Corina Matiesanu

I’ve been busy preparing for the launch of a new Technographics syndicated service, expanding our consumer data coverage into Latin America. Forrester’s Consumer Technographics service already interviews nearly 300,000 consumers in North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific about their behaviors and attitudes related to technology.

Why are we adding Latin America? We’ve been receiving client requests for consumer data in this region for several years, given its fast pace of economic development and “emerging economy” status.  Here are some of the factors we took into account:

Size of markets. About 9% of the world’s population resides in Latin America and Caribbean countries, and about 11% of the world’s Internet users reside in this region. With more than 73 million online users, Brazil is the 4th largest online population after the US, China, and Japan.

Unique technology adoption patterns. Cell phone penetration rates are higher than the adoption rates of other new technologies (such as the Internet), or older technologies (such as landline phones). About 30% of individuals are online now, and this is expected to grow to 39% by 2013, according to the Forrester Research World Internet Population Model, 4/09 (Click here for a report summarizing the findings of the Global Online Population Forecast, 2008 to 2013). Those rates are approximately half of those in North America or Western Europe, but on par with emerging markets in Eastern Europe and higher than emerging Asia Pacific markets like China or India. Public information sources estimate that mobile phone penetration is around 60% of the population in the region in 2009, and landline phone penetration rates are around 20%.

Cultural differences between countries, regions, and even cities. Central and South American countries share as many similarities as they do particularities when it comes to how they regard technology. Differences are expected to be found between cities in the same country, especially in large countries like Brazil. One of the more interesting trends we’re excited to explore is the cultural affinities between consumers in Mexico and US Hispanics, another population covered in Technographics. 

Our new service will focus on the top 10-15 urban markets of Mexico and Brazil for starters. In our offline face to face survey we’ll cover topics like the adoption of various technologies, media usage, attitudes towards advertising, and shopping behaviors. In the following online survey we’ll delve deeper into online behaviors and attitudes, social and digital media, security and privacy issues. The first round of data will be available in early December 2009.

Please let us know about trends or topics you’d like to see covered!