Direct selling helped nearly 5.6 million people in Latin America, particularly women, earn a salary during 2006. Women represent more than 80% of direct salespeople in the region. Working in this industry provides women the opportunity to earn money while adapting their working hours around the time dedicated to their families.

Although the region’s sales represent nearly half of the indisputable world-wide leader—USA, with US$31 billion retail sales for 2006—industry sales in Latin America are strongly growing, with 18% rise in retail sales to a record US$13 billion in 2006.

Many years are still to come before public hospitals in Mexico and the rest of Latin America implement a daily rate of change of latex catheters and urine collection bags.

The adoption of silicone catheters is also not expected in the medium term, at least while silicone continues to cost 300% more than latex; however, strict change and removal protocols followed by these institutions have achieved a considerable reduction of urinary infections.

By leveraging its size and scale, Wal-Mart will be able to do in financial services what it does with retail items: undercut competitor pricing. The consensus is that Wal-Mart can easily afford to invest the time and money to educate the larger unbanked Latino community and can operate at a loss until the product is known and respected within the community. Big banks are well aware that the Latino community is quickly moving into the middle class within a generation of immigrating.

Developing a profitable go-to-market strategy in Latin America is no easy task given the multitude of consumer sales channels at work. In urban areas, the arrival of modern retailers in the form of global supermarket, hypermarket and club stores has shaken up traditional channels made up of owner-operated independent retailers built upon inefficient layers of intermediaries.

However, marketers would be mistaken to abandon independent and informal channels of retail that still represent more than three-quarters of Latin American retail for fast moving consumer goods. Instead, successful marketers must master multiple channels, even at the risk of cannibalizing their own sales in a single channel.