TransCity

In the United Kingdom, Starfish has recently conducted a research on media consumption habits of ethnic minorities across both mainstream and ethnic media as well as the brand preferences and consumer behaviour of ethnic minorities across a range of product categories.

Based on interviews with 1,661 respondents representing eight distinctive ethnic communities, Starfish finds that 53% of all those who watch TV daily, watch ethnic TV channels while 44% of all those who listen to radio daily, listen to ethnic radio stations.

According to the research ethnic minorities are three times more likely than the population as a whole to own a BMW and twice as likely to own a Mercedes Benz. Furthermore, 60% of these BMW’s and 66% of Mercedes Benz’s were bought as brand new cars. Ethnic minority consumers are keen purchasers of hi-tech products with their ownership of laptops, digital stills cameras and iPods/MP3 players being above the national average, making them an important consumer group for manufacturers and retailers of hi-tech goods.

There are high levels of mobile phone ownership, and mobile network provider T-mobile performs particularly well amongst ethnic minority consumers as a whole, whilst Orange and Vodafone also perform strongly amongst certain ethnic groups.