Study Examines Asian Indians in America

An individual store's success is dependent on its placement in the community. Local store marketing and catering to community demographics is essential for any merchant to succeed (this holds true for small and big box).

Back in my days as a store manager, I would make contact with the local Chamber and cultural groups to see if there was any partnership possibilities. I always made sure I had some sort of signage in the local dominant non-English language. Even something simple as 'Welcome' or 'Open' will go a long way in establishing bridges with the community. I would also focus on the merchandise mix and optimize accordingly.

If I'm a grocery store, I need to bring in products that are cultural specific. If I'm renting or selling DVDs, I'm going Bollywood (in respect to the article's focus on India). Remember to not dilute your core offering but adding some unique products specific to the community will help your Word of Mouth campaign. I can't stress how important these community partnerships are. Community presence must be a priority for the store manager (and if anything, it gives the manager a chance to actually get out of the store during daylight hours).

Doron Levy, President, TheMortgageMachine.ca

Asian Indians come to this country for a good education and better economic opportunities. They're focused and work hard to attain both agendas. I doubt that they come here seeking absorption into our culture versus their own. They naturally want the comfort of seeing vestiges of their native culture while in America even as they accept American citizenship.

But with many the world's demographic segments multiplying so rapidly here and wanting to preserve their native culture, how will that affect the future labeling and meaning of the "American Dream?"

Gene Hoffman, President/CEO, Corporate Strategies International

Two days ago on a windy Sunday afternoon here in Sacramento, local Pakistanis celebrated "Basant," welcoming the coming of spring. The state of the wind was important, because Basant includes kite flying, brought to Western attention by the novel and film, "The Kite Runner." Unfortunately, wind gusts of up to 40 mph shredded paper kites (20 mph is maximum for good flying) and only the vinyl varieties survived. There was some kite-fighting, in which competing kites try to cut the lines of other kites by using abrasive metal or glass-impregnated strings. Pakistani food and music highlighted the event and underscored the underlying joy in this tradition.

What an opportunity for brand sponsorship! This and similar events are super-targetable and ripe for support. The food part of the events alone represents marketing nirvana. Grass-roots opportunities such as these should be the launch-points for creating and maintaining successful relationships with this ethnic population.

M. Jericho Banks PhD, President, CEO, Forensic Marketing LLC

Right now the population density doesn't seem high enough to begin adding specialty departments in stores. Most major metro areas have a small number of specialty stores that cater to the Indian population. In rural America, typically the only Indians in town might be the local doctors, hotel operator and gas station owner. Due to their high level of educational and economic success, and because they have stepped up and embraced capitalism like the good people of America, most Americans have developed a fondness and respect for them. I remember 25 years ago when I would arrive at a hotel and see is was owned by Indians I'd think "oh no, run by Indians." Now when I enter a business run by Indians I think "Oh good, run by Indians."

David Livingston, Principal, DJL Research

It's interesting...I think it is likely that Asian Indians are one of the quicker-to-integrate groups within American history, for all the reasons the article says (highly educated, English-speaking, etc.). Unlike, say, my Polish immigrant ancestors in Detroit, Indian Americans in the SF Bay Area are much more integrated into the broader culture right off the bat. Many first-generation immigrants work in very multi-racial, meritocratic environments like Google, Cisco, and McKinsey.

I don't think there are a lot of lessons for marketers here, other than the marginal obvious stuff. When I walk down University Ave. in Berkeley or drive El Camino in Sunnyvale, I see saris, Bollywood videos and many regional Indian restaurants. Sure, if you are Safeway, you might want to broaden your selection of Indian items a little. But when I go to a nearby Target, it is filled with people from all ethnic backgrounds buying very similar stuff.

The fears about immigrants trying to keep their home culture and how that could change to the American Dream are as old as this country--and are no more well-founded now then they were a century ago.

Jonathan Marek, Senior Vice President, Applied Predictive Technologies

I agree that most Indian Americans who are being educated in this country are not all that interested in preserving their culture to the letter and actually embrace ours. However, if there is some product or good they want their local grocer to carry, all they have to do is ask. They may have to pay a little more but if they really want it, they can get it. As for the kite flying, I doubt if sponsoring such and event would increase the chain's bottom line in any significant way, so that really wouldn't be profitable.

Michael L. Howatt, Retail and Shopper Insights Consultant, Ascension Growth & Innovation Strategies

The elephant in the room is the largest immigration since Ellis Island. Immigrants from India, in theory, are largely ethnocentric like many of the immigrants from 150 countries around the world that have come to America in the last 15 years. This lack of assimilation by the majority of recent immigrants and the homogeneous footprint that retailers put down in their stores does not allow for quick change of their formats.

Given that reality, many of the young Asian Indians do want to assimilate to pop culture and may find these retailers appealing along with their peers. What I saw in Southern California is Ralphs, Albertsons, and Vons being bulldozed to be turned into Vietnamese markets and Hong Kong markets. They promised a multi-cultural market in one of the cities and it ended up being a Korean market.

Although the younger generation may embrace the traditional retail formats, they are disappearing fast on both coasts as minority majority states take over quickly. Studying the population momentum graphs, it appears that Caucasians are already the minority. The likely scenario is that traditional supermarkets and retailers won't change fast enough and that more stores will be gutted in favor of ethnic markets.

The tsunami of diversity will make it hard for retailers to have mass appeal and the current deep recession we're in may prove the ultimate turning point in retrospect. We may find that the Asian Indian market is truly just a microcosm compared to the segments within the Asian market alone. In other words, with the Asian population headed towards 10% in America, how can retailers market to the diversity within the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Filipino markets.

Let's not forget that their is a huge population of immigrants from the Middle East that are thrown into the Caucasian category in the Census. This market is probably larger than the current Indian market.

'CompSales'

Amusing to come across the term "Asian Indians"...only in the USA! :-)

Retailers in the US might draw a leaf out of British retailers that have significantly tailored their product mix to suit specific immigrant populations. Sure, the UK has a higher proportion of Indians (and other South Asians), but there are enough areas in the US where the South Asian population is high enough to warrant more specific merchandising and marketing.

When I think of the "Indian stores" owned by someone of Indian or South Asian origin in concentrated catchments of high-income South Asians (LA, Houston, Boston etc.), I can't help thinking of the opportunities missed by the chain stores.

On a separate note: I think there may a typo on Slide 3 of the presentation, which may have been intended to read: "Some felt that the Asian classification was negative, an attempt to lump Asian Indians in with the rest of Asia [not India, as in the presentation] when they have a distinct, rich culture that should stand by itself." I'm sure other communities would also take exception. It is indeed interesting that marketers tend to use the term "Asian" clumping together diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds from Turkey in the West all the way East to Japan.

Devangshu Dutta, Chief Executive, Third Eyesight