Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1962)

dollars also will flow into a small but fruitful tv operation. (About 200 am outlets regularly program to Spanish listeners; a string of Spanish tv stations in the West Coast and Southwest states is currently the only ethnic element in the video industry.) Mass-market advertisers already are making an important broadcast play toward the pocket of Spanishspeaking Americans, despite some lack of precise market information. Each company works with its own estimates; formulae; facts and educated guesses. Some of these coincide with the bases developed by other marketing teams; some are at wild variance. sponsor editors, in this special report, bring a sampling of these together in a state-of-the-art survey. It's an important subject to marketers and broadcasters alike, because: • The Spanish-speaking market now is being cultivated by at least 100 of the major national and regional advertisers. • In rate-of-growth, this group has generated the most spirited movement of any section of the na. tional economy. • Spanish-language broadcasting is now the second-largest specialized service in am radio (closely following Negro-appeal programing) . Supporting evidence on these three points is not hard to uncover. Five years ago, when sponsor undertook a similar survey, the permanent Latin population of the U.S.A. was around three million. Today's conservative estimate is six million, excluding Puerto Rico. In 1957, total income was calculated at $3l/2 billion; for 1963 a total of S6 billion will be generally acceptable. The number of radio stations with heavy Spanish pro graming has doubled in five years. Where total radio advertising then was figured at $5 million, one station group alone now predicts $10 million billings in 1963. These bold outlines undoubtedly are impressive, but in trying to build a detailed picture, the marketer encounters real difficulty. His troubles start just in counting heads. Number-of-people is the measurement that's basic to all marketing analyses, and with some minor reservations, the Census report is the bedrock on which marketing and advertising rests. However, the Census is unable to give an accurate count of Spanish-speaking Americans. Its broad divisions are white v. nonwhite (in which Latins qualify as "white") , and native v. foreign-born. It's thus only in "foreign-born" that pollsters really come to grips: Mexico and the other Americas account for about 2,300,000 resi Spanish-Americans score strongly in market surveys, BUYING HABITS with 1. Supermarket or bodega? Prefer supermarket 85.4% Prefer small grocery store 14.6% 2. Preferred days for shopping Monday 6.7% Tuesday 4.3 Wednesday 10.0 Thursday 11.2 Friday 31.7 Saturday 38.6 Sunday 4.6 No Preference 10.2 (multiple respoTise) 3. Typical product preferences Frozen foods Buy 44.4% Don't buy 55.6% Cake mixes Buy 63.3% Don't buy 36.7% Cold cereal Buy 83.5% Don't buy 16.5% Hot cereal Buy 75.5% Don't buy 24.5% Household bleach Buy 92.4% Don't buy 7.6% Source: The Pulse Inc. Personal interview of 1380 respondents in 15 markets, for the National Spanish Language Network, June 1962. 40 SPONSOR/5 November 1962