Crafting the Customer Experience For People Not Like You: How to Delight and Engage the Customers Your Competitors Don't Understand

ASIANS AND ASIAN AMERICANS

From a marketing perspective, the strength of the Asian population is pretty irrefutable. It’s the largest population in the world, numbering nearly 8 billion as of this writing. In the United States and Canada, Asian Americans have the highest household income of any race or ethnicity. So whether you’re trying to sell shoes in China or home mortgages in Canada, learning about the Asian market is certainly worth your time.

So what is the definition of Asian? It varies from country to country, but the most common definition is a person who descends from East Asia, South Asia, or Southeast Asia. Here are some (but not all) of the groups that are considered Asian:

Chinese	Palestinian
Indian	Laotian
Filipino	Taiwanese
Pakistani	Indonesian
Korean	Malaysian
Vietnamese	Thai
Lebanese	Jordanian
Iranian	Burmese
Sri Lankan	Tibetan
Japanese	Sakha
Afghani	Mongolian
Syrian	Nepali
Iraqi	Saudi
Cambodian	Yemeni
Bangladeshi	Singaporean

The U.S. Asian Population

Current estimates indicate that about 5 percent of the U.S. population reports themselves as having either full or partial Asian heritage (approximately 15 million people). The largest ethnic subgroups are Chinese, Filipinos, Indians, Vietnamese, Koreans, and Japanese. Other sizable groups are Cambodian/Khmer, Pakistanis, Laotians, Hmong, and Thais.

Geographically, the top places in the United States for marketing to Asians are California and New York, because there are large concentrations ...