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Asian American and Outlook for Asian American Consumer Marketing
While we usually focus on the outstanding success in school or business of Asian Americans, their remarkable achievements were often matched by young Asian immigrants for whom English was a second language. Part of their success story has been the old-world ethics of their parents, who often left their Asian homes without any material possessions and who had to work very hard to achieve their goals.
Beyond their common struggles for success in a very different world, the various Asian American ethnic groups should not be lumped together as if they were homogeneous. Their cultures are distinct, and each of these ethnic groups came to the United States under widely varying circumstances.
Asian Americans vary as much as Norwegians differ from Spaniards or the English from the French and Italians, though all are Europeans. The term is broad enough to include people from all of what was Soviet Central Asia (including Russia east of the Ural Mountains, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), as well as citizens of the Indian subcontinent (including India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh), Thailand, China, Japan, Korea, Indochina, the Philippines, Indonesia, and some Pacific islands (mainly the Hawaiian islands, Samoa, and Guam).
The real success story of Asian Americans is epitomized in their overall pursuit of excellence. The median family income of Asian Americans exceeds that of the general population by several thousand dollars. (An exception is emigrants from Southeast Asia, refugees from the Vietnam War who only began coming to America after the war ended in 1975.)
Asian American children of high school age generally outscore other students on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), and their overall grades are higher. They make up a disproportionately large segment of student bodies in the most prominent colleges and universities.
Japanese Americans in college today are the second and third generations of their families born in the United States. Chinese Americans in college today range from individuals whose families have lived in the United States for five generations to the children of educated urban Chinese newcomers. These individuals are American by birth, outlook, training, and philosophy, and are influenced only peripherally by ancestral traditions. This is not wholly true of the offspring of recent arrivals in the United States. Many are influenced by the ancient legacy of their parents, whose traditions emphasize family solidarity, discipline, hard work, and schooling.
Outlook for Asian Consumer Marketing
Asians, who numbered 18.2 million nationally in 2011, were the second fastest growing minority group by over 3.0 percent since 2010. California had both the largest Asian population of any state (5.8 million) in July 2011 and the largest numeric increase of Asians since April 1, 2010 (131,000). Hawaii is our nation’s only majority Asian state, with people of this group comprising 57.1% of the total population. Los Angeles had the largest Asian population of any county (1.6 million) in 2011, and also the largest numeric increase (16,000) since 2010. At 61.2 percent, Honolulu had the highest percentage of Asians in the nation.
According to a 2012 Pew Research study, Asian Americans are the highest income, best educated and fastest growing racial group,” (now exceeding Latinos) in America and the most likely of any racial or ethnic group (in America) to live in mixed neighborhoods and to marry across racial lines.
Overall, Asian Americans skew younger than the average American (41 years vs. 45 years) and their household size is slightly larger than average (3.1 vs. 2.6). Adult, native-born Asians skew much younger than adult immigrants (median age of 30 vs. 44).
The median income for Asian American households is higher than average ($63,420 vs. $49,580 in 2012). More than one-fourth (28 percent) of Asian American households have incomes of more than $100K; among overall households, only 18 percent boast this income level.
By Wayne Kinch, Senior Consultant, Global Markets, Ethnic Technologies, LLC
Source: A project by History World International World History Center
About Ethnic Technologies, LLC
As the industry leader in multicultural marketing intelligence our ethno-linguistic analytics team provides unique insight. Simply stated, our software enables clients to segment their customer or prospect audiences by ethnicity, religion, language preference and degree of assimilation. America’s demographic composition will continue transitioning. Understanding how to effectively communicate with ethnic consumers remains critical to building relationships and expanding market share.
Ethnic Technologies, LLC is the platinum standard in multicultural marketing. The result of over 40 years of continuous ethnic, religious and language preference research, E-Tech applies a unique approach for identifying different ethnic consumer segments. After identifying their specific names, E-Tech does a neighborhood analysis using multi-sourced information compiled from our research team. From that data, E-Tech is able to accurately identify an individuals’ Country of Origin. The incorporation of Enhanced Neighborhood Analytics (ENA) technology in E-Tech Version 8.1 establishes a new and unprecedented level of granularity in the ethnic marketing industry. Clients also benefit from available ethnic mailing, telemarketing and email lists for both the United States and Canada. The analytics department at E-TECH offers ethnic data appending services and mapping to provide businesses with an overview of both new and existing markets.
Contact Karen Sinisi, Sales Director at 866-333-8324 ext. 117 or karens@ethnictechnologies.com
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