Hispanic Culture: The Lifestyle

Hispanics consider family to be the most important part of their lives. They embrace opportunities to get together with family, extended family, and friends. When marketing to Hispanics, make a family friendly brand and consider that the marketing message may be touching more than one generation.

Hispanics are very social and like to communicate for an extended period of time so customer service plays a key factor in how Hispanics measure loyalty for a retailer or service.

Hispanic culture operates on P-time, or poly-chronic time, which gives rise to looser time schedules, deeper involvements with individuals and a “wait-and-see-what develops” attitude.

Hispanics tend to live in small communities. This allow Hispanics to maintain their language and culture, thus, small communities are very important to them.

Hispanics place alot of value in the importance of belonging to a group, thus images and symbols are often used to represent a particular segment. Ex: Wearing a country’s flag as part of an apparel or jewelry.

Hispanics tend to be conservative and traditional in their cultural lifestyle.

The Spanish language is not uniform throughout the Hispanic world. Words vary from one Latin country to another. Ex: The word “orange juice” is translated “jugo de naranja” in Cuba, but in Puerto Rico is is “jugo de china.”

Across Latin America, there can be important variations in behavior in different Latin countries. Ex: Argentina has a more European behavior while Venezuela has Caribbean.

Warm colors are popular to use. It’s representative of Latino warmth.

Using images or symbols related to a Hispanic segment must be appropriate to that particular business in that segment. Ex: Putting an image of a man in a Mexican hat and a poncho in an ad for a Nicaraguan restaurant in unacceptable.

You must learn as much as possible about the particular segments within the Hispanic market. If a product needs branding in Mexico then you should gather market data about the Mexican lifestyle. If you are planning to expand business into Puerto Rico, be sure to gather data on Puerto Rican purchasing power and promotion for consumer attraction. Research and a planned strategy are two key factors that will lead to a successful Hispanic marketing plan.

During my research I happened to come by a book using Google book search called Hispanic Marketing: A Cultural Perspective by Felipe and Betty Ann Korzenny that you can read online. Some pages may have been omitted due to copyright issues but the information displayed are still very useful and it’s free! I highly recommend you take the time and read this book as a stepping stone in understanding the Hispanic Market.

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