Hispanic cultural identity and reference groups.

Hispanics who live in the United States live in a heterogeneous cultural environment: they are surrounded both by the culture they or their relatives experienced in their country of origin and by mainstream American culture. Additionally, Hispanics who live in the United States may grow to feel a connection with people with different countries of origin within Latin America. This diverse experience exposes Hispanics in the United States to several reference groups.

Spencer (1994) proposed that Hispanics would form a collective identity regardless of country of origin much like earlier European immigrants had done. He reasoned that a common language, a common religion, and a common experience as an “out-group” would lead to the formation of a “Hispanic” cultural identity. Over fifteen years after Spencer offered his prediction, Korzenny and Korzenny (2011) offered some confirmation of this scenario. Hispanics are likely to use the terms Hispanic or Latino to describe themselves when they are speaking to people who are not Hispanic, but they are more likely to refer to their specific country of origin when speaking to other Hispanics. This means that Hispanics do see themselves as part of a collective Hispanic identity, though their ties to their countries of origin have not been severed.

Of course, not all Hispanics identify with mainstream culture or with Hispanic identity to the same degree. Torres (2003) used Phinney’s Bicultural Orientation Model to explain why Hispanic college students differed in their cultural identities. According to the Bicultural Orientation Model, Hispanics can adopt a Latino Orientation, a Bicultural Orientation, an Anglo Orientation, or a Marginal Orientation. Torres found that the factors that influenced orientation were the environment where the students grew up, their family and generation, and their perception of how Hispanics were viewed by society. Additionally, their college experience caused shifts in their orientation.

Marketers should be aware that defining their target audience as Hispanic is not a specific category at all. Other demographic and psychographic characteristics need to be taken into account, such as level of identification with Hispanic culture. Schwartz, Donovan, and Guido-DiBrito (2009) found that male Mexican college students emphasized the importance of learning “middle-class rules” from their families, even if the family did not belong to the middle class. These rules were not related to Hispanic culture, but rather to the social status that the students wished to exude. For these students, middle class has become an important reference group. Consequently, positioning products as symbols of middle class status could be an effective marketing strategy to target this specific subset of Hispanics.

Hispanic cannot be considered a narrow target audience since Hispanics may rely on several reference groups depending on their cultural identity or on the product being sold. In Torres’ (2003) study, not all Hispanic college students adopted the same cultural orientation; some identified more with Hispanic culture, some with Anglo culture, and some were equally comfortable with both cultures. Therefore, even targeting Hispanic college students could prove to be a more fragmented audience than it would seem at a first glance. Marketers would need to ask themselves which of these three groups of Hispanic students they will target, or if using Hispanic as a reference group at all would be the most effective way to reach the audience for the particular product.

By Sully Moreno
Student
Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication
Florida State University

Works Cited

Korzenny, F., & Korzenny, B.A. (2011). Hispanic Marketing: Connecting with the New Latino Consumer. New York: Routledge.

Schwartz, J.L., Donovan, J., & Guido-DiBrito, F. (2009). Stories of Social Class: Self-Identified Mexican Male College Students Crack the Silence. Journal of College Student Development, 50 (1), 50-66.

Spencer, M. E. (1994). Multiculturalism, “Political Correctness,” and the Politics of Identity. Sociological Forum, 9 (4), 547-567.

Torres, V. (2003). Influences on Ethnic Identity Development of Latino College Students in the First Two Years of College. Journal of College Student Development, 44 (4), 532-547.