Globalization

Crossover between general and diversity creative works because most of the time they are built on the same platform. In fact, most major global brands set up one platform for all regions and ethnicities. Localization allowed with all must be tie to the same theme.

The "Your Point of View" campaign of HSBC is one of the examples. Its print creative shows alternate images with attached "labels", showing how different people can have various points of view on the same issue. TV and radio creative are based on the same theme. Depending of the regions and ethnicities the ads are presenting to, different sets of "labeled images" apply. It works globally. McDonald’s "I’m loving it" and Dove’s "Real Beauty" other examples.

Some of the platforms, however, cannot be just translated to other markets literally. Take Chevy’s "An American Revolution" as an example. While American Revolution could symbolize the transformation of the all-new Chevy in a very positive way, it means nothing to Asian immigrants. Focus group further confirmed Chinese are scared by the word "revolution." It reminded them the painful history of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s. Thus, Chevy’s Asian marketing agency came up with the modified line "New Era" for Chevy’s Chinese American market. "New Era" perfectly translated the spirit behind "An American Revolution" without bringing up the American and/or Chinese history.

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Crossover

Creative adaptation in diversity marketing is not necessary a one-way street. Even though most of the time, it is the diversity markets adapt the general market creative. In some rare cases, the opposite could happen.

Chevy’s Dream spot is an example. The spot was created by its Asian marketing agency, but was also aired in the Emmy Award night with English copy and VO.

Marketers should be open to such opportunities.

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Geico Caveman On Netflix Commercial

Geico’s series of caveman commercial promotes that Geico.com is "so easy even a caveman can do it." In the spots, the cavemen actually are very civilized and intelligent. They were very mad and Geico apologized. The series is like a story for people to follow. It makes people laugh and remember Geico.

Not sure if Netflix is trying to do the same. In one of its new commercial, a guy introduces Netflix.com to a room of people who all meant to look uneducated and not smart, including cavemen, Pinocchio and two Asian fishermen. I was very upset. Seriously, this commercial really pissed me off. But my husband, who is also an Asian found it quite funny. I tried to ask several Asian friends but none contacted have seen the spot yet. Nevertheless, I am very sure I am not the only one who found the spot very offensive.

It is common sense that if you have a TV spot trying to make fun of a particular group of people, you should do some research to make sure the group is ok with it and could laugh at the spot as well. I wonder if Netflix did the homework.

Chevy’s recent spot features a sumo wrestler in an Aveo. The message is small car, big capacity. The car manufacturer was sensitive enough to consult with its Asian marketing agency if Asian, especially Japanese, would find the creative offensive. It turns out Asians like the creative as well. Chevy later decided to translate the commercials and put it in Asian TV stations as well.

Take away for marketers: Be sensitive.

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Fortune Cookies

I had talked about Asian faces in general market advertisements in my blog post "Asian on TV." How about Chinese characters and fortune cookies?

To promote its direct flight to Shanghai, American Airlines hired a street team to give out future cookies in Chicago. FYI, future cookie is NOT a Chinese traditional culture. It is just a "dessert" Chinese restaurants give to customers in the US. AA did not give the cookies in Chinatown either. Their team handed out the cookies in business district areas.

Wonder what are the fortunes in the cookies? There are there of them: "Nonstop to Shanghai on American Airlines, your perfect match," "You will enjoy nonstops to Shanghai on AA," and "AA nonstops to Shanghai looks very good."

AA also had scooters towing two-sided backlit panels (Chinese headline and English copy) toured the streets within Chinatown and the Central Business District. The campaign also includes some print ads on Chinese publications and online ads on Chinese as well as pan-Asian sites. The whole campaign indeed integrate both general and Asian marketing.

See also story on MediaPost.

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Traditional vs Simplified Chinese

In my last blog post "Language Difference", I mentioned Chinese share the same set of Chinese characters and have the same grammar logics. Actually, there are two sets – traditional and simplified.

Traditional Chinese characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Mainland China and Singapore use the simplified Chinese characters developed by the PRC government in the 1950s and finished in 1964.

Majority of the Chinese publications in the US are printed in traditional Chinese. There are two reasons: 1) Traditional Chinese has longer history and is considered as the standard written form of the language. 2) Simplified Chinese users could easily guess the traditional characters right and pick up the new form easily; but not vice versa. All the language dialects and forms could be confusing to non-Chinese. But marketers must be aware of the difference.

I recall I received two IOs from IBM during the time I worked for a Chinese newspaper. Both had language related mistakes.

First insertion was in 2003. The creative has an Asian face but copy was all in English. I offered the agency to translate it at a minimal fee. They accepted but it took them forever to approve my translation. I suspect they had hard time finding someone to evaluate the translation quality.

The next one I received about a year later was not much better, Chinese face and Chinese copy – but in simplified characters. It took me hours to explain to the agency the difference between traditional and simplified characters and that our paper is in traditional. The agency decided to have their Chinese office in Beijing to convert it.

Don't assume agencies in China are professional in Chinese language. The revised creative I received had two mistakes. Since my agency contact didn't know Chinese at all, she asked if I could contact their Chinese team in Beijing directly. I did, but several back-and-forth emails didn’t work out. We later had a conference call in their morning time and my nighttime. It turned out that their Beijing office didn’t have the right font typeface of those particular characters in traditional form. I had to do it for them!

Take away for marketers: Make sure your agency has the local expertise to manage your target segments. While some work may be outsourced to overseas, it is the local team that serves us your eyes and ears. This applies not only Asian marketing, but all diversity marketing.

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Language Difference

The Asian-American immigrants bring more languages to the US than perhaps all other population segments combined. Just India alone, there are fifteen different languages. Not to mention the multiple dialects spoken by the various subgroups.

While Chinese has tens of dialects (Mandarin and Cantonese are the major two), the written form is the same. They all share the same set of Chinese characters and have the same grammar logics. (FYI, there are more than 10K Chinese characters, but you only need to know ~2500 to comprehend regular newspaper.)

Just like English, however, there are some language variations among regions. Ask for soda and French fries in London will not get you what you expect in New York. Same for Chinese, the fuel we feed the cars is called "gas oil" in Mainland China but "electric oil" in Hong Kong. The situation is further complicated for terms introduced by foreigners. Salad is an example; there are at least five different combinations of the Chinese characters to translate the term phonetically.

Years ago when McDonald's tried to promote its salad to Chinese customers, they gave out couples as pre-print insert to some Chinese newspapers. The Chinese translation they used for the term salad unfortunately was not the most popular used one. If only there were no product pictures, many readers would have no clues what it was about. I later found out that the agency just hired a freelancer for translation. No one at the agency or the client side was able to comment before the insert was printed.

Take away for marketers, especially those do Asian marketing: Don’t rely on one freelance for any translation and copywriting in any language that you are not familiar with.

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English Ad On Chinese Newspaper

In 2003 when I was working for a Chinese newspaper, I received an IKEA ad from its agency. It was a typical promotional ad with some nice furniture pictures and the headline saying sales ends on a certain date, followed by store locations and web address. The ad was nice, but only one problem -- it was in English.

I called the agency -- which was not one specialized in Asian marketing -- and offered translation of headline and typesetting free of charge. The response I got was that the client wanted it in English. They believed those readers who did not understand the simple line were not the target audience anyway.

It was true that more than half of our readers knew some English; yet they counted on the paper for in language news and product information. Other than some job classified ads, the entire paper was in Chinese (90+ pages daily).

After the ad was printed, several readers called our customer service team asking why we had that ad on our paper. Was it a mechanical mistake? Why didn’t we translate it? None of them asked about the actual product/service/promotion.

By placing an English ad on a Chinese newspaper, IKEA’s message to the audience was like "We want to tell you what we have/sell, but we don’t want to listen to what you need." Was that really what IKEA wanted?

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Asian on TV

In the past few years, we see more and more Asian faces on screen. Some well known Asian artists include Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Lucy Liu, Sandra Oh, Daniel Kim, Yunjin Kim, to name just a few. But are the roles these Asian play in the movies really Asian?

Tony Award winner B.D. Wong plays a doctor on Sesame Street, Jurassic Park and Law & Order. In the interview with ABC 20/20 Hollywood Stereotypes, he said the image of Asian "pisses him off". He wants to be cute but Asians are not in Hollywood.

In Hollywood, Asians are either boring professional or kung fu experts. Yes, martial arts are part of the Asian culture. Yes, Asians accounts for 30% of the medical scientists in the US, and that 17% of physicians and surgeons are Asians. But that does not mean Asians are not cool.

I found the recent Alberto VO5 "Break the Mold" spot (see below) which features two Chinese rebellious teenagers run away from a strict school, captures very well what Asians really are. Asians will find this spot particularly interesting, no matter they like it or hate it. The spot should be very eye-catching to non-Asian as well. After all, it looks so different from the other commercials.

Some of the marketers are smart enough to share general market creative with their diversity AOR before production to see if it makes sense to apply the creative in multiple segments. In some cases, some additional shadow shooting with Asian talents will work. That could save a lot of production cost.

What marketers should also do is to make sure Asian talents are included in the general market media as well. After all, it is the minorities in the US that are the majority. 5% of the population is Asian and they represent $260 billion annual buying power. While many Asians consume Asian media, they don'’t live in a vacuum. They are reached by general market advertising as well. Keep that in mind, whether you do Asian marketing or general marketing.

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No one says "I am an Asian"

Go ask any Asian looking people around you for their ethnicity. I bet no one would say he is Asian. Rather, they would say they are Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Vietnamese, Filipino, Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian and such. They may say they are from Asia (knowing you probably don’t know what Khmer is or where Cambodia is anyway). They just would not say they are Asian.

It is just like people would tell you they are French, Italian, German, Irish; or they may say they are from Europe. They would not say they are European.

"Asian" is a term used in Census, in survey, and in business. Asian Americans are learned to check the box next to Asian when filling out forms. They tell people we are Asian Americans in our online profiles. Yet they actually see themselves Chinese/ Korean/ Japanese/ Indian/...

Hispanic used to be a census term too. Years ago, there were Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, Argentinean, Dominicans, Colombians, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Ecuadorian, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, Bolivians, Peruvians, Venezuelans, Spaniard and even Latino… but no Hispanic in America. It was then. Now, all the subgroups are happy to claim themselves Hispanic. Each Hispanic subgroup may have different culture, value and dialect. Yet they share the same media in the same language. Yes, it was the media that put them together.

This is not the same case for Asian. Though Asian subgroups share some similarity in culture and values, they speak different languages. They don’t see themselves as one big segment. In fact, people even further differentiate themselves within a subgroup. For instance, Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong Chinese, Macau Chinese, Singaporean.

It explains why one of the first questions Asian marketing professionals have for any campaign is: Which segment/subgroup should be covered in the plan?

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What Makes Marketers Hesitate?

If all the researches show the Asian American market is a big opportunities (growing population, well-education, high income, etc.), why haven’t all the marketers dive in? Here are some of the excuses:

Lack of Knowledge

Most marketers are not familiar with Asian. While Americans know Japanese sushi, Chinese ku fung and Korean nuclear threat, most barely know the group’s multiple cultures and languages. When you are not familiar with something, you either learn or stay away from it. Since learning takes effort, a lot of people choose to hide instead. That’s the very sad part of human nature.

Lack of Infrastructure

Product must be ready -- not necessary finished though – before advertisement starts. In some service industries, companies need to have the infrastructure built before they enter any new markets. For the Asian American market, they may need to open stores in areas with high Asian populations, hire Asian staff and/or develop in-language literature/website.

Lack of Support

For a brand to enter any new market, not only it needs approval by brand manger and upper management, it also require support by the fields. Their green light is the admission ticket to the new market. Yet it is their commitment to diversity marketing that counts. It is their Asian mind to makes the difference. I find it important to have an ambassador in the company to take the ownership of the show as well as leadership to run the show. In reality, the scale and the success of the campaign depends very much on the status of this ambassador.

Lack of Budget

Though one out of four luxury cars are sold to Asian in California, car manufacturers rather look at the Asian potential as the 5% of the total US population. It doesn’t matter how affluent Asian are (number of Asian HHI>200K is that of African American and Hispanic combined), almost all diversity marketers treat Asian as the third focus (at least budget wise). Asian budget comes like something leftover. If there is no leftover, there is no Asian budget.

Being an Asian marketing professional could be very frustrating especially if you don't get the support you need. It is not easy to be the unflavored kid in the family especially when you really believe in yourself.

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Who Should Advertise To Asian American?

Basically, all brands should consider investing in the Asian American market, especially the businesses that:

Target immigrants

• Immigrants are the core customers of money transfer. Asians transfer hundreds of millions to their home country every year. Western Union has been advertising to the group actively. So are some local/community banks. But MoneyGram is not. Neither are the national banks. Are they not seeing the potential?


• The phone giants like Verizon has been promoting their international call package to the Asian American market. Couple other calling cards and VoIP companies are testing the market now. None of them has established as leader yet. Anyone ready for full launch?

Number 1 in Asia but not in the US

• Most people may be surprised to hear that KFC is the no.1 preferred American fast food restaurant in China -- not McDonald’s. Knowing there are so many recent Chinese immigrants in New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia, would KFC do something to reinforce the no.1 preference status? Bear in mind, McDonald’s is actively hitting the market right now.


• Believe it or not, Buick is the number 1 luxury car in China. People really rank it at the same level as Mercedes Benz. Yet Buick suffers in the US badly. If it has to focus in one segment to make a come back, would it be easier to start with Chinese?

Very big in US, but relatively unknown to Asian

• Cereal is a new food category to Asian. In Asia, you could probably only find Kellogg’s corn flake (the basic one with the chicken on the box) in 7-eleven and maybe two more varieties in big supermarkets. It is classified as American food. When Asian move to the US, their kids have cereal at school all the time. They then introduce the product to their parents. But most adults think it is not nutritious enough (or some even believe it is just another kind of potato chips). Similar case for oatmeal. Kellogg’s and Quaker, do you get the message?


• Most of the retail stores in the US are new to Asian immigrants. In their home countries, there are no Macy’s, JC Penney, Target, Sears, BJ’s, Costco, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples, Office Depot, A&P, CVS… and the list goes on. These are all big brands but Asians do not know what they are and what they stand for. Are these stores ready for more Asian foot traffic and sales?

The number 2 in the US

• In his book "Then We Set His Hair on Fire", Phil Dusenberry suggested Reebok not to fight with Nike, but to "take market share away from all the small brands behind it". I agree and I would add: instead of battle with Nike in the general market, make an effort to conquer the diversity markets. Just one question, are you ready?


• Pepsi has great campaigns in Asia. Have they ever thought about sponsoring their endorser/artists for a concert in the US? Asians are big in home country entertainment. Korean artist Rain had 2 concerts at MSG in NY last year. Tickets were sold out within hours. Think about the cost efficiency of securing a small segment of the population and gain more market share to get closer to the no.1 guy. How about that?

Have competitors in the market already

• With the new management and marketing team, Wal-Mart is getting more aggressive in the diversity market. Target, are you listening?


• Kraft is in the Asian American market now. Would General Mills do anything?


• Even if your direct competitors are not in the market yet, you want to get in and establish the industry leadership role before the followers come. So why wait?

Perhaps we should ask who do not need to do Asian American marketing. Kosher food and maybe Big And Tall are the only ones I can think of. Anyone interested in bottom line should take a closer look at the affluent Asian American market.

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Who Advertise In the Asian American Market?

A brief list of who are the players in the market right now.

Telecommunications:
It all started with MCI in the late 1980’s for its international call service. AT&T of course had to jump in. The battle now has turned to Cingular, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint. But most of them run co-op retail ads only.

Insurance:
MetLife began its Asian recruiting advertising effort more than 20 years ago. It is still one of the active players in the Asian American market. Other advertisers include New York Life, State Farm, and Nationwide. Each focuses on different segment with very different media approach.

Heathcare:
Oxford, HIP have been very involved in the Asian American BTL marketing. Since the introduction of Child Health Plus and Family Health Plus in New York, more than a dozen managed care providers flood the market.

Finance:
Sure the national big banks like HSBC, Chase, Citibank, Commerce Bank are in. So as many local community based banks such as United Orient Bank, Abacus Bank, Cathay Bank, to name just a few. National banks of other countries, for instance, Bank of China, also play a significant role. Other financial services providers such as TD Ameritrade, E-Trade, and Charles Swabs are also in the game.

Automobile:
It is perhaps the biggest advertising category in the Asian American market. Active players include Chevy, Cadillac, Hummer, Buick, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Volvo, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes Benz and Jeep. Mazda and Chrysler have also come in this year.

Retail:
JC Penny, Wal-Mart, Lowe’s – all advertise in Asian American market.

Packaged-Goods:
Kraft started two years ago. SK-II advertised big time after it was bought by P&G. Both Coke and Pepsi had been on and off the market, never big though.

Casino:
Asians are big in gambling. That’s why there are Asian VIP sections in every major casino on both East and West coasts. It makes perfect sense for them to advertise in the Asian market.

Alcohol:
Remy, Hennessy and Martell are very active. Several beers, including Budweiser, are also in.

Travel:
International airlines such as Cathay Pacific, Asianna, China Airlines, Korean Air are of course in the market for obvious reason. For American airlines, only Continental is an active advertiser in the Asian market.

(Update 10/16/06: American Airlines is promoting their Shanghai flight in NY as well.)

Others:
Other advertisers include Western Union (for obvious reason), Uncle Sam (Anti-smoking, CDC, USPS, CIA recruitment, etc), IKEA, McDonald's…

Each category has an Asian marketing story or two to tell. I will save them for some other time.

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Reaching the Asian Americans

70% of Asian American population can be found in just five states. California has 35.1% of the entire Asian population, and New York has 10%; followed by Hawaii, Taxes and New Jersey.

Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco account for 45% of Asian American buying power -- nearly $200 billion. Other major Asian American markets with the highest buying power include Chicago ($18 billion), Washington DC ($17 billion), Honolulu ($15 billion) and Boston ($12 billion).

Nevertheless, the ethnic composition of individual markets varies widely. Below is a list of the top Asian Metropolitan Area with Asian subgroup breakdown.

• Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County CA CMSA
  Chinese 24.1%, Filipino 21.5%, Korean 15.9% (total of top three 61.5%)
• New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island CMSA
  Chinese 35.9%, Asian Indian 30.2%, Korean 10.6% (total of top three 76.7%)
• San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose CA CMSA
  Chinese 34.5%, Filipino 25.7%, Asian Indian 10.9% (total of top three 71.1%)
• Washington DC-Northern Virginia CMSA
  Asian Indian 25.7%, Chinese 19.6%, Korean 13.1% (total of top three 58.4%)
• Chicago, IL CMSA
  Asian Indian 30.4%, Filipino 22.2%, Chinese 16.6% (total of top three 69.2%)
• Honolulu HI CMSA
  Japanese 40.3%, Filipino 31.8%, Chinese 11.3% (total of top three 83.4%)
• Boston-Worcester-Lawrence CMSA
  Chinese 38.6%, Asian Indian 22.9%, Vietnamese 13.2% (total of top three 74.7%)
• Seattle-Tacoma WA CMSA
  Chinese 19.5%, Filipino 16.8%, Vietnamese 15.9% (total of top three 52.2%)
• San Diego CA CMSA
  Filipino 46.2%, Chinese 16.4%, Vietnamese 13.3% (total of top three 75.9%)
• Houston-Galveston TX CMSA
  Vietnamese 28.6%, Asian Indian 26.8%, Chinese 19.1% (total of top three 74.5%)

Acculturation pattern in each of the Asian American markets vary as each Asian American subgroup has its own unique profile (culture, background, behavior and language). Finding the right message delivered in the right manner across the ethnicities and/or markets is one of the most important yet difficult tasks marketers have. In reality, most marketers choose to target selective subgroup(s) and/or market(s) only.

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Asian American Subgroups

What Drive the Asian Amerian Population Growth

Asian immigrants accounted for more than two-third of the Asian American population segment growth from 2000 to 2005 according to Census 2006. Natural increase caused the rest (32.6%), compared to 55.9% of the growth in the Hispanic population.

Where Are Asian American Immigrants From?

There are three board regional groups of Asian:

• Northeastern Asians come from Greater China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. They share some linguistic and religious similarities.


• Southeast Asians are from the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, etc. These countries have a strong influence from the Spanish, Portuguese and/or French.


• South Asians are people come from countries including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They may be Hindu or Muslim but share a strong British influence.

Chinese account for nearly one out of four Asian Americans. Asian Indians and Filipinos are the next largest subgroups in the Asian population; followed by Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese. Almost 90% of all Asian Americans come from these six countries.

Not All of Them Are Immigrants

No doubt immigrants play the most important role in the Asian American population -- almost 70% of Asian Americans were foreign born. The impact varies by country of origin though. For instance, majority of Japanese Americans are native born; many of them are the third or fourth generation.

Multiple Subgroup Challenge

With the influence of more than fifteen different cultures, Asian Americans are the most diverse ethnic group in the US. The wide range of languages spoken -- Cantonese, Hawaiian, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Tagalong, Vietnamese and hundreds of other dialects -- further complicate the situation.

While Census Bureau tracks population trends of the top six major subgroups (Asian Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese) and ten other Asian nationalities and ethnic groups, there are limited market researches on this demographic segment. This makes the Asian American market arguably the most challenging market. Marketers need to learn the markets by working closely with them, not from the books.

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Snapshot of the Asian Market

A Growing Market

Asian Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group in the US. According to the Census data released in May 2006, there were 12.7 million Asian Americans in 2005 -- 19.8% increase since 2000 and 77.3% since 1990. It is projected that Asian American population will increase to 14.6 million by 2010.

Best Educated

Asian Americans are the best educated population segment in the country. Nearly 50% of Asian Americans has a bachelor's degree or higher compared to 27% of the total US population.

Well Employed

Among all population segments, Asian Americans are the most likely to work in managerial and professional jobs. There are 46% of Asian Americans employed in high-paying job categories defined by Census Bureau, compared to 38% of non-Hispanic White, 27% of African Americans and 18% of Hispanics.

While Asian Americans represent 4.4% of all employed Americans, they account for about 25% of computer software engineers, 23% of computer hardware engineers, 30% of medical scientists, and 17% of physicians and surgeons.

Higher Income -- Much Higher

Asian Americans are exceptionally high earners. The median household income of Asian Americans is 25.7% higher than average, 15% higher than that of non-Hispanic White and 56% more than Hispanic's.

More than one out of four (28%) of Asian American household make $100,000 or more. Though the population base of Asian Americans is much lower than that of Hispanics and African Americans, there are more Asian American households with incomes topping $100,000. In fact, the number of Asian American households with incomes of $200,000 or more is about the same as Hispanic and African American families combined.

Asian Americans households are more affluent than any other population segments in the US. It is a fast growing group that no marketers can afford to miss.

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