8 Asians

Nielsen recently released a report on Asian American consumers, called State of the Asian American Consumer Report: Growing Market, Growing Impact. It focuses on Asian American buying habits (e.g. Asian American make more shopping trips and are less likely to use shopping lists and clip coupons) and media consumption (e.g. watching Internet videos more than the average American and use smart phones more). The report tries to stimulate interest in Asian American consumers by saying that Asian Americans have the U.S.’s wealthiest households and  US$718 Million in household income. When I read the full report, I had a mix of appreciation for being wanted and some skepticism toward the numbers and conclusions.

I recall seeing numbers like US$506 million in Asian American household income as recently as in June 2012. Nielsen says US$718 million. A 40% increase in five months? I checked my latest paycheck, and that increase didn’t seem to be there! The report talks about median Asian American household income is 28% higher than the general population, and unlike other reports on Asian Americans consumers, at the authors did acknowledge that Asian Americans have larger average household size than the general U.S. population.

When I saw the report’s title, I immediately wondered how it would deal with the issue of diversity within the broad category of Asian American. Nielsen acknowledges that the diversity with the category is a challenge, but said that traits like an emphasis on family and focus on the future (e.g. education, saving for retirement and college expenses) are unifying ideas across the Asian American spectrum. The report mentions that Korean dramas are popular across many different Asian American ethnic groups as are food trucks – those are funny yet accurate insights. I would have added that K-Pop is also another pan Asian American pop culture favorite.

While some of the material in the report has been covered in articles like this one from the BBC and we have been covering Asian Americans in commercials for some time, I’d say that there is enough new information in this report for you to submit some personal information in order to get access to it. If reports like this can stimulate more advertisements like this one and less like these, I definitely would be happy.