Multilingual Malls : ‘Pinata-With-Purchase’ Typifies Retailers’ New Cultural Literacy

Women wearing loose, flowing djellabahs . Welcome signs in Spanish, Chinese and Korean. Mariachi Muzak.

It’s just another day in a typical Los Angeles mall.

As Southern California’s cultural demographics shift, shopkeepers are learning to cater to a new clientele, hoping to attract local residents as well as cash-rich international tourists.

“Cultural literacy” is the buzz phrase used in the retail world to refer to an understanding of foreign customs and shopping habits.

In recent years, for example, retailers have noted that tourists and transplants from Latin American countries prefer vivid colors and lightweight fabrics. Japanese tourists are made uncomfortable by salespeople standing too close. And non-English-speaking customers are often sensitive to laughter, because they fear it is directed at them.

A culturally literate salesperson must be able to estimate the shoe size of a Middle Eastern woman who, out of modesty, won’t uncover her feet to try on shoes in the store.

Retailers around Southern California are making an art of accommodating such special needs. At the Montebello Town Center, a mall that draws middle-income shoppers, May Co. executives say their customer base is 67% Latino and 23% Asian. As a result, they gave their high-end, Tokyo-based Shiseido cosmetic line the kind of floor space usually reserved for an American staple, such as Estee Lauder. And at surrounding counters, they stocked lots of bright cosmetic colors to appeal to Latino women.

Customers responded enthusiastically, and the store now has the highest cosmetic sales of all 37 May Co. branches. Shiseido is the best-selling brand.

Shiseido executives say this May Co. branch is among their top 10 performers nationwide--out of a total of about 700.

Other large chains are also responding to demographics. Bullock’s is researching the needs of the Latino market and the efficacy of bilingual advertising.

At the Glendale Galleria, situated near a large Armenian-American community, the JC Penney store runs bilingual ads in a local Armenian-language magazine. Store manager Jack Robison has encouraged the entire mall to advertise in the same venue because of the size of that population in Glendale.

The Montebello Town Center targets recent immigrants with newspaper ads in Spanish and Chinese and prints mall directories in three languages. Deborah Blackford, the mall’s marketing director, replaces Muzak with Chinese pop vocals or mariachi music on holidays and runs promotions such as the highly popular pinata-with-purchase.

“It’s more advantageous to have a gift-with-purchase around Cinco de Mayo than Mother’s Day,” she advises merchants.

Rodeo Drive retailers have long been sensitive to the area’s shifting multicultural customer base because of the street’s appeal to affluent foreign tourists.

Over the years, the nationalities of Rodeo shoppers have changed.

“There used to be many more Saudi and Mexican customers. We very seldom see them now,” says Marguerite Schaefer, who has been a salesperson at Fred Hayman Beverly Hills for 21 years.

“We’ve been seeing more Japanese customers. They like high-quality leather goods and investment clothes, like cashmere blazers.”

Schaefer says the techniques for selling to the Japanese are subtle but important. Customers are greeted in English, and if necessary, a Japanese-speaking salesperson is called over to assist.

“What we try not to do is to send a Japanese salesperson to an Oriental person right away. Some would be offended because they speak English,” she explains. “We take a low-key approach and give them time. They know what they want.”

To help the Beverly Center’s retailers with the growing number of international tourists, marketing director Cheryl Chung established a language bank, which currently lists 42 languages, from Arabic to Zulu, spoken by the center’s employees. By referring to the list, stores can call on their neighbors for help in communicating with a customer.

Some stores also display signs listing languages spoken by their own employees.

At Laise Adzer, a Moroccan-themed clothing shop in the Beverly Center, salesperson Dudzile Mkhize is a typical multilingual employee. Born in Durban and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, Mkhize speaks a range of languages and dialects: Soto, Zulu, Xhosa, Dutch, Afrikaans and English.

Recently, the upscale shopping center asked Michael Nicklin, president of Nicklin Group Retail Services, to present a seminar on cultural literacy. Nicklin told employees how to deal with unusual situations, such as what to do when a foreign customer doesn’t understand the concept of sales tax or tries to negotiate the price of a necktie.

American standards, such as the degree of privacy in a dressing room, might seem odd to some foreign shoppers, Nicklin says.

“In one case, a customer wandered around the store topless as she tried on blouses. Nudity was acceptable in her country.”

The most common mistake when talking to foreigners, he says, is raising one’s voice. “They’re not hard of hearing, they just can’t understand you. Speak slowly and clearly in a normal tone of voice.”