Hispanic Marketing in Latinos INC by Arlene Davila

Hispanic Marketing

In the book Latinos INC, Arlene Davila discusses and explores many of the dimensions and elements of Hispanic Marketing. In the beginning of the book she states that the Hispanic market is a multi-billion dollar industry. This market has grown tremendously and it is most prominent in densely populated Latino cities, such as Miami and Los Angeles. In these cities the main percentage of these Latino Americans tend to be Cuban. Davila explains and argues many points about Hispanic Marketing that bring great insight into this billion dollar industry.

The dominant ideas about the Hispanic population and how to market them are key concepts looked at in chapter two. There are many facts and fictions about marketing to Latinos as single ambiguous market. Hispanic advertisements and marketing strategies take a unique approach to target Latinos as a whole. Marketers take the approach of targeting all Latinos as a group and based many advertising campaigns off of stereotypes instead of researching the Latino culture. “One result of this lack of market research was the dissemination of generalized assessments about the Hispanic consumer that were ultimately based on the self-image, class background, and experiences of Hispanic marketers”(59). Many advertisers target Latino Americans as a one group of people with nearly identical looks, culture, and values. “(The Hispanic) population is continually stereotyped and constituted into an undifferentiated Hispanic consumer”(57). They do not advertise to Latinos as separate people from different Southern and Central American countries.

Davila does not agree with this and argues that they should market differently to these people because of their cultural differences. The problem...

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...eneficial. Many Hispanics with the required pre-requisites disassociate themselves from ethnic marketing. A common trend of corporate America has been to place Hispanics in community relations departments. In these departments Hispanics have the power to “advise the corporation about the best activity or latest festival they should sponsor, but rarely have influence or power to direct the development of original advertising executions”(144).

Hispanic agencies face a wide variety of obstacles in producing Latin images that are marketable. First, most agencies allocate a small amount of their budget for Latino marketing. “A general market budget of $25 million may allocate only $1 million to the Hispanic market”(147). For this reason most Latino advertisements have gained the reputation of being educational and geared at introducing recent immigrants to new products.