Migrant consumers in focus

With about three million Turkish-speaking residents living in Germany, tailor-made marketing for this large community should offer great business opportunities. At least that's what German private media company Pro7Sat1maintained in a Tuesday interview for the business daily "Handelsblatt."

The group's Katja Hofem confirmed her company was currently investigating the chances of starting a Turkish-language channel as a platform for what's come to be called ethno-marketing.

"The non-German-language market seems to be full of enormous opportunities," Hofem commented.

Missed opportunities

Studies have shown that residents with Turkish roots living in Germany spend twice as much time in front of the TV than ethnic Germans. But in 80 percent of all cases they watch Turkish-language channels coming directly from Turkey via satellite.

What's also interesting for a media company hoping to make money by placing advertisement in between shows, films and serials is that people with a Turkish background have been found to be showing much more brand awareness than their ethnic German co-citizens.

The German media are rather late in trying to tap into the economic potential of making special offers to residents with a migrant background.

Others have been quicker to react to the steadily growing number of migrants now counting about 16 million people. Knowing that every fifth Turkish-speaking resident in Germany drives a Mercedes, Daimler recruited many Turkish migrants to work in its showrooms and boost sales that way.

The Targobank lender also employs many people with Turkish roots and has offered free transactions to Turkey to lure more clients.

hg/dr (Reuters, dpa)