Study: Multicultural consumers grow in importance

New York – Multicultural consumers are growing in importance as the U.S. increasingly becomes a multicultural country. According to an upcoming study from Nielsen, “The Multicultural Edge: Rising Super Consumers,” multicultural consumers today are leaders in technology adoption.



These heavy consumers over-index against non-multiculturals on smartphone usage (82% compared to 70%), mobile app duration (index of 130) and number of apps used (index of 142). Individual social media apps were tracked for the report and these multicultural heavy consumers over-indexed non-multiculturals on Facebook (index of 128), Twitter (index of 149) and Instagram (index of 231).



By 2030 all of the nation's population growth will come from multicultural consumers, as 2012 was the first year that non-multicultural mortality exceeded births. Most importantly, the compound effect of relative youth and longer life expectancy translates into extended effective years of buying power for Hispanics (56.5), Asian-Americans (52.3) and African-Americans (42.3), compared to non-Hispanic whites (36.7).



For marketers and advertisers, the many additional years of effective buying power represented by multicultural consumers translates into a better long-term ROI on their marketing and advertising dollars and a chance to align their brand with a fast-expanding pool of empowered tech-savvy shoppers.