Hispanic Market Handbook: The Definitive Source for Reaching This Lucrative Segment of American Consumers

Rating:
Summary: Dangerous Oversimplification
Review: Dangerous Oversimplification

If the Hispanic Market were a music CD, this book would be only the cover...and an oversimplified and dangerously traditional one at that.
This book regurgitates (or maybe CREATED) the standard image of a Latino consumer.

If you know nothing of the Hispanic Market, you might want to read it. But if you don't follow it with a serious study of the subject (like Arlene Dávila's, Latinos INC) you'll be left soaking in stereotypes that will inhibit your true understanding of this complex market.

The main problem is that as she slams obvious stereotypes (sombreros, burros etc..) she ignores (and perhaps was instrumental in creating) conceptual stereotypes.

Blanket comments like -Hispanics are not individualistic- have lead marketers down the wrong path for years. Valdes' is great at pointing out the differences of Latino's, but in doing so, completely ignores their similarities to the General Market, thereby giving marketers a dangerously PARTIAL understanding of this consumer.

Watch some Spanish television for a few hours. You'll notice some repulsively traditional commercials here and there. These are the fault of Valdes and "researchers" and "marketers" like her. (I must admit that these commercials have been effective in the past, but as advertising muscle increases against Hispanics, they've become all but useless. Why? They don't represent the 'whole Hispanic' and reach the consumer on an equally partial level.)

Valdes' understanding of Hispanics is probably what Dávila would accuse of "...selling and promoting generalized ideas about 'Hispanics' to be readily marketed by corporate America."

Read the book. But beware of falling into the trap...