Instead of leaving the market to ethnic-focused stores that traditionally serve immigrants, Walmart and Best Buy are actively pursuing these growing audiences via multiple channels and multiple languages.
Best Buy and Walmart now have Spanish-language websites, and Walmart has launched special holiday sections of its site for its Vietnamese and Chinese customers.
Best buy is hiring staffers with language skills in Spanish and other key languages, including Korean and Chinese.
Both Walmart and Best Buy are both putting up bilingual signage and displays that appeal to these immigrant communities. Specifically, Best Buy has signed a contract with Mexican soccer star Cuauhtemoc Blanco to be a brand ambassador, and will put up bilingual signage at 350 of its more than 1,000 stores.
According to Hispanic Business, Inc. Latinos currently spend more than $870 billion on consumer products and this figure is expected to increase to $1.3 trillion by 2015 or 12% of total U.S. purchasing power.
In terms of results, Best Buy executives claim that activity on the Spanish site has since far exceeded that of the original site.
Are these companies going to benefit from their comparatively early efforts in this area? We shall see...
Read full article - Los Angeles Times
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