New Study Taps UK's Non-Native Consumers

Today sees the launch of a new syndicated study of the impact of cultural diversity on UK consumer attitudes. 'Culture Watch' will be led by senior brand strategist Kate Wilson and conducted by ICM Research.

Wilson's twenty-year brand strategy career spans brand and service positioning, finding competitive advantage, audience segmentation, advertising and communications. She combines quant and qual skills and has worked in sectors ranging from top end luxury goods to fashion, FMCG, retail, healthcare and home wares.

Culture Watch combines inputs from three elements: a central syndicated quantitative survey; bespoke questions added by specific brand clients; and a supporting panel of experts offering bespoke advice and consultancy.

The service will address some of the UK's key cultural groups, including Polish, Chinese, Indian sub-continent and Latin-American, representing the tithe of the UK workforce made up of non-native British consumers. It will cover four main areas: Cultural Demographics - exploring the basic dynamics of the sample; Marketing Essentials - attitudes to brands and advertising; Sector Specifics - awareness and purchasing across key market sectors; and Media Consumption - including key media, mobile phones and Internet.

Says Wilson: 'There is a growing appreciation amongst marketers of the importance of culturally diverse groups but the obstacle to successfully reaching these audiences has been the lack of reliable market intelligence. The complexity of the audiences, lack of consumer and brand based information and highly fragmented and changing media options has put understanding cultural diversity into the 'too difficult' box for many brands. Culture Watch aims to provide a strategic and marketing-focused look at the UK landscape to give marketers the information they need to assess markets and understand their audiences.'

ICM Associate Director Gregor Jackson says the research is 'ambitious in its scope and to the best of ICM's knowledge has not been attempted before beyond specific large scale ad hoc surveys driven by public sector requirements.'

The full survey will launch in Q3 2011. To coincide with today's announcement, Culture Watch has alo released results from a pilot study conducted among the UK Polish community, which includes the findings that 68% of the sample claims that it is of 'no importance' that advertising or marketing messages take account of cultural background; and only 15% claim to look for brands that they are familiar with from their native culture.