The report comes from the Tesco Asian Network, which is a group inside Tesco that aims to help Tesco's British Asian employees develop their careers within the company and attract more people of British Asian ethnicity to join the business.
Some British Asian students surveyed said they would put their family's wishes ahead of their own (3%), the same number would follow their parents' suggestions and 18% would let their family's views strongly affect their decision.
Less than a third (32%) of British Asian graduates said their families had had no influence on their choice of career at all - compared with almost half (47%) of the white British control group.
Faisal Sheikh, a programme manager at Tesco.com and spokesman for the Tesco Asian Network. said: "With families having such a significant influence on Asian graduates' career choice, Tesco realises the importance of getting this message out to them. As a result, the Asian Network is working on a number of promotional activities in 2009 aimed not only at graduates, but at their parents as well.
"We're developing a careers brochure for graduate jobs aimed at parents and grandparents. Members of the Asian Network will attend graduate careers fairs to talk to parents as well as students."
When Tesco asked British Asian parents and grandparents what careers they would prefer their children to go into, most popular were traditional careers such as medicine (24%), law (19%) and accountancy (14%). Retail did not feature in their thinking.
There are approximately 23,500 British Asians working for Tesco in the UK, out of a total of 286,392 employees. This equates to 8.2% of the workforce.
