Michael Adams offered a data-packed presentation this morning at Marketing‘s Multicultural Marketing Conference, painting a picture of Canada’s increasingly multi-ethnic makeup for marketers who still mostly ignore a consumer group growing by 250,000 immigrants each year.
“Multicultural diversity: we’re moving to a time now where we’re gaining traction, we’ve gone beyond clichés, it’s reality,” said Adams, founding president of the Environics group of research and communications consulting companies. He presented both proprietary research and census data to the approximately 200 attendees during his keynote address, “Our Multicultural Future: The new reality for Canadian business.”
A new reality indeed. One in five Canadians are foreign-born, he said, which is the highest proportion in the population since 1931. Asia has displaced Europe as the major source of Canada’s immigrants – less than 20% of Canadian immigrants are from Europe, and 60% originate from Asia.
Here’s a sample of the information Adams presented:
• Immigrants tend to move to the big cities, Adams said, however fewer recent immigrants have settled in the Toronto and Vancouver metropolitan areas. Adams said smaller cities like Halifax are trying to grow their multicultural population. “It’s happening all around the country… It’s an engine of growth.”
• A strong majority of Canadians (73%) reject the idea that immigrants “take away jobs from other Canadians.” In fact, most Canadians think immigrants help the economy, said Adams. However, many Canadians are concerned that immigrants are not “fitting in” quickly enough; two-thirds believe too many immigrants do not adopt Canadian values.
• Many Chinese and South Asian immigrants make sacrifices to live in Canada as they struggle with the cost of living in the early years of their residence. For instance, 20% postponed medical dental work citing that it was “not necessary.”
• Chinese Canadians as enthusiastic consumers of new products. More than half of Chinese Canadians (64%) said they often get pleasure from looking at advertising (compared to 45% of total Canadians). Also, 73% of Chinese Canadians and 76% of South Asians appreciate that Canadian companies are making an effort to connect with them.
The Multicultural Marketing Conference continues tomorrow in Montreal and on Friday in Vancouver.
