You Can’t Do It Alone; Myths and Misconceptions; Why Are you Knocking Yourself Out?; Where to Get Noticed; First Impressions; Goals, Intentions and Strategies; Cultivate the Media; Build on Your Passions; Focus, Focus, Focus; Always Keep It Real; Balancing It Out; Service Makes a Difference; Be Flexible and Keep Your Options Open; Fill It with Magic; and Summing Up.
Jill Lublin, author, Get Noticed Get Referrals
Lublin is chief executive officer of Promising Promotion and the author of Guerrilla Publicity and Networking Magic. She is the host of the nationally syndicated radio “Do the Dream” about celebrities who have achieved their dreams. She is also the creator and host of “The Connecting Minute,” a television show.
Get Noticed Get Referrals
Click here to buy Get Noticed… Get Referrals
Posted by Elena del Valle on May 20, 2009
Sometimes the United States Border Patrol utilizes horses in difficult terrain
Photo by James Tourtellotte (Border Patrol)
Immigration from Mexico to other countries, including the United States, declined sharply last year, according to an article in The New Times relying on Mexican government census data. The data released recently indicate a decline of 25 percent or 226,000 people immigrating from Mexico to other countries for the year that ended August 2008 compared to the previous year. Most of the immigrants headed to the United States.
Researchers believe that although heightened security at the border has played a role, the change is due mainly to a decrease in illegal crossings because of the economic hardships in the United States; and that the shrinking United States labor market results in fewer worker border crossings.
In addition, the final outflow of migrants from Mexico, taking into account departures and returns, dropped by half for the same time period ending in August 2008, according to data resulting from detailed household interviews conducted quarterly by the census agency in Mexico, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography.
In spite of the economic conditions in the United States the number of Mexicans living in the United States that returned to Mexico did not increase compared to the previous year, according to the Mexican census figures. Just under half a million Mexicans (450,000) returned to Mexico in 2008 as in 2007.
Although the Border Patrol force grew 17 percent to 17,500 agents last year it seems many who wish to reach the United States do in spite of the added security at the United States-Mexico border. However, crossing is expensive and arduous, requiring illegal travelers to rely on smugglers to make the crossing across scorching deserts and hidden mountain terrain. For example reaching Los Angeles from Mexicali, according to immigrants and social workers, costs $3,000 to $5,000 in smugglers’ fees. The high fees combined with lower income make the illegal crossing less appealing.
Eventually, it is likely past immigration patterns from Mexico to the United States will resume. The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego interviewed one thousand Mexicans in California and in a Yucatan village that has had many migrants in the past. Based on the interviews the researchers concluded that once the job market rebounds in the United States Mexican workers will return.
Discover from a new mom market expert how to reach Latino moms by listening to
“Marketing to New Hispanic Moms – a case study” audio recording
Presenter Cynthia Nelson, COO, Todobebe
Find out about
• New Latina mom market
• Baby demographics including market size, profile
• New moms’ language preferences
• Latino baby market trends
• Factors influencing Hispanic baby market
• Location of new Hispanic moms’ market
• Issues affecting new Latino moms
• Todobebe strategies
Click for information on “Marketing to New Hispanic Moms – a case study”
