Hispanics Celebrate the Day of the Dead

With 59 million Hispanics in the U.S., they represent almost 18 percent of the U.S. population and their buying power grew to $1.4 trillion in 2016, according to Nielsen. Hispanics are now the nation’s largest minority and have accounted for nearly half of the population growth in the U.S. since 2010.

Need to win over Hispanic customers?

Starts by understanding who they are. First of all, they’re young. Their median age is 29 compared to 41 for the rest of the population. They also use their mobile phones more than non-Hispanic populations to purchase and share purchase experiences online. But they also watch TV. Advertisers spent $9.2 billion in 2017 to reach Hispanic consumers, over $6 billion of that on TV advertising.

In general, Hispanics tend to:

• Embrace family, cultural traditions and heritage and many stay in contact with friends and relatives in their home countries.
• Pay attention to ads that include aspects of their culture, whether the ad is in Spanish or English.
• May prefer messaging in Spanish. For example, Best Buy’s Mexico Spanish-language website gets more traffic from within the U.S. than Mexico and Latin America combined.

One of Hispanics important cultural traditions is The Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos), a Mexican holiday that honors the lives of deceased friends and family. Celebrated in the U.S. from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, the holiday tradition includes the creation of altars to deceased loved ones decorated with photos, meaningful objects and their favorite foods which are said to attract their souls.

In towns and cities throughout Mexico, individuals wear costumes, hold parades and parties and make offerings to lost loved ones. The success of Disney’s recent Coco which centered around the holiday has heightened awareness and sales of Day of the Dead products and are expected to spike this year.

Retailers taking part include:

• Etsy, with over 87,000 results in its Day of the Dead online collection,
• 30,000+ product results on Amazon.com, and
• Target’s web page dedicated to Day of the Dead items available online and in store,
• Walgreens is offering an LED figurine and wooden table decor among them in most of its stores.
• 1-800-FLOWERS offers a skull flower arrangement, a special edition tin from The Popcorn Factory and skull truffles from Simply Chocolate skull truffles and Day of the Dead Oreo cookies.