ECRM’s International Foods event, held last month in Arizona, featured several general sessions addressing multicultural markets both in the U.S. and abroad.

Joe Benites, President and CEO of The Benites Group, a firm that specializes in Hispanic marketing, advertising and consulting, gave a presentation about how to reach Hispanics in a digital world, including a case study on a mobile marketing solution developed by Hispanic grocer Northgate Gonzalez.

Below is an overview of his presentation, Click here to download the presentation slides.

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With 57 million people in 2015, Hispanics account for 17.7 percent of the U.S. population today. Much of this growth since 2000 has come from the births of Hispanics in the U.S. rather than the arrival of new immigrants. As a result, English use among Hispanic adults is on the rise. Today, about six-in-ten U.S. adult Hispanics (62 percent) speak English or are Bilingual. The retail spending of Hispanic consumers will nearly double over the next ten years and account for almost one-fifth of total retail spending.

Technology and media use among Hispanics don’t mirror the general market but have distinct patterns due to language, culture, and ownership dynamics. Hispanics outpace all other ethnic groups in mobile downloads of music and photos, and are more likely to watch video online and on their mobile phones than others. Specifically, Nielsen says that Hispanic video viewers are 68 percent more likely than non-Hispanic White viewers to watch video on the internet, and 20 percent more likely to watch video on their mobile phone.

• 93 percent of U.S. Hispanics use a mobile phone regularly
• 45 percent of U.S. Hispanic mobile phone users have smartphones compared to 34% of general market
• 87 percent of U.S. Hispanic mobile phone users have contract plans and only 8% have pre-paid plans
• 12 percent of U.S Hispanic mobile users use social networks on their mobile vs. 10% general market. 

Overall, Hispanics are more likely to use the mobile web than the general market mobile consumer and are also more likely to own smartphones in the first place. Currently, however, most mobile shopping apps don’t really address the way these users shop. Because of this, the study recommends that these apps start adding more social features like automatically alerting friends when you scan a QR code inside a store.

Case Study: Northgate Gonzalez Markets

Hispanic grocer Northgate Gonzalez Markets wanted to leverage digital marketing to drive awareness and in-store purchase intent of several products. The grocer launched a campaign in which it ran a display custom channel combined with in-banner video. Thanks to a proprietary Media Audience Management platform it was discovered that over 30 percent of the clickers were using a smartphone. Based on this insight the Client assigned a test budget to Mobile and incorporated two more lines: Mobile Web and Mobile Video