Blog #3 - Paper Topic (Due 24-Feb)

- What is your idea for this topic?

Hispanics as tablet early adopters... What does this mean for technology companies in the future?



- Why is this topic interesting to you?

I have a passion for technology and read techcrunch, pcworld, cnet, wired, etc. on a daily basis so I want to be able to understand and potentially predict how this tablet trend in the US will impact the tablet space as well as other techology products in the future.

I also struggle with the topic of how to target the Hispanic consumer in meaningful way that can be monetized since the market can be segmented and looked at under different lenses and companies across the US have not been able to clearly identify the best way for segmenting and developing personas for the entire hispanic population. The hispanic market in the US can be looked at in different such as:

*First-generation immigrants vs. Second-generation native-born.
*English speakers vs. Spanish speakers vs. Spanglish speakers
*Dual-identities vs. Acculturateds
*Young trendsetters vs. Older family influencers
*Cash Only Payers vs. Debit Card Payers vs. Credit Card Payers

Another thing to consider is that the identification of specific Hispanic segments in some major markets. In Miami, Cubans are the largest group; in Washington, D.C., it is Salvadorans; in New York it is Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, while in California, New Mexico and Texas have the largest Mexican population.

- What is the connection to the gathering and identification of customer insights and/or the design of valuable customer experiences? (at least, as you see it right now)

1st) Right now, I think the connection would be to identify existing trends, then extrapolate the information to predict tablet future trends.
2nd) Next gather customer insights from this one product and attempt to identify how this impacts not only impacts the tablet market but also the personal tech devices market.
3rd) This would lead into what this means for technology companies in the future.

Open Questions:

What implications does this have for tech companies that do not currently target the Hispanic Market?

Does it matter for all technology products or just some technology products?
What particular devices would appeal to this market?

- Cite and briefly describe at least one article that is related to your topic (this can be either an academic article or trade article, at this point). Do your best to find an article that might be a central source or guidepost for your paper.


Levels of tablet adoption outpace smartphones says study: http://ph.omg.yahoo.com/news/levels-tablet-adoption-outpace-smartphones-says-study-170227932.html

This report found that in less than two years, over 40 million tablets came into use in the US market, equaling a level of penetration that it took the smartphone market seven years to reach. I think this is an important statistic and it is the statistic that made me feel it would be much better to assess the tablet market instead of other non-traditional devices (Nintendo Wii, Sony PS3, Smart TV, Blue-ray DVD players) used to stream content over the web.

Hispanics are tablet early adopters:
http://strategicsalesmarketingosmg.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/hispanics-are-tablet-early-adopters/

People of Hispanic origin are leading early adopters of tablet technology.
*Roughly 7% of the population own a tablet computer
*Currently, 15% of Hispanics are tablet owners
*28% of Hispanics who mainly speak English plan to buy a tablet in the next year
*41% of Spanish speaking Hispanics are planned tablet buyers

Hispanics check in:
http://www.adweek.com/sa-article/hispanics-check-135798

What I thought was very important to note, by 2014, U.S. Hispanic consumer purchasing power is expected to exceed $1.3 trillion, forecasts the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia.

While Hispanics are a sizable minority, they have become a dominant force in social media due in large part to their greater use of mobile technology. This stands in contrast to their use of the first wave of Internet technologies. Hispanics are less likely to own a personal computer than the general population, and less likely to have home broadband access, according to the Pew Hispanic Center’s 2010 study on Latinos and digital technology. So what accounts for this greater use of mobile and social? Industry professionals suggest this may be because being social is a key part of Latino culture and that that cultural phenomenon is just now playing out in the online world.

How to reach the hispanic market online?
https://www.joinazima.org/blog/%E2%80%9Chow-to-reach-the-hispanic-market-online%E2%80%9D-a-presentation-by-kelly-mcdonald/

I read this article to understand the market as a whole and why it is important and the statistics below made me feel confident that this market is a market worth researching.

Why is the Hispanic Market important?

Latinos are the fastest growing minority group in the United States. 1 in 4 children are Latino, 1 in 6 U.S. residents are Latino, and by 2020 that statistic is expected to be 1 in 5. There are over 50.5 million Latinos in the U.S.

Latinos are early adopters of technology, highly engaged online, and active mobile users – 25% of 1st generation iPhone purchases were made by Latinos, and Hispanics make up the largest percentage of users of MySpace and Facebook. However, Hispanic social media usage is different from non-Hispanic usage in that they are more likely to:

*Engage in social media for personal use rather than business
*Use social media to reach out to extended family or communicate with friends they know, rather than building networks of new people
*Need an effective and affordable way to communicate with family in different countries.

Blog #2: Qualitative Research of Online Social Behavior

Let's say your brand or product has five thousand followers on Twitter, ten thousand fans on Facebook and both fans and foes are creating user-generated content in the form of blogs and video blogs. At most companies this would be considered great news, even a reason to celebrate, however most companies do not have a good idea about what the next step should be.

Growing the fan base and helping to engage customers should definitely be a priority and a core part of the marketing strategy, however most companies are still struggling with monetization.

First, companies need to understand what social media outlets their target customer is using to discover, consume and share content and how often.

Once this is understood a Groundswell approach of (1) understanding how they work (2) how many people use them (3) how they enable relationships (4) how they threaten institutional power (5) what you can do about them

Each company needs to understand what goals they hope to achieve and if it is different for different audiences such as:

· Customers
· Employees
· Partners
· Media

Once it is understood who in the company needs to be involved, meaning which department a clear strategic direction should be solidified.

Defining a social media strategy and implementing it is not an easy thing to do because if it was we would not see so many problems with social media proliferation. Today companies are paying interns or consultants to work in a full-time capacity to identify all social media sites and find out how to get control of these sites because some are being monitored while others are not, some have been re-branded while others have not, and valuable comments or data may have been missed because of the lack of process in place to check these sites.

Discuss the quantitative data that can be pulled.

When we consider how we could pull quantitative data today in the market place, the “Decoding Our Chatter” article provides great examples of using twitter data to do predictive analysis. If hundreds of social media, data-mining and financial services companies are paying a base rate of $360,000.00 per year for Twitter information, it is because they have computer scientists that can develop algorithms that help identify patterns which guide them on how to run their business better. Hedge funds are using it to beet the S&P 500, movie critics are using it to detect office hits, the military is using it for warfare and it is being used in medicine to track influenza outbreaks.

When we consider how we could pull quantitative data, Facebook is a much cheaper way to advertise than buying words from Google (search engine), however the click through rate on Google Ads can be up to 10% while Facebook is only .01% according to the “Facebook Sells Your Friends” article.

Statistics can be used to prove long-term benefits of engaging with customers on Facebook such as:

· New customer recruitment
· Higher conversion rates
· More frequent purchases

Forums and Reviews are helpful ways to gain quantitative data. For example I have a passion for technology so I love reading tech forums and I have preferences on where I go to get my technology advice such as CNET, PCWorld and TechCrunch. For the most part I feel as if the reviews are unbiased, however I think the reviews provide a great scoring mechanism for product features. I think companies should be sifting through review comments because hundreds and thousands of comments are written on new products in response to reviews and it is easy to find patterns to determine if your customer does or does not agree with the review and the comments tend to be detailed.

How might you get at interesting insights about social media use (or interesting insights about people that you extract from their social media use), using a more qualitative approach?

Interesting insights today are gathered by watching how users share videos, songs, product reviews, commercials and news articles with their friends. A lot of what goes on in the purchase decision is based on interactions between the buyer and the set of people in his/her group. These interactions are being tracked and the buyer and his/her group are being targeted with advertisements that should be appealing to him/her. Sprint used this mechanism to quadruple sales for the PalmPre after the product launch was not as successful as planned.

Facebook likes on non-Facebook websites are also tracked, several sports sites today have the option to like a website which will start generating a set of RSS feeds to you phone. I am subscribed to ESPN feeds and I prefer it so when I don’t have time to get onto ESPN I can read the short text messages about all my favorite teams.

33Across, Media6-Degrees and Lotame are some of the startups that are all using internet user data from social-networking sites and other sites that you interact with people (leaving comments, likes, review writing, etc.) to facilitate targeted advertising for large corporations.

What information would you try to elicit?

· Frequency of purchases
· Purchase influences (friends, colleagues, family)
· Purchasing Power
· Channels purchased through (online, in-store, couponing-site, etc.)
· Emotional connection or lack thereof to a particular brand
· Reason for Purchase / Reason not to purchase

How would you get at that information in a way that would be most accurate and telling?

I think the purchasing and searching for patterns from actual user data is better than asking people because when people are surveyed they don’t always to what they say they will do. I also think there are ways to manipulate survey data such as top box, but that doesn’t give a guarantee that it will mimic reality.

To get information in a way that would be the most accurate and telling I think you would need to develop a methodology that could connect the qualitative to the quantitative data. Although the consensus map method discussed in article “Metaphorically Speaking” seemed very thorough and comprehensive, I am not sure that it would be feasible to do this type of detailed analysis on every product or brand due to cost and time limitations.

Blog #1: Meet Marcos! Mi abuelito querido!

Marcos is an 84 year old father, brother, Uncle, Grandfather, Great Grandfather and friend of many. He stands about 5 feet 3 inches (use to be 5'6), with tan skin, a thin build and white hair. He needs to use a cane for walking but doesn't like to use it because he sees it as a sign of weakness.

He feels like more people started asking him for advice as he approached 70 years old, but he's not comfortable giving so much advice because he thinks people are more worldly these days than in his generation and doesn't want to give advice based on his values. People ask for advice on home purchasing, annuities, retirement planning, and he likes to give his experiences as examples; people can make informed decisions.

Major Career Accomplishment: working on the first Commercial Videotape Recorder (1956: Ampex VRX-1000)

Sense of Pride: He feels very proud about being part of history and saved every IEEE publication, picture and news article about the VRX-1000.

1. What does he see (environment, what does the market offer for him?, what problems do you encounter?)

The market offers him and his family a chance of building up a retirement fund which they already have. The market is also targeting his age group in the future family planning area, such as will writing and the importance of leaving an inheritance behind.

He encounters health problems at his age and many of his friends encounter these problems, he's had several major surgeries which have caused him to shrink and it is very frustrating for him.

2. What does he hear (daughters, spouse, influencers, media channels that influence him)?

He enjoys reading a physical newspaper because he believes it provides him with more information on topics and it is less biased than the news. He enjoys reading the SF Chronicle and SJ Mercury News and then his wife likes reading the retail shopping advertisements leaflets.

He likes watching the 6pm news and 60 minutes with his wife and then they are able to discuss what is going on in the world; however his strongest influencers are his family.

His wife and children usually knows what’s best for him, even though he is stubborn and only follows advice after constant reminders. He likes watching the stock market and follows the companies his grandchildren work at or the educational institutions they attend.

3. What does he think and feel (worries (keeps you up at night)?, aspirations (dreams)?)

In the past, his aspirations and dreams were to become an Electrical Engineer which he accomplished. During this time his biggest obstacles were lack of education, reading, writing, speaking English, but he always went to Junior College in the night so he could keep moving up in his career. He had one mentor at work, he learned a lot from him mainly about engineering and how to have a successful career in Corporate America. This was very valuable to him and he holds this mentor dear to his heart because he served as a successful role model. Up until then all of his influencers were uneducated and it was difficult getting advice about his career.

Future aspirations and dreams: when he leaves this world, he only wants to leave debt free, which has already been taken care of so he is satisfied about this, he does worry about future medical expenses

4. What does he say and do (Imagine what the customer might say, or how he might behave in public, behavior towards others, what does he tell others)?

Philosophy toward people: He likes everyone and is very friendly unless they do some harm towards himself or his family because his family is the #1 priority

Behavior towards Others: When he goes shopping or to dinner with his spouse or family members, he is always complimenting attractive female sales associates or waitresses, he is also able to fascinate younger generations about his knowledge and wisdom that is only obtained through living life

5. What are his pain points?

His Health concerns are his pain point which is a concern for himself and his entire group of friends. Even though some of his heath concerns are due to drinking and smoking, he still loves to have a glass of tequila or a cigar every now and then (without his wife knowing).

6. What does he hope to gain?

He measures his success as himself being able to provide for him, his wife and his children.
He feels his goals in life have already been achieved and if they hadn't he joked with me that the opportunity to achieve them would be very small since he's already 84.