Consumer Behavior: Building Marketing Strategy 13th Edition by Delbert Hawkins, David Mothersbaugh

Exercise 39

Hispanic Teens: The New Bicultural Youth
Hispanic teens constitute about 20 percent of all teenagers but are far more important to marketers than that percentage suggests. 36 First, they currently represent $20 billion in spending power. This is likely to grow dramatically since this segment is projected to grow by 62 percent through 2020, which is six times faster than the overall teen market. More important, these teens are joining black teenagers as fashion and style leaders for the overall teenage market.
Hispanic teens often differ from their parents, who in many cases felt strong pressures to blend in and "be American" (i.e., act and speak like white Americans). These teens don't. Rather, the trend for Hispanic teens is to be bicultural, that is, acculturating by adding a second culture, not replacing their first culture. To do so requires a balancing act, particularly in how the divide between inside and outside the home is accomplished. This is particularly challenging given the importance of family, both nuclear and extended, in the Hispanic culture. How this balancing act is enacted is shown in the table on the next page.
And the balancing process leading to biculturalism seems to be working. As three experts describe:
I'm always amazed by the "Hispanicness" of Hispanic teens. They're speaking Spanish at home, both with friends, English for college and the Internet, but they're very much into the Hispanic culture. Even when they're born here. It's downright breathtaking. It's not about being bilingual. It's about being bicultural. They are engrossed in the American culture, but they take an incredible amount of pride in being Latino.
It's very cool to be Hispanic at this age. It almost makes them more attractive, exotic. Hispanic teens are brushing up on their Spanish and celebrating their culture.
These bicultural teens read the same English-language magazines and watch the same television programs as their non-Hispanic counterparts. In fact, they are much more likely to read such teen magazines as Seventeen and YM. One of the magazines targeting the female Hispanic teenager, Latina, is mostly English, though most of the ads are in Spanish. However, they also utilize Spanish-language magazines, television, and radio. They grew up listening not only to hip-hop and other popular music but to Hispanic-based rhythms as well-mariachi, banda, and norteño in California; tejano in Texas; salsa in Florida; and meringue in New York.

*Data on specific behaviors and attitudes not available.
Source: Adapted from Nuestro Futuro (Redwood Shores, CA: Cheskin, 2006), p. 24.
Now they are helping popularize these sounds and variations of them throughout the larger teen population.
Many Hispanic teenagers are truly bicultural. What challenges does this present marketers