The New Mainstream: How the Multicultural Consumer Is Transforming American Business [Paperback]

Guy Garcia (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 18, 2005

An economic revolution is transforming America: the New Mainstream. In this groundbreaking book, Guy Garcia explains how Americans will eat, work, play, learn, and spend money in the twenty-first century -- and why any organization that ignores the lessons of the New Mainstream is doomed to fail.

Led by the growing statistical and buying power of blacks, Latinos, and Asians, the New Mainstream is a loose coalition of minorities who have been forced to forge their own identity in American culture -- even as they use and consume goods and services targeted to the general public. This shift in consumer buying power is not only transforming how products are developed, marketed, and bought, it also illustrates that diversity is the driving force of American capitalism. As Garcia shows, The New Mainstream is both a wake-up call and a road map to this new economic reality.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Garcia marshals experience as a journalist (13 years at Time), novelist (Obsidian Sky) and multimedia entrepreneur to make "the business case for diversity": "Simply put, diversity breeds money." Those who fail to heed "the multicultural gospel" risk marginalization by the New Mainstream, a dynamic fusion of the "creative class," non-European immigrants and native-born American consumers with rapidly changing tastes and habits. At times, Garcia risks reducing culture to market forces and people to consumers ("for the new multicultural consumer, making and spending money is nothing less than a sacred, life-affirming act"). However, he works enough skepticism and detail into his argument to avoid flattening himself with it, mobilizing an impressively broad knowledge of cultures—popular, folk and high—and a lively sense of history. He warns that "ethnocentric nativism" and xenophobic policies, whether fueled by economic, cultural or terror-driven fears, can only damage the American corporation and nation. Garcia is at his best juggling a diverse range of examples of U.S. multiculturalism—Walt Whitman, 50 Cent, Octavio Paz, Shakira and Craig's List, to name a few—to make the argument that diversity is, more than ever, the dynamo driving American capitalism, and businesses had best take heed.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Guy Garcia is an award-winning journalist, novelist, and multimedia entrepreneur and a former staff writer at Time magazine. He is the founder and CEO of MentaMetrix, Inc., a multicultural research and marketing firm based in New York City. He is the author of the nonfiction book The New Mainstream and two novels, Skin Deep and Obsidian Sky.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness (October 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060584661
• ISBN-13: 978-0060584665
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #572,610 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A cultural and demographic shift is occurring in America - this book will help you seize the rising opportunity, May 4, 2009

By 

Rebecca Clement "Publisher, Soundview Executi... (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Mainstream: How the Multicultural Consumer Is Transforming American Business (Paperback)

America has long been a nation of immigration, but the "old" mainstream immigration was primarily from Europe. In his new book titled - "The New Mainstream" - journalist and author Guy Garcia discusses the political, economic and social implications of the current changing face of America. Today, there are more than 80 million Asian, Hispanic and African Americans that comprise a quarter of the nation's population, and as consumers they spend more than $1.2 trillion a year on aggregate. It's estimated that within four decades, America's non-Anglo population will be near 50 percent of the total. These stats suggest a cultural shift that's now underway, which impacts every business, government agency and organization within this country. Soundview recommends this book for any group that heeds its clarion call of opportunity to meet the needs that will occur with the demographic move that's currently occurring and will continue for the foreseeable future.