Latin American brands often feel overly confident in entering the U.S. market. Having experienced success in their home markets, they look to replicate that brand affinity north of the border, often using the same strategy that won at home. But, that affinity doesn’t always translate into a successful entry, especially when brands fail to realize and plan for the shift from a mostly homogeneous cultural group to a more diverse society composed of varied multicultural backgrounds, cultural influences, and behavioral drivers. 

The tendency of LatAm brands to target their core Hispanic constituency can cause missed opportunities to reach broader markets. (more…)

As a strategist, your clients look to you to develop a solid strategy that leads to their next successful product launch or branding campaign. Essential to making a business case for your ideas is data. Identifying the insights you need requires sifting through an enormous amount of secondary data via search engines and subscription research services like eMarketer and Statista. This desk research involves a lot of time because it’s difficult to find the EXACT data point(s) you need to validate your strategy. You are often relying on multiple data points from various sources that may indirectly support your hypothesis but fails to provide the exact data point needed to build a compelling case.

As someone who has worked in market research for the past 20 years, it’s disheartening to see entrepreneurs and brand managers struggle with marketing campaigns due to knowledge gaps that could have been avoided with a simple market research study.  Properly conducted custom market research is the common denominator in successful marketing campaigns. But, to some, conducting research is intimidating. To others, it’s too expensive, too complicated, or takes too long.

Truth be told, market research today is none of those things. Coding and data tabulations done by hand are a thing of the past. Improvements in cost, timing, and ease-of-use have made primary research accessible to everyone. (more…)