Danay’s Musings

While countries in Latin America do not have the same credit card adoption rates as the US, there still remains a large chunk of opportunity for those who sell in and to Latam consumers. According to LatinFinance, there are approximately 70 million credit cards in Brazil and 17 million in Mexico alone. There is a move int eh region towards EMV cards, which comply with the global standard for payment systems used by Europay, MasterCard and Visa. These cards are known for their enhanced security features like complex encryption algorithms to provide authentication to processing terminals and the transaction processing center.\r\n\r\nWhat does this mean to those of us doing business in Latin America? According to the trade magazine, this will mean that by the end of 2008, about 450 million credit cards will have been issued across the region with EMV chips. The technology that we take for granted here are breaking down the barriers that have made it difficult to sell to consumers in the region.

According to BIGresearch’’s SIMM 10 Profiles Hispanic Diversity survey, Hispanics should not be treated as one category. Instead, they are split into several racial ethnic descents by their own choice. Of the 14,439 consumers surveyed, many report being from multiple racial ethnic descents. In SIMM 10, Hispanics identified themselves racially as: as Caucasian (44.2%), Other Race / Heritage (34.6%) and Multi-Racial (16%). “The breakout of Hispanic/Caucasian, Hispanic/Other Race and Hispanic/Multi-Racial consumers reveals differing cultural identities within the categories which give a real insight into the complexity of marketing to Hispanics who have their own internal diversity,” said Joe Pilotta, VP, Strategy of BIGresearch. Age and income as social and cultural markers of mobility within Hispanic groups are also items to note. Hispanics who identify themselves as being Caucasian are generally older and report a higher income than other Hispanic races.

“Still too often marketers and advertisers lump Hispanics into over-simplified categories. Through increased research we aim to help advertisers and marketers better understand how they can optimize their ad dollars by effectively targeting niche markets within the Hispanic market, that often times have more affinity for a product or service,” said David Taggart, general manager Televisa Publishing. “If marketers are interested in strategic media planning and ROI, then cultural differences must truly be a part of a consumer-centric model, not just another variable,”said Pilotta. A complete report comparing Hispanic niche markets is available from BIGresearch. http://www.formsite.com/prosper/info