The Hispanic shopper is a critical buying group for both retailers and brands in the convenience channel.
As the fastest-growing demographic group in America, and with a gross domestic product greater than $2.6 trillion, it is important for convenience retailers to attract and retain the Hispanic shopper, and it is crucial for brands to build awareness, equity and trust with this key customer segment.
Marketing to the Hispanic shopper should not be an afterthought or a checkbox, but should be a primary requirement of overall marketing and convenience channel strategies.
NielsenIQ’s “La Oportunidad Latinx: Cultural Currency and the Consumer Journey” reported that Hispanics prefer shopping convenience to other retail channels ~50% more than the average shopper for food purchases and ~180% more than the average shopper for non-food purchases.
Convenience stores, which are often bodegas or other independently owned neighborhood stores, represent not just convenience, but also community to the Hispanic shopper — an important factor to keep in mind.
The NielsenIQ study also cited that the Hispanic shopper is more open than the general population in considering information consumed in-store to create product attention across every major category, including health and personal care items, food, non-food and beverages.
Growing Engagement
Retail media networks, which are increasing in popularity across the convenience channel, have become a significant vehicle for both the brand and the retailer to inform and engage with the Hispanic shopper.
In fact, these in-store advertising networks should be part of every brand’s Hispanic marketing mix. While social and digital platforms are top of mind for most Hispanic marketing campaigns, overlooking convenience channel place-based media is a mistake.
These networks present an opportunity to engage with the Hispanic shopper:
- within their community,
- in a venue that they trust,
- multiple times a week if not a day,
- and can immediately influence a brick-and-mortar purchase decisions across a wide variety of categories.
The venue alone does not guarantee success, however. The messaging or campaign creative needs to be thoughtful and deliberate, including:
- comes across as authentic,
- demonstrates that the brand understands the Hispanic shopper and their heritage and culture,
- is eye-catching with vibrant visuals.
Additionally, Hispanics are more likely than non-Hispanics to be influenced by a celebrity spokesperson who represents their culture
and values.
These suggested practices apply regardless of the medium and fall to the brand or agency to consider within their creative.
Advertising through retail networks like National Retail Solutions (NRS Digital Media) that has screens in over 12,000 independently owned bodegas and convenience stores also offers a higher spend efficiency than other out-of-home vehicles because NRS can:
- target screens based on specific in-store, geographic and demographic conditions,
- assure an ad is served only on screens where brand is sold,
- optimize a campaign to specific daypart to heavy up impressions during peak selling periods,
- leverage point-of-sale scanner data from those same stores to measure campaign effectiveness.
Retailers offering in-store media networks need to partner with brands in this way to first assure the stores are carrying the right products, second to deliver the right messaging at the right time to the Hispanic shopper, and lastly provide measurement against these campaigns to understand their impact and test and learn where refinement is necessary.
The buying power of the Hispanic shopper will continue to grow and outpace other demographic segments. Getting this “right” now is a critical call to action.
Not reaching and authentically engaging with the Hispanic shopper through all influential touchpoints across their purchase journey is a missed opportunity for today, but more importantly can have a long-term impact on this growing and valuable demographic’s relationship with any given brand.
Suzy Silliman is senior vice president of data strategy and sales with National Retail Solutions (NRS). At NRS, Silliman works with manufacturers, distributors and retailers to harness data-based learnings from a robust and representative inner-city independent retailer network and urban multicultural shopperbase to identify profitable growth opportunities and measure return on existing retail execution and marketing investments.
