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Appreciating vs venerating cultural outgroups: The psychology of cosmopolitanism and xenocentrism

Mark Cleveland (DAN Department of Management and Organizational Studies, The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada)
Anjana Balakrishnan (Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada)

International Marketing Review

ISSN: 0265-1335

Article publication date: 6 December 2018

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Abstract

Purpose

Cosmopolitanism and xenocentrism denote distinct individual orientations toward cultural outgroups. The former considers an individual’s openness to cultural diversity and ability to navigate through intercultural environments, whereas the latter describes an individual’s feelings of admiration or preference for specific cultural outgroup(s), over his/her ingroup. Few studies have simultaneously examined these constructs and fewer still have considered these within a nomological framework of key predictors (i.e. basic psychological needs) and practical outcomes (e.g. influentialness and friendships across different groups). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors hypothesized a series of relationships of various antecedents and outcomes of cosmopolitanism and xenocentrism, and tested these conjectures using survey data from Canadians (n=238) and Americans (n=239).

Findings

The findings support the psychometric robustness of our tripartite operationalization of xenocentrism, and clearly distinguish this construct from cosmopolitanism. Beyond confirming earlier findings, the authors illuminate several novel relationships (e.g. between basic psychological needs, cosmopolitanism and xenocentrism), and elucidate the role played by a key personality dimension, neuroticism, in mediating the relationships between basic psychological needs and the two outgroup orientations.

Research limitations/implications

Samples of this study are drawn from North America and a cross-sectional research design is used.

Originality/value

Whereas for xenocentric consumers admiration of one or more foreign culture(s) displaces customary preferences for one’s own cultural group, cosmopolitan consumers are able to embrace outside cultures without disaffection from their sociocultural ingroup. Given the obvious repercussions of these differences for targeting international consumer segments and for positioning brands across borders, our research has numerous practical applications as well as theoretical implications.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the IMR Editor-in-Chief, the Special Section Guest Editors, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for their cogent feedback, which was very helpful in improving our research. The authors are grateful for the financial support provided by the Dancap Private Equity Research Grant and the Samuel Clark Research Fund Grant. An earlier version of this work was submitted to the 2018 Global Marketing Conference at Tokyo (TRACK: Cross-Cultural Consumers and Globalization).

Citation

Cleveland, M. and Balakrishnan, A. (2019), "Appreciating vs venerating cultural outgroups: The psychology of cosmopolitanism and xenocentrism", International Marketing Review, Vol. 36 No. 3, pp. 416-444. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMR-09-2018-0260

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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