In 2008, US ethnic communities will spend $59.8 billion on telecommunications services, accounting for over one-third of all residential telecom expenditures, according to a new market research study from The Insight Research Corporation. The largest minority group, Hispanics, representing 14.8 percent of the total US population, will spend the most. The ability to tap into the increased spending power of the Hispanic-American, African-American, and Asian-American communities will be crucial to the survival of telecommunications providers over the next five years.
Insight Research’s market analysis study, US Hispanic Use of Telecommunications Services, 2008-2012”, takes a close look at the purchasing habits and telecom usage patterns of the Hispanic segment of the US population. The study emphasizes that the US Latino market is not one homogenous market; rather, it is made up of many markets. The study reports that 65.5 percent of all Hispanic respondents now have cell phones, that Hispanics’ average monthly household expenditures on cell phone service was more than 80 percent higher than the average household spend on wireline services, and of those Hispanics that own a cell phone, nearly four in five had a post-paid contract.
“The purchasing power that the Hispanic-American, African-American, and Asian-American communities exert in the telecommunications industry is not being ignored,” says Robert Rosenberg, Insight Research. “Yet the cell phone companies that now spend millions of dollars on undifferentiated Spanish-speaking advertising campaigns that blanket the Latino community have missed the boat. The Hispanic community must be addressed with nuanced messaging appropriate to its internal diversity or those cell phone carriers simply won’t survive,” Rosenberg concluded.
An excerpt of this Hispanic market research report, table of contents, and ordering information are online at http://www.insight-corp.com/reports/hisp07.asp