An exciting opportunity landed in my mailbox yesterday: "Your household is cordially invited to join ACNielsen's Homescan Consumer Panel," the elegant brochure announced. An insert printed on heavy paper asked, "Are you African American? Hispanic? Married 30 years old or younger? Living in a household with an annual income less than $25,000? If you answered yes to any of the above, we really want to hear what you have to say! Join today!"
I probably received this invitation because of my Spanish surname, which gets me on a lot of marketing lists for products I never use. My favorite was a series of Spanish-language telemarketing calls from people wanting to sell me English as a Second Language home-study courses. When I told the callers that I spoke the language fluently already, thank you very much, they couldn't respond back to me in English. I guess their program doesn't work.
ACNielsen wants me to accept a "small hand-held scanner" that I will carry around with me everywhere I go and scan the UPC barcodes on all of my household's purchases. They also want me to fill out "special surveys" asking me for information that manufacturers and retailers want to know about my buying habits. In exchange I'll get "valuable gift points for scanning and transmitting" my purchase information, which I can trade for "exciting gifts" from Nielsen's catalog.
Corporate America's desperation to know what makes the Latino consumer tick is predictable. Latinos are the fastest-growing racial/ethnic minority in the country, and have been fairly successful in entering the professional and entrepreneurial classes, so there's a little bit of money to spend.
But I think Nielsen's missing the mark. There's significant diversity within the "Hispanic" population: families of recent immigrants and those who have been here for generations; English-only families and Spanish-only families, and a wide range in between; Mexicans, South Americans, Caribbeans, Filipinos; citizens and non-citizens; the destitute and the highly placed. It's simply impossible to lump us all into one consumer group.
"Your household has been specially selected to 'speak' for thousands of people just like you!" the Nielsen brochure exclaims. Just like me. ¡Qué chévere! Thanks to this important research on Latino shopping habits, I'm sure all of those thousands of English-dominant, middle-income, mixed-race, blended-family households out there headed by Mexican/Irish/Filipina lesbian moms will be in complete agreement with my choice of breakfast cereal.
Jennifer Morales is an elected member of the Milwaukee Board of School Directors, the first person of Latino descent to hold that position. She was first elected in 2001 and was unopposed for re-election in 2005. In 2004, she ran for a seat in the Wisconsin state senate, earning 43% of the vote against a 12-year incumbent.
Previously, she served as the editorial assistant at the educational journal Rethinking Schools; as assistant director of two education policy research centers at UW-Milwaukee; and as the development director for 9to5, National Association of Working Women.
She became the first person in her immediate family to graduate from college, earning a B.A. in Modern Languages and Literatures from Beloit College in 1991.
In addition to her work on the school board, she is a freelance editorial consultant and a mother.
