Recently Univision held a “Hispanic 411: Insights to Grow Your Business” webinar that revealed the findings of a new study on Hispanic millennials. The results show how culture deeply influences millennials across social interactions, attitudes, purchasing behaviors, technology usage and media consumption. The webinar also introduced the Cultural Connection Index (CCI), the tool that measures whether a respondent has a high, medium or low connection to culture.
The importance of Hispanic millennials to a brand’s bottom line is tremendous. They represent a higher lifetime value for brands because they’re young, they’re open to your messages, they are connected and influential. Culturally connected Hispanic millennials are all that – young, open to your messages and influential, connected – to the nth degree. They’re like millennial superheroes for brands. No millennial strategy can be complete without including Hispanic millennials.
According to the newly-released population estimates, Hispanic adults 18-34, or millennials, currently account for 15 million people in the U.S. This is 21 percent of the total millennial population and that number will grow to 23 percent by 2020. Fifty seven percent of the 15 million Hispanic millennials were born in the U.S. and you may be surprised to learn what we uncovered about their connection to their culture:
The majority of Hispanic millennials have a powerful connection to their culture; our study found that 62 percent of Hispanic millennials have a high or medium CCI. One of the ways this connection is expressed is through self-identification. Two-thirds of Hispanic millennials identify themselves as Hispanic and for high CCI Hispanic millennials, that number jumps to 89 percent. The connection is retained even as Hispanic millennials live in the U.S. – 40 percent of high CCI millennials have lived in this country more than 10 years.
Our study also suggests that culture runs deep, as passing on family traditions to children (61 percent), observing family traditions (51 percent), customs and holidays and enjoying traditional Latino meals (68 percent) all ranked high among total Hispanic millennials. Those numbers shoot up to at least 31 percent for high CCI millennials, who also say socializing with others in the Hispanic community is extremely important (90 percent).
Culturally connected Hispanic millennials are more deeply engaged with technology. They own more smartphones and tablets than the total Hispanic millennial population and they also do more with them. In the past three months, high CCI millennials were more likely to download TV shows to their devices – 23 percent vs. 17 percent for smartphones, and 20 percent vs. 18 percent for tablets. And when it comes to movies, high CCI millennials averaged two more streams (10.5) over the past three months than the total Hispanic millennial population.
Hispanic millennials are active brand experimenters, using digital media to inform their choices. Seventy-one percent of the total Hispanic millennial population said they are extremely comfortable using the Internet to find out more information about brands and products. The study suggests, however, that high CCI millennials, are more open to hearing from brands. Fifty-seven percent said they often sign up for email or text messages from brands vs. 43 percent of the total millennial population. They are also more likely to go online to research a product after having seen a TV commercial (56 percent vs. 52 percent).
Spanish remains important to how millennials connect and watch. Our study found that 85 percent of the total Hispanic millennial population speaks Spanish. Seventy-nine percent of high CCI millennials say it’s the primary language they speak at home and 66 percent say they use Spanish to make new friends.
High CCI millennials are watching TV in Spanish across genres. High CCI millennials are much more likely than the total population of Hispanics to watch novelas – which are strongly linked to Hispanic culture – as well as other dramas, news, celebrity news and talk shows.
In summary, our study found Hispanic culture is running strong among the millenial Hispanic group. These young consumers are enjoying the benefits of two cultures and are stongly in tune to Hispanic culture via family, traditions, language and media.
To view the “Hispanic 411: Insights to Grow Your Business” webinar discussing these results, please click here.
