Ethnic foods take up a small corner of a single ai

Ethnic foods take up a small corner of a single aisle in most supermarkets. Ethnic shoppers are filling supermarket aisles in increasing numbers; yet language, culture, and tradition keep many of them from taking full advantage of all the store has to offer.

The 2000 Census numbers show the American population rapidly diversifying. The nation's Hispanic population has grown 58 percent since 1990. The Asian population is up 52 percent. Those increases dwarf the overall population increase of 13.2 percent nationally, to just more than 281 million citizens. By comparison, the white population grew just 8.7 percent and the African-American population increased 16.2 percent from 1990 to 2000.

Numbers equate to power, and supermarket retailers are seeing the power these new markets can wield, especially in the area of HBC products. They are also learning how to reach these emerging audiences where they live, and in their own languages.

"When we looked at the census, we started to look at directly communicating to that audience. It's a matter of putting nuances in the ads, so that what they say hits home with the audience," says Steve Climons, creative director for Crossover Creative Group, hired by Safeway, Inc. to reach diverse customers in Safeway's urban markets. "To get to the audience, you really have to speak to them. It is language, cultural nuances?things we think are constant across the audience."

Of particular importance to the Hispanic audience, Climons says, is family. "There's the family element and how we communicate with the family in particular. If you can convey that to this audience, you have a chance to capture this audience."

But even the term "Hispanic" is too broad to address all the cultural and language diversity issues present. "The overall theme is understanding that there are significant differences in language skills and behavior. Lumping all Hispanics together doesn't make sense in marketing," says Ken Greenberg, vice president of marketing for ACNielsen Homescan Consumer Panel Services. "The issue is that there is not an understanding as to what the Hispanic market needs are. I think they've been under-advertised to. For marketers and retailers, it helps to have the information available to understand why it's under-marketed."

To address that, Nielsen has expanded its consumer panel to take in not only a greater diversity on the overall panel, but diversity within the Hispanic panel itself. "The most important thing was the realization that a significant portion of the customers prefers not to speak English," Greenberg says. "We have 55,000 households in our consumer marketing study, and we've always had Hispanic members of that panel. But the scanner we needed them to use for the study was only in English.

"We were missing a large part of the Hispanic population," he continues. "We had to go back and make sure the information was in Spanish so we could capture those households, and we had to make sure it was in Spanish and culturally relevant, that they understood who ACNielsen is and understand the awareness of the consumer panel."

The numbers that came out of the Los Angeles area, the nation's largest Hispanic market, indicate that for HBC products, language can be a barrier. For example, the numbers of Hispanics and non-Hispanics in the L.A. market who purchased deodorant were almost identical, at 73.3 percent. However, break down the Hispanic numbers to English-only speaking, bilingual, and Spanish-only speaking, and you find that 80.6 percent of English-only Hispanic homes purchased deodorant, while the percentage drops to just 66.7 percent in Spanish-only households.

In almost every category in the Nielsen HBC study, the products purchased did not vary widely between Hispanics and non-Hispanics, but saw a difference of as much as 35 percentage points between English-speaking Hispanics and Spanish-speaking Hispanics.

"If you look at English-only [Hispanic] households, they look similar to non-Hispanic households," Greenberg says. "If that's all you've represented in your market research, that's an opportunity that you're missing."

Supermarkets have an opportunity to capture not just sales but loyalty with a targeted program aimed at a strong sense of community and family. In short, they need to tailor their traditional marketing efforts to these emerging ethnic shoppers.

"What you're going to see is that the really smart marketers will make sure they are connected with their customer group," Climons says. "A lot of them take that market for granted. We're talking about a higher relationship, where there's real loyalty. You can have real brand loyalty once they understand the significance of the brand.

"America has always been diverse, but in the last four or five years, there's been a huge integration. In the 1950s, you saw ethnic groups emerging, establishing a whole new mainstream. America has always been about that. Now you have Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians, and that mainstream is evolving now."

Climons says the program with Safeway, targeted at urban markets in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, and Washington, will work to develop stronger ties to the urban markets through advertising and community relations.

"Safeway understands that besides understanding how these groups feel, besides community relations, they need to know how to merchandise to these groups. It is critical, especially for supermarkets, because you can become a commodity," Climons says. "You see a richer and much more colorful store. It's having creative displays for holidays. It's how you create a connection with going to the supermarket. Bringing the food and the family together is the key."

Greenberg says, "Some of the households have lower income levels, but we also see that they have larger families. They are spending more at the food store. Perhaps they have less disposable income, but you can't jump to the correlation that because they have a lower income, they don't spend as much at retail.

"We've seen that certain brands have done better at addressing Hispanic consumers," he continues. "Sometimes it can come down to brand heritage, the image that the product is 'for them.' If you think about consumers who are recent arrivals, we're not educating them with the advertising. You can't take it for granted that they know the product."

Procter & Gamble is using modern tools to address that issue. In March, the company launched an interactive Web site branding game, called Mission Refresh, to promote Head & Shoulders to the Hispanic market. In partnership with Fusion Networks, the game features a character called Captain Cool, who the player uses to get rid of dandruff using a bubble machine and bottles of Head & Shoulders Refresh. The site can be found at www.missionrefresh.com.

The game is bilingual, an important consideration in a multicultural landscape. "Some people in our panel have told us that when they see an ad in Spanish, even if they don't read Spanish, they know that it was an ad targeted at 'my people'," says Greenberg. "What's interesting to see is the assumption that those consumers are going to alternative markets. In L.A., the more developed supermarkets are capturing a majority of the business."