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Social scientists often speculate that both acculturation and socioeconomic status are factors that may explain differences in the body weight between Mexican Americans and whites and between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants, yet prior research has not explicitly theorized and tested the pathways that lead both of these upstream factors to contribute to ethnic/nativity disparities in weight. We make this contribution to the literature by developing a conceptual model drawing from Glass and McAtee’s (2006) risk regulation framework. We test this model by analyzing data from the 1999–2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Our conceptual model treats acculturation and socioeconomic status as risk regulators, or social factors that place individuals in positions where they are at risk for health risk behaviors that negatively influence health outcomes. We specifically argue that acculturation and low socioeconomic status contribute to less healthy diets, lower physical activity, and chronic stress, which then increases the risk of weight gain. We further contend that pathways from ethnicity/nativity and through acculturation and socioeconomic status likely explain disparities in weight gain between Mexican Americans and whites and between Mexican immigrants and whites. Study results largely support our conceptual model and have implications for thinking about solutions for reducing ethnic/nativity disparities in weight.

Previous research on global marketing has typically focussed on marketing strategies across national markets. Yet, the cross‐national mobility of individuals has increased heterogeneity within country markets. The purpose of this study is to examine how immigrant consumers perceive advertising appeals in the context of the consumer acculturation process. Specifically, our study focusses on the reactions of Mexican, American, and Mexican‐American consumers to puffery‐laden advertisements.

Using two‐factor theory as our theoretical prism, the study offers salient hypotheses regarding consumer perceptions of puffery‐laden advertising appeals, which are then tested in a cross‐national experiment in the USA and Mexico.

The results show that Mexican consumers are more susceptible to puffery‐laden claims than Americans. In contrast, American consumers are more susceptible to advertising that does not contain puffery‐laden claims than their Mexican counterparts. Interestingly, the findings also reveal that Mexican immigrants are highly susceptible to both, puffery‐laden and no puffery appeals. The mixed results show that recent Mexican immigrants struggle as they transition to the dominant American consumer culture. First and second generations of Mexican‐Americans, however, react to puffery‐laden advertisements just as typical American consumers.

The paper discusses relevant implications not only for the study of puffery and acculturation of immigrant minority groups, but also for companies engaged in global advertising campaigns in countries with diverse immigrant communities.

The paper offers a worthwhile and unique examination of consumer acculturation in an international cross‐cultural setting and puts forward interesting insights regarding the application of international advertising strategies.

The paper's aim is to explore how bicultural consumers differ from monocultural consumers, and among themselves, in terms of country‐of‐origin effect and ethnocentrism.

A multidisciplinary literature review pointed to a set of hypotheses regarding the differences between biculturals (Mexican Americans) and monoculturals (Mexicans and Americans), and between bicultural groups (integrating biculturals versus alternating biculturals). Two pilot tests and two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Bicultural Mexican Americans are less ethnocentric than either American or Mexican monoculturals; exhibit more favorable quality evaluation and purchase intention toward American brands than Mexican monoculturals; and exhibit more favorable quality evaluation and purchase intention toward Mexican brands than American monoculturals. Although ethnocentrism does not significantly demarcate alternating biculturals from their integrating counterparts, alternators are more likely than integrators to provide a favorable evaluation of foreign brands and entertain the intention to purchase them.

As a starting‐point for understanding the bicultural consumer, this study is subject to exploratory research limitations.

The country‐of‐origin literature implicitly assumes that consumers identify with either the country where the product is originated or the country where it is sold. This assumption, however, might not hold for ethnic groups who identify with both countries. Such bicultural consumers might identify with the product's origin country as well as target country and, therefore, be less amenable to the country‐of‐origin hypothesis. We address this important research gap.

This paper analyzes causes of the low self-employment rate among Mexican-Americans by studying self-employment entry and exits utilizing panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Our results indicate that differences in education and financial wealth are important factors in explaining differences in entrepreneurship across groups. Importantly, we analyze self-employment by recognizing heterogeneity in business ownership across industries and show that a classification of firms by human and financial capital intensiveness, or entry barriers, is effective in explaining differences in entrepreneurship across ethnic groups.

The South Texas University this study examined is a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) that has a 73.3% Hispanic (primarily Mexican American) population (Tallant, 2018 ). The logical consequence of education is the provision or guarantee of an equitable opportunity for all students to have equal access to learning and the achievement of academic success (Stewner-Manzanares, 1988 ). The basic definition of bilingual education in the United States is the use of two languages for instruction of the home language and English. Unfortunately, this basic principle is not accepted by postsecondary institutions as predispositions of university preparedness (Blanchard & Muller, 2014; García, Kleifgen, & Falchi, 2008; Kanno & Cromley, 2013; Lee et al., 2011; Menken, Hudson, & Leung, 2014). Mexican American students are potentially being left out of the opportunities afforded by the attainment of a postsecondary education because they are a language minority (Lucas, Henze, & Donato, 1990; Moll, 1990; Trueba, 2002; Trueba & Wright, 1981; Washington & Craig, 1998). Students are already examined for postsecondary credentials or college readiness, in the eighth grade (Paredes, 2013). Through this testing, 11 out of every 100 Hispanic children in the state of Texas are deemed as having attained postsecondary credentials (Paredes, 2013). As part of the fastest growing demographic group in Texas and the United States, the Mexican American population holds the lowest rate of graduation from postsecondary institutions and the highest high school dropout rate of any ethnic minority in the nation. In a 12-year study, Kanno and Cromley (2013) found that one out of eight English as a second language (ESL) or English language learners (ELLs) attain a bachelor’s degree from postsecondary institutions across the United States while the success rate for their English, monolingual counterparts is one out of three. Various researchers (García et al., 2008; García, Pujol-Ferran, & Reddy, 2012) argue that the inequity of education in the United States can be measured by how few minority students educated under the principles of education attend a postsecondary institution because it is the diploma from such institutions that leads to higher paying wages for the individual (García, 1991; García et al., 2008, García et al., 2012).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contributions of both successors and incumbent leaders to family firm continuity, using insights from the family business succession literature and cultural dimensions theory.

In a qualitative study, the succession practices of 19 Mexican-American family firms were examined.

The findings are encapsulated by seven propositions and a model of Mexican-American family firm generational contributions and constraints to family business continuity.

In-depth interviews with immigrant and second generation family firm leaders revealed both traditional family firm succession patterns and atypical succession patterns, including generational inversion and equals across generations.

Using microdata from the 2000 US Census, we analyze the responses of Mexican Americans to questions that independently elicit their “ethnicity” (or Hispanic origin) and their “ancestry.” We investigate whether different patterns of responses to these questions reflect varying degrees of ethnic attachment. For example, those identified as “Mexican” in both the Hispanic origin and the ancestry questions might have stronger ethnic ties than those identified as Mexican only in the ancestry question. How US-born Mexicans report their ethnicity/ancestry is strongly associated with measures of human capital and labor market performance. In particular, educational attainment, English proficiency, and earnings are especially high for men and women who claim a Mexican ancestry but report their ethnicity as “not Hispanic.” Further, intermarriage and the Mexican identification of children are also strongly related to how US-born Mexican adults report their ethnicity/ancestry, revealing a possible link between the intergenerational transmission of Mexican identification and economic status.