In April, Amazon announced the launch of its “eBooks Kindle en Español” store with titles such as The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, and the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.
The online behemoth has tapped the zeitgeist, launching a product at the intersection of America’s Latinization and changing technology preferences. In addition, Amazon provides Hispanics as well as Latin Americans a far greater number of choices in book titles with customer service in Spanish.
A recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project shows that Hispanics’ adoption rate of both eReaders and tablets supersedes that of the already explosive growth in the general market. The share of U.S. adults who own eReaders as well as tablets grew from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January.
In contrast, Hispanics’ adoption of eReaders expanded by 217%, or a jump of 13% points from 6% to 19%, during the holiday gift-giving season. And Hispanics’ adoption of tablets increased 110%, or 11% points, from 10% to 21%. We see that Hispanics’ adoption rates of eReaders and tablets overshadowed the 9% growth in the total market.
So, why does research continually show Hispanics as early adopters of new technology like eReaders and tablets as well as cell phones and smart phones?
The strongest reason may be cost savings. Some versions of Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook now cost well below $100. In addition, books on the Kindle and Nook cost $10 versus $25 for a new hardcover. Many library systems, including the public library here in Los Angeles , enable eReader owners to “borrow” digital books. eBooks can hold up to 3,500 books and provide a far more portable option than carrying heavy hardcovers. Thus, convenience, saving space, portability, and especially cost savings appear to drive the adoption of eReaders among Hispanics and the general market alike.
Those same benefits also drive the adoption of cell phones and smart phones. Hispanics tend to cut the cord on home phone lines more often, opting for the portability of cell phones with unlimited minutes instead of paying for two phone lines, one of which they can only use at home.
When the Smithsonian Library, the world’s largest museum library with over 50,000 rare books and manuscripts, saw Pew’s statistics on the growth rate of Hispanics’ adoption of eReader tablets, the librarians asked themselves what could they do to bring more Spanish-language texts to market to meet the needs of this growing market. American Latino adults had the highest percentage of any ethnic group surveyed for owning an e-Reader.
Two of the Smithsonian’s librarians, Alvin Hutchinson and Martin Kalfatovic, outlined how it launched “Libros digitales para todos” (“eBooks for Everybody” in English) at the SXSW Interactive Conference this past March. They partnered with the Smithsonian Latino Center to fund the conversion of its Spanish-language collections into both Kindle and Nook eBook formats.
The library released 48 Spanish-language book titles into eBook format, now available for free in the Latino history and culture section on its website All of the titles are copyright-free (published before 1923) mostly from its anthropology, botany and entomology collections. You can read the library’s story of its digitization and conversion of Spanish-language publications for e-Readers here .
Not only did the Smithsonian have its eye on the growing Hispanic market but also on Latin America. Now, scholars don’t have to fly all the way to Washington D.C. to research its collection. They can download titles from home, without buying an expensive plane ticket. The Smithsonian also avoids the wear and tear on its rare Spanish-language collection, thus preserving the quality of its printed materials.
The growth opportunities for Spanish-language books are enormous when you look at scaling out distribution across the World Wide Web. According to Internet World Stats , there are 182,379,220 Spanish-speakers online out of total population of 423,085,806 Hispanics, Latin Americans and Spaniards globally.
How has your company changed to meet the changing needs of the digital Latino marketplace?
U.S. HISPANIC SPENDING ON THE RISE
Spending power among the U.S. Hispanic community is projected to continue its upward rise over the next two years, according to a new report from Hispanicize and published by SocialMediadd. 2013 projections see the U.S. Hispanic spend at $1.3 trillion. There are now over 50 million Hispanics in the U.S. (1 in 6 adults) and the growth rate of the population has been 46.3% over the last decade. These figures do not take into account the estimated 10+ million undocumented Latinos living in the U.S. As for Hispanic-owned businesses, they are growing three times faster than the general market.
Roberto Orci, president/CEO of Acento Advertising is interviewed in this NPR news story, titled: “Rapid growth in the U.S. Hispanic community has created another boom—in Hispanic Media.”
“There are various reasons why Hispanics gravitate towards technology and why their engagement is so high,” says Tony Aguilar, Acento’s Chief Integration Officer. “The two main reasons have to do with Demographics and Culture.” According to Aguilar, Hispanics on average are younger than non-
Hispanics, and young people have the highest adoption of technology and social media platforms. “From the cultural perspective, Hispanics have tighter relationships … (Read more in April’s Hispanic Market Newsletter)
The demographics of higher education are shifting. The fastest growing segment, by far, is Hispanic. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the number of Hispanic young adults in college increased by 349,000 between 2009 and 2010. By contrast the increase for African Americans was 88,000, and 43,000 for Asians while Caucasians decreased by 320,000. In fact, the Hispanic increase was a whopping 24% improvement from the previous year. Going a bit deeper reveals that the number of Hispanic graduates nearly doubled between 1999 and 2009 (National Center for Education Statistics.) The potential impact of this trend over the coming decades is staggering.
What does this mean for advertisers? Hispanic consumers will have much greater discretionary income to spend on their products. According to a report from the Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce, college graduates earn almost $1 million more than high school graduates over their lifetime. For a college graduate that goes on to get a Master’s degree, earning potential increases to almost $1.4 million more than high school grads. If that student earns the right to put doctor in front of her name, that figure is almost $2 million.
It is clear that the Hispanic degree track creates a consumer segment that advertisers cannot afford to ignore. In fact, a poll from the Associated Press-Univision, which was co-sponsored by Stanford University and the Nielsen Company, reported that 94% of Latinos expect their children to go to college. This indicates a cultural imperative, not simply upward mobility as traditionally measured.
It is also important that we not underestimate the level of educational sophistication of the Latino consumer. Of the students accepted into Harvard University’s class of 2015, a record 12.1 percent were Latino. Consider that Businessweek.com lists Harvard as the number one Ivy League school for value of degree—a $1.63 million net return on investment over the first 30 years. That one graduating class represents substantial potential discretionary income!
I’ll leave you with a final statistic to distinguish this education trend from simple population growth. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the 18- to 24-year-old Hispanic population increased by 7% from 2009 to 2010 while the number of Hispanic college students increased by almost 3 ½ times that figure.
The World Wide Web has become a standard part of life, and it appears that social media has become a major part of the online experience. The vast majority have at least one social media account; in addition, over half of Adults 18+ (54.5%) say they log in to Facebook once a day or more often, according to the February American Pulse Survey. Hispanics are even more likely to log in once a day and more on Facebook as well as other online communities. “Hispanics are the most avid social media users among ethnic groups,” said Dianne Kremer, Senior Analyst at BIGInsight. Although Blacks report that they spend the most time online in a given day, self reported time spent on social media sites is higher among Hispanics.
How should brands adapt their communications and engage consumers in the age of social media? Surprisingly, a book first published in 1936 best highlights how to “win friends” on social platforms, written long before Al Gore “invented the Internet.” Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” outlines fundamental approaches on how to build long-lasting relationships with friends, colleagues, and consumers.
Our team here at Acento has had the opportunity to develop a general market social media strategy for our clients. That means a lot of research, analysis, and thinking on how brands should interact with consumers on Facebook, LinkedIn, and whatever new social network pops up next.
Multitudes of books and white papers discuss the tactics and statics of social media. But very few books successfully outline the psychological dimensions of engaging consumers on social platforms as well as Carnegie’s book.
As marketers, we need to appeal to the nobler interests of our fellow consumers within the social sphere (and allocate human resources to support honest, immediate responses via social media response teams).
That’s far easier said than done.
Fortunately, many of Carnegie’s principles, however basic, provide a roadmap on how we can successfully communicate with customers and colleagues on social platforms. We know we can’t push our messages out into the world anymore. It’s up to us to break away from status quo marketing and truly communicate with consumers on a one-on-one basis.
Carnegie’s most relevant principles for managing social communities include:
• Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
• Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
• Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
• If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
• Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
• Dramatize your ideas.
Obviously, this sage advice and story telling requires a 180-degree shift from the marketing of yore. We need to ask questions of our consumers in order to become good listeners…and have a staff that can respond to consumers’ concerns.
In an excerpt of the updated version of the book, “‘How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age,” the New York Times published, “Messaging speed is instantaneous. Communication media have multiplied. Networks have expanded beyond borders, industries, and ideologies. Yet rather than making the principles in this book obsolete, these major changes have made Carnegie’s principles more relevant than ever.”
