Page 199 - Foundations of Marketing

166 Part 3 | Customer Behavior and E-Marketing

auto insurance has featured African American basketball superstars such as LeBron James
and Chris Paul in their advertisements as the insurance provider seeks to appeal to a younger
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and more ethnically diverse audience and to draw in new customers.
Hispanic Subculture
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Hispanics represent 16.7 percent of the U.S. population. Hispanic buying power is expected
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to reach $ 1.5 trillion by 2015. Hispanics represent a large and powerful subculture, and are
an attractive consumer group for marketers.
When considering the buying behavior of Hispanics, marketers must keep in mind that this
subculture is really composed of many diverse cultures coming from a huge geographic region
that encompasses nearly two dozen nationalities, including Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican,
Caribbean, Spanish, and Dominican. Each has its own history and unique culture that affect
consumer preferences and buying behavior. Marketers should also recognize that the terms
Hispanic and Latino refer to an ethnic category rather than a racial distinction. In spite of its
complexity, because of the group’s growth and purchasing power, understanding the Hispanic
subculture is critical to marketers. Like African American consumers, Hispanics spend more
of their income on groceries, phone services, clothing, and shoes, while they spend less than
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average on health care, entertainment, and education.
Recognizing that half of children under age 5 are minorities, and that about 25 percent of
children are Hispanic, marketers for Huggies Pull-Ups training pants developed two paral-
lel advertising campaigns. One features a white family and one features a Hispanic family.
Through research, marketers learned that the Hispanic subculture had slightly different issues
and needs with toilet training. While white parents are reluctant to start the process, Hispanic
parents are impatient to get through it. To this end, the English campaign features the line
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“Celebrate the first flush,” while the Spanish campaign uses “Celebrate every flush.” It is
through capitalizing on subtle but important differences such as this that marketers can attract
a target market and retain them as loyal customers.

Asian American Subculture

The term Asian American includes Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese, Asian Indians, Koreans, and
Vietnamese, encompassing people from more than 15 ethnic groups. This group represents
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5.7 percent of the U.S. population. The individual language, religion, and value system of each
group influences its members’ purchasing decisions. Some traits of this subculture, however,
carry across ethnic divisions, including an emphasis on hard work, strong family ties, and a high
value on education. The combined buying power of Asian American consumers is projected to
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reach $ 1 trillion by 2017. Asian Americans are the fastest growing demographic, increasing by
50 percent in a decade, and a valuable target market because, as a group, Asian Americans are
more educated and have household incomes that are 28 percent higher than the median income.

LO 6 . Examine consumer CONSUMER MISBEHAVIOR
misbehavior.
Approaching the topic of inappropriate consumer behavior requires some caution because of
varying attitudes and cultural definitions of what comprises misbehavior. However, it is gener-
ally agreed that some conduct, such as shoplifting or purchasing illegal drugs, falls under the
category of activities that are unacceptable by established norms. Therefore, we will define
consumer misbehavior as behavior that violates generally accepted norms of a particular
society. Shoplifting is one of the most obvious misconduct areas, with organized retail crime
(where people are paid to shoplift goods from retail stores) on the rise. For example, theft of
consumer misbehavior
Behavior that violates generally Tide detergent has become a national problem, with some grocery stores losing up to $ 15,000 a
accepted norms of a particular month. Tide is a premium detergent and thieves use it as a form of currency to buy drugs, with
society the dealers then turning around and selling single-use servings of Tide at Laundromats for high

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