“Meet the Faith” on money: Follow-up
Sorry for the delay with this post 
.
In an effort to not sound like a broken record on the issue of how Blacks spend money and what should be done, I am just going to provide links to old posts that addresses this issue further than I care to at this time.
Are they taking over or did we give them the keys?: This talks about how the Black community has virtually given up the economic authority it once had in the Black beauty industry.
“Pump it up, Pump it upâ€â€¦and right of our community: This post talks about the free advertising the hip-hop community has been giving to corporations for years.
Something I stumbled upon while on the net: In this post I highlighted an article that addressed the topic of media usage amongst Blacks. I will give you an excerpt here:
(mediavillage.com) According to the new Emotional Connections Study conducted among 4,000 adults by Jack Myers Media Business Report, African Americans watch significantly more television on average than other ethnic groups; have more television channels on their primary TV sets; own more television sets in the home; watch more Pay TV; spend more time on the Internet; spend more time listening to radio; and are slightly more likely to own a digital video recorder but significantly less likely to skip through commercials and are more likely to stop and view selected commercials.
So again I pose the question “Why should companies feel compelled to pump more money into Black ad shops when we, ABOVE ALL OTHER ETHNIC GROUPS tend to watch commercials as well as outspend other races when it comes to depreciatable products?” If anything, more should be done to bring other ethnic groups to our level of spending and ad-watching.
Increasingly Affluent African American Market Set to Reach $981 Billion by 2010
The buying power of black America (detailed)
In closing, “Meet the Faith” is one of the few shows on BET I think is really good all around. Host Ian Smith does a really good job addressing current issues as it relates to the Black community without having to sound like a thug or have the word “cousin” in front of his name. I just hope that the same Black folks who wasted no time criticizing the network for what it didn’t like would get behind the programing that is good. Otherwise, let’s not kid ourselves about wanting a Black television network that better represents the community.
P.S. I almost forgot about Oprah (she was the main highlight of the show). Her response to all the criticism regarding her decision to build a school in South Africa as opposed to America: “To hell with your criticism!”
Deal with it!
August 1st, 2007 at 7:05 am
” “Why should companies feel compelled to pump more money into Black ad shops when we, ABOVE ALL OTHER ETHNIC GROUPS tend to watch commercials as well as outspend other races when it comes to depreciatable products?â€
We had this discussion once before. Apparently, you still haven’t learned a thing. According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics, Af-Am households actually spend less as a percentage of per capita income and in overall dollars on consumer goods than all other groups measured. As I’ve written previously, the Af-Am market is clearly underdeveloped.
The other lesson to be learned from this information is exposure does not always result in action. I won’t debate whether Af-Ams consume more media than other groups — especially TV and radio. For whatever reason, they’re not reacting, proportionally, to the advertising that’s presented. That’s the fact.
August 1st, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Fyi:
Anytime you include a link in a comment, wordpress will automatically throw it into “moderate”. This gives me better control over spam.
Now, as to your comment.
There was nothing to learn in what you presented in past and in this latest especially when you ignore studies like the one conducted by the U. GA that found:
Target Marketing News also found that…
Now, is there more that could be done marketing-wise within the AA community? Sure. But again, just based on the simple fact that we consume more media than any other group (I would think that the Japanese were right up there), Black ad shops cannot make the claim that the Black consumer is “being left out in the cold” economically when it comes to this issue. We have been practically giving away our money to companies that do not cater their marketing for Black audiences and that is something Black advertising shops have to deal with more so than trying to find the racist in the boardroom who does not see a strong incentive to pour more money into Black advertising shops.
Again I ask the question: “Do Black consumers really care who is doing the advertising?” This is the question that Black ad shops are afraid to ask.
##Updated
I was in a bit of a rush with the above comment. Here is the rest I wanted to add:
Here is another study done by a AA market research company:
I would challenge the word “disposable” here for the same reason why I would challenge your mentioning of Black per-capita findings. Why I do not doubt that we spend less than Whites per-capita, what the findings do not cover is the debt-to-income ratio for the Black community. In other words, it is wrong to assume that just because we spend less than Whites per-capita it does not mean that there is some untapped surplus of money within the Black community You have to match the info you provided in your link with reports like this that addresses our debt in order to get a more complete picture.
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August 2nd, 2007 at 7:08 am
My apologies for the duplicate posts. I did not see the message that the post was subject to moderation.
“There was nothing to learn in what you presented in past and in this latest especially when you ignore studies like the one conducted by the U. GA…”
Au contraire! The BLS’ numbers were not projections of growth rates in consumer spending like the Univ. of Georgia’s study, but actual expenditures that plainly refute the assertion Af-Ams spend more than other groups on “depreciable products”. For example, Af-Am households spend less in cumulative dollars on automobiles and furniture (both depreciable assets) by a considerable margin than Whites, Asians, and Latinos. The trend is largely the same for consumer goods in general, whether we’re discussing food/groceries, bank/financial services, entertainment (?!?), health care, housing (owning or renting), and so forth. Now, a partial explanation for these numbers is Af-Am households have significantly less income to spend on consumer items. But the amounts of total dollars spent don’t tell the entire story.
Af-Ams don’t make consumer expenditures in proportion to our representative numbers, generally speaking. At approximately 14% of the U.S. population, we account for less than 6% of the country’s annual economy. Even if we were to apply the Univ. of Georgia’s projections as fact and hold the nation’s annual economic production constant at today’s level (~ $11 trillion), Af-Ams would still count for less than 9% of consumer spending. In considering all the consumer statistics in combination, the Af-Am market qualifies as both underdeveloped and underserved.
The statistics also bear out what I’ve maintained; consumption of mass media advertising does not directly translate into consumer action, especially among Af-Ams. Rather than parse out those exceptions to consumer behavior as the rule (e.g.; Af-Am teens’ purchase of athletic footwear), your time would be better spent examining solutions that foster Af-Am economic parity. Such solutions would include corporate America increasing their business with Black-owned & operated ad agencies and media outlets.