A Word On The Hispanic Market: A New Media, Linguistic & Cultural Landscape.

At long last, and with a little help from the Census 2000, advertisers, marketers and programmers are recognizing that cultural and ethnic diversity is a hallmark of North American society. A day does not pass without another report on corporate response to America’s new demographic and cultural complexion: Pepsi signs Latina pop star Shakira for a mainstream marketing campaign, Nickelodeon develops another kid’s show featuring characters of all stripes and colors, PBS produces a landmark series described as “a Latino drama” that goes by the simple title, “American Family.”

This is all good news, but there is a long way to go before the new market opportunity is fully realized. Towards that goal, the next step is to increase our knowledge fund by replacing ethnic and social stereotypes with facts and understanding about the peoples and cultures that constitute this new marketplace.

FOCUS: Latino is Horowitz Associates’ vanguard study designed to fill the information gaps about this fast-growing and changing market. The study provides an in-depth look at urban Hispanic consumers and their cable programming, telecom, Internet and new media profiles. The evidence shows urban Hispanics to be particularly oriented towards television with high rates of premium penetration, pay-per-view usage, and daily television viewing. Urban Hispanics also show more interest in new technologies such as digital television, interactive TV and high speed Internet access as compared to their total urban counterparts. Since fewer of them own a PC or have Internet access at home, great promise holds out for converged TV and Internet, as well as for broadband, in this market.
Hispanics are not only big media consumers, but media name-brands are big among these urban Latinos. The data show that HBO, MTV, ESPN (a big favorite among Hispanic men) and Lifetime (high on the Latina list of favorites) enjoy favored status among this target segment. In terms of programming genres, Hispanic viewers stand out for watching more music programming, children’s programming, and of course, Spanish-language channels than do their urban counterparts.

A Word on Language and the New Hispanic Market

Our research shows Spanish language channels are an important part of the media mix, but urban Hispanics say they actually more often watch “mainstream” channels like Discovery, NBC, MTV, ABC. At first glance, this is a startling result. A closer look at the issue of language and Latinos helps explain this puzzlement. Exploring this particular issue represents another critical step in debunking myths (or just false assumptions) about the target segment, and provides guidance to advertisers, programmers and operators moving into the new Hispanic marketplace.

Towards that end, the first, most basic question is: what is the level of English-language competency among Hispanics in the U.S.? The Census 2000 does offer some answers. The U.S. is home to nearly 33 million Hispanics of which 60% (20 million) are U.S. born. Among the nearly 13 million Hispanics who are foreign-born, the majority entered the U.S. before or during the 1980’s. The U.S. born and the long-term foreign-born together constitute the vast majority (83%) of Hispanics in the U.S. These data suggest that the majority of America’s Latinos are likely to be English-proficient. In fact, the Census reports that only 2.7 million of that 32.8 million say they do not speak English. This leaves 80% of Hispanics who have some, if not a good deal of English-speaking proficiency.

Keeping in mind these linguistic data, we might conclude that knowledge and use of English would indicate Hispanic “assimilation” into American society, and that those Hispanics with less English knowledge and usage would need and want more Spanish-language programming, while English speakers would have less interest and need for such programming. In fact, we have discovered that this language model of assimilation does not help explain actual findings.

One study we conducted on Spanish-language programming among Hispanics in several U.S. markets illustrates the point. In that study, Hispanics in one city showed very high levels of English knowledge and usage, but preferred Spanish-language television programming, and in fact, they gave the highest approval vote to a Spanish-only programming sample. On the other hand, Hispanic respondents in a second city, who were more recent immigrants to the U.S. and who showed the lowest levels of English knowledge and usage, indicated no language of preference for television watching, and gave the highest vote to a bilingual form of the program. To account for these findings, we looked to the broader social context within which ethnic identity formation occurs. We discovered that Hispanics in the first city constitute a prosperous ethnic enclave. In that site, Latinos accrue great political, social and economic advantages to maintaining their Hispanic identity and to retaining Spanish, their “native” language. For this reason, Spanish-only programming is very important to these English-proficient Hispanics. In the second city, the advantages of an Hispanic identity does not accrue to a majority of its Hispanic residents. For them, bilingual programming is more useful, in part because it serves as an aid to learning English

By Alisse Waterston, Ph.D.
Surveys Unlimited division of Horowitz Associates, Inc.