Consider your audience
Editor’s note: J.P. Theberge is manager, corporate development and client services/Latin America, TNS Market Development, a San Diego research firm.
While Internet mania may be cooling off in the general market, there are subsegments of the population that are still in the early phases of growth and can be marketed to as they begin their infatuation with the Web.
The U.S. Hispanic market is one such subsegment, and possibly the most significant. Thirty-two million strong, Hispanic consumers are going online much faster than marketers ever realized. Depending on who you ask, somewhere between 25 to 30 percent of Hispanics can be classified as Internet users. Because Hispanics are on average 10 years younger (27) than the general population (according to the U.S. Census Bureau), most are still in the early phases of their income earning cycle.
Take a young population with increasing social mobility and a thirst for information, add in the declining cost of computers and access to a worldwide treasure trove of information, and you have the opportunity to establish and grow a marketing relationship with an relatively ignored and brand-loyal consumer.
Culturally relevant
Internet companies, both pure plays and the brick-and-mortars, are beginning to see the importance of the Hispanic consumer and are starting to see that this market needs to be strategically reached in a culturally relevant way.
One company that decided to involve the consumer early on in the process was DeCompras.com, a Monterrey, Mexico-based Web site which provides Mexican expatriates in the U.S. a way to send gifts and other items via the Internet to their families still living in Mexico. Like other e-commerce sites, DeCompras.com allows users to browse through an online catalog of products ranging from electronics to kitchen appliances and have them shipped free of charge to any destination in Mexico.
DeCompras’ General Manager Fernando López Castro had noticed in the back-end Web site logs that the site was getting many active visitors who seemed to spend a lot of time on the site browsing through the different SKUs and adding various items to their online shopping cart. But the conversion to a purchase was lower than expected. This perplexed him and members of his staff, and prompted them to turn to TNS Market Development to investigate the situation.
Our firm implemented a qualitative usability and navigability study to track users’ progress through the site to determine which part of the process was turning away interested customers. A series of interviews was conducted in which a bilingual moderator accompanied individuals during their online search for a product. Through specialized software, Internet and video technology, clients were able to observe the physical, non-verbal cues of the respondent as they navigated the site and also to see exactly what was happening on-screen, all from a remote location.
Traditional focus groups were conducted as well, to allow for more spontaneous feedback from consumers. The sessions included exposure to the Web site and thorough probing on layout, design, and navigability. Respondents were selected to be representative of Spanish-dominant Hispanic Internet users of Mexican origin (i.e., a range of experience levels, leaning towards less experienced).
After a short session of exploratory probing on Internet usage and sending gifts to family in Mexico (to aid in the development of communication goals), respondents were given a brief non-specific description of the site (i.e. “DeCompras.com allows you to purchase items online for family or friends in Mexico”) and were asked to pick out and actually purchase an item for someone in Mexico. After some observation, the moderator probed respondents specifically on why they made certain navigational choices as they browsed the site.
Expose weaknesses
With the usability interviews our firm was able to expose weaknesses in the interface design that assumed a great deal regarding Hispanic Internet users’ habits. Not unlike other marketers, DeCompras was so deeply immersed in the details of its business and making the site work that it was easy to lose sight of the way consumers actually navigate a site. Generally speaking, the site assumed users were more advanced in their use of the online medium (which, like in the general market, most were not). What consumers really required was some serious guidance, to explain, illustrate, and support the process of selecting the items and then checking out and purchasing the items.
Several days following the completion of the research, DeCompras redesigned its site and later reported significant increases in completed sales per visitor. Additionally, Decompras.com was acquired by ElSitio.com, a leading Latin American Internet portal.
Important to know
In addition to providing direction for improving the DeCompras site, the research uncovered three things that are important for all e-marketers to know about how to approach Hispanic consumers, particularly the large foreign-born segment.
The first major finding, which was consistent with findings from other Hispanic Internet research, was that Hispanic consumers are generally inexperienced with using the Internet and with computer culture in general. These consumers, who have not had the benefit of being raised with computers, are not only inexperienced on the Internet, but in some cases aren’t comfortable with manipulating a mouse or using a keyboard.
Online Hispanic consumers are also less likely to be accustomed to the steps required in an e-commerce transaction. Common e-commerce site elements such as adjusting the quantities of items in the shopping carts or registering as a user of a site are not as obvious to these consumers.
In fact, the whole idea of shopping remotely rather than in-person is a relatively new concept to foreign-born consumers from Latin America, where historically the postal system has not been particularly reliable and credit card shopping has not been embraced. There is no culturally ingrained history of purchasing things from catalogs as there is in the U.S. (e.g., J. Crew, L.L. Bean, Sears, etc.).
Additionally, the use of computerese tends to throw some consumers off, even though the terms are in Spanish. Spanish-dominant consumers, who tend to be less tech-savvy in general, are not familiar with the terms in English or in Spanish. Since these consumers tend to be foreign-born, they have received little to no training and exposure to computers or the Internet in their countries of origin.
This is a lesson that packaged goods manufacturers have been learning all along. For example, Hispanic consumers, eager to try new food preparation techniques, were trying a particular packaged baking product in droves, but were unsatisfied with their experience. It turned out that the product packaging failed to fully explain the process to consumers who did not have experience with a) baking their food and b) using a plastic bag to prepare their food. Through research, the company learned that Hispanic consumers were cooking the product in their frying pans, to disastrous results. The packaging was modified and the marketing efforts were adapted. The result: a more loyal consumer.
All this points to the need for e-marketers who are in the process of building brands with consumers in the Hispanic market to consider education as a main part of their strategy. Simply differentiating the brand itself isn’t enough. As illustrated in the DeCompras research, consumers were interested and willing to purchase items, but became frustrated with the checking-out process and abandoned the sale in its final stages. This points to the need to inform and guide the consumer more explicitly throughout the process and do some category building in addition to brand building.
Focused on information
A second major finding was that Hispanic Internet users are more focused on the information value of a Web site than on its entertainment value. Hispanic consumers suffer from an information gap. There are relatively few sources of information about navigating everyday life in Spanish. The information-gathering process is more complicated for Spanish-dominant consumers. This was consistent with our findings on Hispanic consumers’ reactions to advertising messages, which showed that Hispanics are more likely to rely on advertising for information and, for most categories, tend to prefer informational commercials rather than entertainment-oriented ones. Any Web site, regardless of its ultimate objective, will be better received by Hispanic users if it incorporates an informational element that speaks to this need among Hispanic consumers.
We also learned that, in communications messages, Hispanics tend to be more focused on finding out the end benefit of a site (or service) rather than the more specific product features. They are less likely to judge a site positively or negatively in terms of its features. Their focus is much more on the end-use of the site - what it’s for and what it does to improve the user’s life.
In the DeCompras research, this was illustrated by consumers’ extremely positive reactions to the statement: “DeCompras.com is a site that allows one to send packages to family in Mexico.” The statement itself did not focus on product or service attributes (such as no delivery fee) but rather in the end result. While the actual shopping experience was confusing to them, they were overwhelmingly positive about the site concept.
This is similar to what we’ve found in the financial services area, where Hispanic consumers are much more motivated by hearing that a particular financial instrument is for buying a house or paying for a child’s education than about its rate of return, interest rate, etc.
Regardless of their purpose, Web sites that stress that purpose and how it relates to the values of Hispanic users — in this case, the ability to maintain a closer connection to home — will be more appealing than sites that try to sell their features. This is not to say that features are not important, but only in the context of accomplishing the intended goal, i.e., sending gifts to family in Mexico, being informed about buying a new car, or finding more information about health care options.
Need for Spanish-language content
The last significant point uncovered in this research, and confirmed in other research, is that while there is an overabundance of quality content available in English, predominantly Spanish-dominant Hispanic consumers are still very much interested in obtaining information about products and services in Spanish. Most studies show that Hispanics online prefer existing English-language sites to existing Spanish-language sites, if forced to choose. What the studies do not show is that consumers would rather get certain information in Spanish, if they could.
The language issues surface particularly in the retail arena as well as in other marketing environments. Spanish-dominant Hispanics, who would rather make a purchase with a salesperson who speaks Spanish, do not have many opportunities to do so, and are forced to make sometimes-important decisions in a language they are not comfortable with.
This phenomenon can help explain the extraordinary success within the Hispanic community of certain door-to-door sales companies staffed with bilingual sales people. There is a huge opportunity to offer this customized Spanish-language exchange in an e-commerce environment as it offers something that most Spanish-dominant Hispanics could only dream of: a one-to-one dialogue with the seller in their most proficient language. This is not to say that there aren’t certain obstacles to overcome, but knowing what the obstacles are is an important step in the right direction.