As the Latino consumer market gets more culturally fragmented nationwide, national retail brands are demanding more actionable Latino insights to create new strategies for brand growth, which makes perfect sense right! Are these brands getting the bang for the buck? You be the judge, it just takes a minute flipping pages on a magazine or watching TV to realize that most of the retail brands keep on telling us the same story to connect with Latino consumers. Why? There are a handful of factors as to why this is happening, however, for the purpose of this article; I have chosen four areas that need close attention when forming a qualitative Latino cross-cultural consumer research project in the U.S. marketplace.

Let me begin by saying that some times, even when both researcher and respondent speak Spanish, communication can become garbled in either direction. That is, respondents misunderstand the questions or researchers misunderstand the answers and the chances of misinformation expand dramatically.

For that matter, it happens in any language, right? Most importantly, some of the problems developing meaningful insights in Latino consumer research stem from cultural differences among Latino subgroups and sadly enough, it continues to be a misunderstood or perhaps an unrecognized critical factor in qualitative research. As a result, when this happens, a project is set to fail from the "get go" because it automatically incapacitates the respondents from communicating their opinion on a brand due to inadequacies in the cultural frame of interaction.

So, what do we do to avoid such inadequacies? For this particular situation, one needs to pay close attention to cultural recruiting, sampling, pretesting and product usability in relationship to the targeted audience.

Cultural Recruiting

Since the Latino consumer in the U.S. marketplace is usually grouped under the same umbrella--language that is--one must diligently identify the nationality of the recruited participant to determine the cultural context to which the respondent belongs. A recruiter must avoid generalities, misconstrued questions and cultural disassociation. For this to work efficiently, the recruiter must be bicultural as well.

Consumer Insights

Cultural Sampling

As stated above, the sample will have a mix of Latin American nationalities, and the latter will be a factor influencing their interaction and the process for assimilating information in any given scenario, whether that is participating in a face-to-face, focus group or ethnographic research. In simple terms, members of different nationalities will interpret questions through their own cultural lenses and when this happens they could potentially misunderstand the purpose of the question or activity altogether. On the other hand, from the perspective of the interviewer, this situation might be intensified even more if there isn't a common understanding on how members of the sample organize their knowledge of a brand based on their place of origin and their stage in the acculturation process once in the U.S. In summary, all of these factors must be taken into consideration for effective cultural sampling in order to facilitate effective interaction.

Cultural Pretesting (Sample and Questions)

As a rule of thumb, the pretest population should be similar in characteristics to the population of the actual survey. In US Latino consumer research this is even harder to establish than for the general market because it demands more time to build cultural subgroups. Isn't that the truth? However, this is the final and crucial screener to make sure that the cultural context of the participants is actually known in order to maximize the efficiency of the project. Here are few variables that should be acknowledged assuming that the questions are asked in Spanish:

• Eliminate Spanish colloquialism in questions that trigger localized cultural associations and prevent and/or marginalize other participants from interaction

• Eliminate transferring or using cultural meanings from any given Latino subgroup that could possibly influence the environment in which the survey is taking place

• Evaluate the effectiveness of the bilingual skills and bicultural knowledge of the interviewer

The point is to make sure that by understanding cultural cues from different Latino subgroups, the interviewer is addressing every respondent within a neutral cultural frame of reference, including the usage of formal Spanish.

Product Usability

When observing natural activities, local cultural factors can maximize or simply ruin a project if the process for product usage is misunderstood.

Consider a product usability study between a Costa Rican and Mexican consumer in which the product for assessment is "chili pepper." A typical Costa Rican consumer enjoys a cup of hot coco and adds chili pepper to it, while in the case of the Mexican individual chili pepper is used to spice up their regular day-to-day cuisine. In both cases, by observing the respondents' behavior, one can draw the conclusion that the difference in product usability is found at the interface level and that the cultural environment influences the usage differently. This is not to say that Costa Ricans do not use pepper in their meals, on the contrary, it reinforces the fact that by knowing a local cultural activity, a product might be branded in multiple ways.

As a result, in order to maximize actionable insights in a rapidly growing culturally segmented Latino market in the U.S., a researcher must have the ability to immerse himself/herself in a cultural context in which a brand is expected to be sold and grow. And this is how you start developing true meaningful and actionable insights.