Looking to sell more electronics to the burgeoning Hispanic population in the U.S., Circuit City also announced steps to make shopping easier for Spanish-speaking buyers:

• It placed bilingual signs in stores in areas with large hispanohablante populations, a practice already common at large retailers like Home Depot and Sears.
• It hired bilingual sales staff for those stores and placed Spanish-speaking representatives at its call center.
• But Circuit City fell down on the web -- its website is English only. This flaw prevents Spanish-speaking buyers from checking out products or taking advantage of the store's 24-hour order online, pick up in the store guarantee.

We'd be curious to see whether bilingual signs and sales staff actually drive more traffic. Retailers wanting to cash in on any market with a recognizable linguistic minority must learn more about their customers -- and they need a feedback loop to determine the return on the investment. This follow-up research would help Circuit City determine if Latino buying preferences differ from the general population and how to best deliver on this multicultural marketing opportunity.