Increased use of Internet by Hispanics

The United States is clearly a melting pot of cultures: Italians, Hispanics, African American, and many other cultures. Yet, according to an eMarketer report the “Hispanic market in the United States is one of the toughest demographics to understand.” This is due in large part that the Spanish language and dialect is not the same everywhere, and many speak both English and Spanish. Further, you have Hispanics who immigrated here as 1st and 2nd generation Hispanic Americans to take into account.

But according to the eMarketer report, defining buying preferences for this cross-section of American culture is about to get easier thanks to the increased reliance on the Internet by Hispanics. In 2005, there were 15.7 million Hispanics using the Internet and this trend is expected to grow by 33 percent over the next 5 years totaling 20.9 million Hispanics users by 2010.



This is great news for marketers because now they know that this particular demographic is online but a whole new set of challenges arises. The dichotomy that is the Hispanic culture innately brings about the discussion of how to assimilate this group into American culture and tastes while keeping the Hispanic culture alive as well. Ultimately, it will be marketers that are required to achieve this balancing act in order to be successful with this strongly emerging interactive demographic.


Sources: eMarketer.com, iMedia Connections.com