Making a connection with Latino clients and consumers
Since we started our blog, we’ve addressed cultural issues that arise with both Latino patients and employees across many industries. We have attempted to illuminate some of these issues by viewing them in terms of Latino cultural values like familismo, personalismo, respeto, and paternalism. We will now devote some time to another aspect of the Latino “market reality” – reaching Latino clients.
While connecting with Latinos as consumers implies a completely different kind of relationship than what we’ve discussed, many of the same cultural values color that relationship, and will come into play in new ways.
Before moving in this new direction, we think it would be useful to reiterate two of the fundamental ideas of this blog:
1) Cross-cultural communication begins with understanding your own assumptions about human beings and your own culture to avoid the trap of unconsciously believing “everyone thinks the way I do.”
2) As with any immigrant group, it’s the first or second generation Latinos who have had the least time to assimilate into mainstream culture, and are therefore most likely to experience a communication breakdown in the U.S.
Take a look at our other blog posts to understand more about the intricacies of Latino culture in order to better understand how to work effectively with Latino clients and employees. Some examples include communicating with Latinos and Latino customer loyalty.
