Why Retailers Shouldn’t Ignore The Hispanic Market During Back-To-School Shopping Season
By Craig Witt, MotionPoint
Summer is a good time for vacation, relaxation and preparing for the important back-to-school shopping season—after all, it’s the second-largest shopping event in the U.S., behind only the Christmas shopping season.
U.S. retailers should make sure they don’t ignore their multicultural customers, especially Hispanics. If anything, companies should actually put more focus on the Hispanic market: A recent survey found that U.S. Hispanic parents are expected to spend $148 more during back-to-school than the average shopper.
More People, More Purchasing
The number of Hispanics in the U.S. — both with children and without — continues to grow. The Hispanic population has been the principal driver of demographic growth in the U.S. since 2000, accounting for half of total population growth. And the Hispanic population continues to expand, reaching 58.6 million in 2017.
As the second-largest racial or ethnic group in the U.S., this group plays a significant role in the nation’s population trends. With one in four children of Hispanic origin or descent, retailers should be thinking about how they can target the U.S. Hispanic consumer around back-to-school this year.
More Hispanics Are Attending Schools And Universities
Because education is so highly valued within Hispanic culture, high school dropout rates have continued to decline while college enrollment rises, according to the Pew Research Center. Research shows that:
· The Hispanic dropout rate fell from 16% in 2011 to 10% in 2016.
· The percent of Hispanic high school graduates ages 18 to 24 enrolled in college rose from 32% in 1999 to 47% in 2016.
· The number of Hispanics enrolled in public and private nursery schools, K-12 schools and colleges rose from 9.9 million in 1999 to 17.9 million in 2016, a jump of 80%.
This represents an opportunity for businesses to demonstrate that they are in touch with Latino culture by marketing their products to the U.S. Hispanic population — and doing so in the language many prefer to speak at home: Spanish.
Best Practices
To effectively reach this population, companies should engage in three best practices:
Be Active in Engagement: Retailers’ Spanish-language web sites should have newly created landing pages devoted to back-to-school supplies, clothing and electronics. These pages should be actively promoted across marketing channels.
But companies shouldn’t just have a Spanish-language “microsite.” In theory, microsites can be easier to manage, but they can alienate Spanish-speaking Hispanics who expect to be treated as important customers. Microsites deliver limited experiences, limited capabilities and diminished consumer value. Spanish-speaking Hispanic customers expect content parity in their local-market web sites. It’s a turn-off when a local site’s content quantity and quality is “less than” a company’s primary-market web site. Instead, companies should invest in a fully-translated version of their flagship web site when possible, preserving the complete content experience for Spanish-language customers.
Stay Relevant with Content: Marketing and promotional messaging should be tailored for U.S. Hispanics on Spanish-language web sites to demonstrate a company’s commitment to — and understanding of — this population’s specific needs. For instance, NRF’s latest back-to-school shopping survey broke down the average budget for the Hispanic shopper. It found that, generally, Hispanic shoppers spend more money on clothing than they would on other items, such as electronics or school supplies. For retailers who carry a diverse product assortment of various items that could apply to back-to-school, promotional messaging should emphasize product assortment accordingly.
Make Sure You’re Mobile-Friendly: Companies must make sure their localized web sites can be accessed by their customers’ preferred devices, since Hispanics are “power users” of mobile devices:
· Nearly 85% of Hispanics use their mobile devices to research products while they shop.
· Hispanic shoppers are influenced more by mobile coupons and deal apps than television advertisements, social media, or in-store displays.
· WhatsApp, a mobile messaging application, is used by Hispanics more often than any other demographic group.
Grow Your Customer Base: Engage Hispanics During Back-To-School Season
Companies that pay attention to the way that Hispanic families shop during back-to-school season — and communicate with them in their preferred language, with a complete customer experience that caters to mobile devices — have the opportunity to substantially grow their customer base, brand loyalty and ultimately their bottom line.
Craig Witt is the Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing at MotionPoint, a company that solves the operational complexity and cost of web site localization. He has 28 years’ experience in building, leading and scaling high performing Go-To-Market teams at global enterprises.