From ethnic market niche to a post-ethnic marketplace: A national profile of Latino-owned business market orientation

Recent rapid increases in the number of Latino-owned businesses (LOBs) in the United States far outpace the growth in the number of businesses generally. In many ways, the growth and success of LOBs are very important to a healthy business, economic, and entrepreneurial ecosystem nationally. Yet there are few national studies of Latino-owned businesses, their characteristics, or their market orientation. Utilizing a national random sample of 4024 LOBs undertaken by the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative (SLEI) in 2018, LOBs are classified by market orientation. The classification segments LOBs along their primary product (ethnic and non-ethnic) and client dimensions (ethnic and non-ethnic) resulting in a two-by-two market orientation typology of four product/client classes and sizes: (1) ethnic market niche (25.9%), (2) ethnic market experience (4.3%), (3) ethnic-friendly marketplace (27.2%), and (4) post-ethnic marketplace (42.6%). Group classification is further examined and estimated through a multinomial logistic regression.