In July of 2019, Illinois became the 11th state to allow the adult use of recreational marijuana. Its state legislature is the first to legalize selling the drug. Marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, for now. But that hasn’t stopped blue-chip consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies from exploring cannabis-based products as many believe that federal legalization in the U.S. is only a few votes away.
For decades, Hispanic grocers and Hispanic products in mass market grocers have been dominated by food which comes either directly from Latin America or U.S. based companies that try to emulate those of Latin America, like cheeses, spices, and canned goods. There has been little innovation in these products since the 1970s and 80s when Hispanic immigration into the U.S. boomed, and companies responded with products to meet the new discerning consumer who was looking for authentic Hispanic products. Flash forward to 2019, and now immigration from Latin America is at an all-time low, but the U.S. Hispanic population continues to grow at a rapid pace driven primarily by U.S. born Hispanics.
For the first time, a brand development agency that specializes in cross-cultural marketing is bringing the following message to suppliers and advertisers of alcohol who think minority populations shed their social and cultural identities when purchasing premium products: You’re wrong. In response to a belief that most high-end beer, wine and spirits brands promote themselves in a way that’s far too color-blind, WPP’s Geometry, a commercial marketing agency, has partnered with the cultural insights research agency Think Now to survey more than 1,000 Asians, Hispanics, African-Americans and LGBTQ+ individuals living in the U.S. to find out what influences their purchasing decisions. They discovered that background does, in fact, heavily impact their shopping behaviors.
Special Report Brought To You By Abasto & ThinkNow. The steady growth of the U.S. Hispanic population has caught the attention of the Latin American food and beverage industry. The United States is the second largest Spanish speaking population in the world and represent a sizable opportunity for smaller, more localized Latin American brands to engage with a large pool of consumers more likely to try their products. Successful brands like Bimbo and Novamex have paved the way for other Latin American food and beverage companies aspiring to take up residence in the U.S.
As marketers, we tend to group people into neat little boxes (that’s technically what segmentation is, right?). Of these segments, no generation has been more clearly defined as millennials, although Gen Z is catching up. But the measure by which we define millennials — age — is rarely questioned. For years now, millennials have been identified as 18- to 34-year-olds. But, that age range has shifted, now indicating that they fall in between the ages of 22-37. Pew Research has drawn the proverbial line in the sand for millennials, defining them as “those born between 1981 and 1996 and the first generation to come of age in the new millennium.”
