Potential advertisers also must consider the relative youth of the Hispanic population. The median age is 24 in Utah, and more than 50 percent of Hispanics in the state are between 18 and 34, he said. Youngsters flock to some of the events he organizes.

"So it's a lot of population. In five years, those kids are going to be either graduated from high school and going to a university, and if they're not going to a university, what are they going to be doing? Working and earning their wages, being part of the work force," he said.

"So if you want to have those dollars, you'd better start advertising right now to those kids so they know who you are, they know the name of your company, they know what you sell, they know your product, they know your culture. Start advertising right now to those kids."

Armando Solorzano, assistant professor of family and consumer behavior and ethnic studies at the University of Utah, described several characteristics of Hispanic spending, as well as the misperceptions associated with them.

For instance, Hispanics tend to eat more food at home than at restaurants, in part because of the high cost of feeding a large family at a restaurant, but mostly because eating at home is seen as a way to share culture through relationships. Food has a meaning, he said. And Hispanics like to spend money on furniture, not to compensate for frustration or to show people they are successful but simply because they want visitors to be comfortable, he said.

Solorzano cautioned that advertisers should be careful not to lump Hispanics into a single category. Because their backgrounds are in different countries, Hispanics have different cultures, different nutritional habits and different names for the same thing.

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com