The twain have met after all

Editor’s note: David Morse is president and CEO of New American Dimensions, a Los Angeles research firm.

In his poem The Ballad of East and West, Rudyard Kipling wrote the now-famous lines “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” Globalization and the growing influence of Asian culture (and demographics) on the United States are proving his adage anachronistic. But Kipling did have a point. There are distinct differences between Asian and Western culture; where they do meet is in the lives of Asian-Americans.

According to psychologist May Paomay Tung, these cultural differences are also a source of conflict for Asian-Americans. In her book Chinese Americans and Their Immigrant Parents, she relates some of the common themes she encounters while conducting psychotherapy with young Chinese-Americans. She writes that these themes include “a sense of parental disapproval or emotional withholding (‘It’s never good enough’), inadequate or mistaken guidance, role reversals and puzzling beliefs and behaviors. In relation to society at large, they often feel unsure of themselves, not knowing who they are. The sense of being ‘invisible’ or overlooked is pervasive. I began to see that much of the intergenerational and societal conflicts basically stem from the intercultural misunderstandings and antagonism.”

Common problems

In our research, when we go for a deeper line of questioning with Asian-American participants, there are common problems that many have faced and continue to face based on cultural differences. One is the lack of assertiveness, either in school or on the job. American children are taught to develop their own opinions, to speak up, to assert themselves. Asian children are generally taught not to speak their minds. Chinese children, for example, according to Tung, are taught to ting hua, literally, “listen to the speech/talk/words of elders, implying obedience.” A corollary is the Western belief in individualism and the collectivist spirit of many Asians; Japanese children, for instance, are taught that the nail sticking up will be hammered down.

One Asian value - one that frequently causes misunderstandings with Westerners - is the desire to maintain harmony at all costs. That Japanese and other Asians will say yes when they mean no is well known. In Japanese, the yes is often an indication that the Japanese person follows what is being said, and not necessarily that he or she is agreeing with it. To disagree would cause a loss of face, it would create disharmony. Harmony must be upheld at all times.

Because Asians as a whole are affluent, they are a popular segment for financial institutions to target, and, as a result, my company has done a lot of work in this area. A common theme is the importance of thrift to Asians, which also translates into a consumer who is hungry for a bargain. This doesn’t mean, however, that Asian consumers are willing to sacrifice on quality. On the contrary, Asians will often pay a premium, but if and only if they feel that they are getting value for their money.

I recently conducted an interview with a Chinese-American woman who was an officer with a San Francisco branch of a large American finance company. I was trying to understand what was important to her Chinese customers. “Do you know what a Jew is?” she asked me. I told her that I did, that in fact I was one. “Oh,” she said knowingly. “Then you can understand that like Jews, Chinese will never let you get away with charging a price that is too high.” I had a vivid image of my grandmother arguing with the kosher butcher and I knew exactly what she was talking about.

A filter

These and other cultural beliefs are a filter through which marketing messages are interpreted. In order to be successful, it’s important to keep them in mind when developing marketing messages. Themes like individualism and assertiveness, which might play out well with a Western consumer, will have different resonance with an Asian-American, particularly an immigrant. Conversely, images with a collectivist or patient feeling may work well. As always, the most important thing to do is to test your concepts with real consumers.

Many identities

Despite the fact that Asian-Americans represent so many different ethnic identities, U.S.-born Asians and acculturated Asian-Americans of different ancestries find that they have many things in common with each other - similar experiences with immigrant parents who struggled to adapt to a new and very different country, parents who stressed similar culture values like education, discipline, respect for family and more mundane pursuits like after-school language lessons, a la the Hebrew school classes and piano training I know so well.

Many U.S.-born Asians, like Hispanics, undergo a return to their ethnic roots, a process called retro- or re-acculturation. To quote an article in Time magazine, today’s young Asian-Americans often follow “the path of a boomerang: early isolation, rapid immersion and assimilation, and then a re-appreciation of ethnic roots.”

Jeff Yang, who writes a column for the San Francisco Chronicle  on Asian popular culture, asked his readers what it meant to them to be Asian-American. Here are some of the responses that he received:

“I save napkins and plastic utensils from restaurants.”

“I cook Chinese food, like wonton soup, tomato beef and sticky rice.”

“I push my kids to get good grades.”

“I’ve eaten with chopsticks because that was the ‘Asian thing to do,’ even though Filipinos don’t eat with chopsticks.”

“I fight for the dinner bill at the restaurant with my other Asian friends.”

“I’ve taken 10 Caucasian colleagues to lunch in a dim sum restaurant and ordered in Cantonese.”

“In America  , when I’m with Caucasians or other races, I feel like I’m Asian. But when I’m trying to work with Asians who don’t speak Vietnamese or English, I don’t feel Asian.”

“My parents would describe themselves as Indian Americans when talking to non-Indians. Among Indians, they’d describe themselves as Gujarati. I always described myself as Indian-American right up until I started working in national politics, when I started using the term Asian-American. Now I do think of myself as Asian-American - though I’m not sure that Indian people are always accepted in that terminology.”

Yang concludes “If there’s one thing my unscientific survey made clear, it’s that Asian means many things to many people.”

Educated and affluent

For companies considering targeting Asian-American consumers, here are some facts about the market:

  • There were 15 million Asian-Americans in 2007. In 1970, there were less than a million. Between 2000 and 2005, this population grew by 19.8 percent (the Hispanic population grew by 20.9 percent). Nearly half of Asians live in either California or New York .
  • Chinese make up the largest subgroup of Asians (the Census tracks 10); they make up about 23 percent of the Asian population (excluding Taiwanese), followed by Asian-Indians and Filipinos who make up 19 percent and 18 percent of the Asian-American population. The two fastest-growing subgroups are Pakistanis and Asian-Indians, which grew by 36 percent and 34 percent respectively between 2000 and 2005.
  • As a group, Asian-Americans are educated and affluent. Nearly half have a bachelor’s degree or more and they are the most likely group to work in managerial or professional jobs (46 percent compared to 38 percent of non-Hispanic whites). The median income of Asian-American households is 26 percent higher than the average. Still, there are disparities between different ethnic groups. For instance, the median household income for Asian-Indians and Filipinos is $69,000 and $66,000 per year. For Cambodians, it’s $36,000 and for Hmong it’s $32,000.
  • Asian-Americans are primarily an immigrant population, with slightly over two-thirds being foreign-born. As is the case with income, there are differences by ethnicity. About three-quarters of Koreans and Asian-Indians are foreign-born, compared to about two-thirds of Chinese and Filipinos. Nearly six in 10 Japanese-Americans were born in the United States  . Also, there are big differences by age. While 80 percent of Asian adults are immigrants, about 80 percent of Asians under the age of 19 were born in the United States.

Huge disparities

The Asian-American market, if such a thing does exist, is extremely diverse. Even within certain groups there are huge disparities. The Chinese market consists of Mandarin speakers from Taiwan  and mainland China; it also consists of Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong and the southern provinces. Taiwanese tend to be high wage earners, higher than people from mainland China. Cantonese speakers include poor people from the southern provinces of mainland China and many wealthy people who came from Hong Kong in great numbers to the United States and Canada.

In 2006, Packaged Facts released a report on the Asian-American market called Asian-Americans in the U.S.  It’s an analysis of data from multiple sources including the Census Bureau and other government agencies, Simmons’ 2005 National Consumer Surveys (NCS) for kids and teens as well as adults, plus information collected from firms active in the Asian-American market. Some highlights:

  • Asian-Americans enjoy shopping, significantly more so than the national average. Compared to the average American consumer, Asian-Americans are more frequent shoppers and more likely to pay attention to advertising.
  • As consumers, Asian-Americans are more driven by price and more likely to seek out bargains where they shop. Compared to U.S.  adults as a whole, they are more drawn to stores they don’t usually frequent because of sales and coupons, travel an hour or more to factory outlet stores, and postpone buying things until they are on sale.
  • They over-index in credit cards, allocate more of their budgets to designer clothing, are health-conscious about food and have a preference for prescription medicine carrying a brand name.
  • Asian-Americans are big consumers of electronics and are far more likely than the average consumer to say they keep up with developments in technology.
  • Asian-Americans are far more likely to say that the Internet has changed the way they shop for and get information about products. They buy more on the Internet and are more than twice as likely to have spent $1,000 or more on the Internet in the last year.

Given that so many Asian-Americans today are foreign-born, it’s not surprising that so many prefer to be marketed to in their own languages. A 2005 poll conducted for New California Media found that 80 percent of Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese adults read an ethnic newspaper on a regular basis. The study, which is ongoing, also concluded that Chinese and Koreans are watching in-language television more frequently. About a quarter indicated watching television in either Chinese or Korean more often than in English - impressive given that large numbers of Koreans and Chinese do speak English.  

Need to be clear

Right now, marketers need to be clear on which Asian ethnicity they plan to target as well as what level of acculturation makes the most sense. Many companies have been successful narrowing their scope, for instance by focusing on Chinese or Koreans. Others have targeted more than one Asian segment. Many have focused on newly arrived Asian-American immigrants, while still others have focused on more acculturated immigrants or even U.S.-born Asian-Americans.

However, in spite of the diversity of cultures lived in and languages spoken in the Asian segment, the real future of Asian marketing is through English. This is borne out by reports such as one by Packaged Facts, which points out that 78 percent of foreign-born Asians speak English, compared to only 52 percent of foreign-born Latinos. In addition, the Made in America  studies by New American Dimensions have shown that only about half of second-generation Asians speak an Asian language, compared to the three-quarters of their Hispanic counterparts that speak Spanish.

Still, the Asian-American adult market, like the Hispanic adult market, remains largely an immigrant one - about 80 percent immigrant to be more precise. Today and in the near future, the rewards will go to the companies that figure out how to reach this group.