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Purpose – The purpose of this article is to investigate consumption discourses in contexts characterized by multiple cultures and intercultural contacts, as multicultural contacts and multiple migrations challenge existing consumer acculturation models based on a dualistic process of acculturation. This chapter explores empirically the character of cultural reflexivity and its expression in consumers’ discourses. Given that nostalgia is one prominent dimension of the migration conceptualization, we seek to understand how the role of nostalgia changes in contexts where consumers are decreasingly territorially embedded agents.

Methodology – The study rests on in-depth analysis of migrant narratives from two research phases. While the first phase encompasses in-depth interviews, the second one combines interviews and observations to provide a depiction of intercultural contact within the micro cosmos of a multicultural apartment.

Findings – The findings of this chapter illustrate how migrants develop different nostalgic discourses, to either (re-)appropriate the Expatriate as defined by James (1999), or to appropriate global consumptionscapes through nostalgia for the routine.

Research implications – On the basis of these findings, the article discusses cultural reflexivity in terms of naturalization and cultivation narratives (Wilk, 1999), proposing shifts between reflexive and routinized consumption practices as basis for consumers’ cultural reflexivity.

Originality/value of chapter – The contribution of this chapter is firstly a contextualized and empirically grounded definition of cultural reflexivity. Secondly, it demonstrates that migrants’ consumption discourses revolve more around disruptions of routines than around acculturation processes. Thirdly, the chapter illustrates the use of nostalgia for emotional valorization of cultures beyond classical home cultural authenticity discourses.

The purpose of this paper is to comment on the conceptual framework highlighting the reinforcing nature of global consumer culture.

The approach is conceptual with illustrative examples.

The authors integrate the conceptual framework that highlights the reinforcing nature of global consumer culture with recent findings about the psychology of globalization. Specifically, the authors bring attention to the perceptual, cognitive and motivational consequences of globalization, as well as its effects on consumer identification. The authors illustrate how this integration provides insights for better predicting consumer behavior in a globalized world.

One key aspect of globalization is the creation of multicultural spaces in contemporary societies. Taking a psychological approach, the authors discuss how consumers respond to the process of culture mixing at the heart of globalization. This has consequences for marketers’ global endeavors and provides a nuanced understanding of consumer behavior in a globalized world.

The paper integrates a novel framework with recent findings about the psychology of globalization, opening avenues for future research on global consumer cultures.

As the popularity of Islamic banking and financial instruments continues to rise globally, a recurring empirical question is what specifically makes consumers choose Islamic banking. This paper aims to investigate the determinants of bank type selection, especially in culturally diverse settings where the Islamic banking sector is well-established. It further examines whether consumers’ gender/religion influences their choices. One intuitive prediction is that Muslim consumers opt for Islamic banking products as “ethical” because of conviction-related reasons. However, the reality is not necessarily straightforward.

This paper uses structural equation modeling to examine data collected from a survey questionnaire of 790 respondents in an emerging market setting. Further analysis is made based on gender and religion to remove related bias.

Results suggest that overall consumer awareness significantly affects the selection of Islamic banking products. The positive effect of awareness is more significant for Muslim consumers relative to non-Muslims. Interestingly, social stimuli and bank attributes have an insignificant effect on the banking choices of both Muslims and non-Muslims.

Results suggest that Islamic banks’ marketing managers should adopt differentiated strategies for men and women, focusing on the core benefits of the service or personal interactions with consumers, respectively, along with a focus on different aspects of personal service for each gender. Awareness should be enhanced by adopting informative and effective marketing strategies to attract and retain consumers in the competitive bank environment. Islamic banks (IB) should pay attention to the religious effect without considering it as the sole variable motivating potential customers. They should design segmented and customized marketing strategies based on gender-religion market segmentation to suit different groups’ needs.

The findings fill a gap in the literature and provide Islamic bankers with insights to help design and articulate their business strategies to appeal to consumers in a multicultural context. Examining an integral part of gender and religion mitigates biased estimates due to the omission of variables. The study contributes to the existing literature on customer preferences for IB with a relatively large, new data set.

Marketing as a concept pays a great deal of attention to the individual market transactions, ignoring the impact of marketing practices on society at a macro level. The paper argues that, in a multicultural marketplace, marketers and consumers of different ethnic backgrounds co‐exist, interact and adapt to each other. In doing so, consumers act as skilled navigators who frequently engage in culture swapping to sample the many tastes, themes and sounds of different cultures. Marketing facilitates this culture swapping and contributes towards tolerance and acceptance of lifestyle among consumers. However, traditional racial or ethnic segmentation could become problematic due to the fact that consumers no longer conform either individually or as a group to any one specific segment or category. The paper is based on an ethnographic study of ethnic minority and mainstream consumers in the UK.

This study examines the impact of situational and stable animosities on quality evaluation and purchase intention while also testing the moderating effects of within- and cross-country cultural distance. It focuses on the case of the US THAAD missile defense system deployment in South Korea (hereafter, Korea) and investigates how the resulting Chinese consumers' animosity affects their quality evaluation of, and purchase intention toward, Korean cosmetics.

This study utilizes a quantitative approach based on a survey and structural equation modeling. The sample comprises 376 Chinese consumers from 19 Chinese regions.

The results indicate that both stable and situational animosities are negatively associated with purchase intention toward Korean cosmetics. However, their effects on quality evaluation are different. While stable animosity is negatively related to product quality evaluation, situational animosity has no such negative association. Finally, the cultural distance between Chinese regions and Korea strengthens the negative relationship between stable and situational animosities and purchase intention.

The study contributes by better unraveling the effects of stable and situational animosities on perceived product quality. The empirical context is unique because it allows the authors to investigate the relationship between Chinese antagonism toward the THAAD deployment in Korea and Chinese consumers' stable and situational animosities in terms of their quality evaluation of, and purchase intention toward, imported Korean cosmetics. Hence, this study contributes to the literature on consumer animosity by empirically testing the moderating effect of within- and cross-country cultural distance on the relationship between stable and situational animosities and purchase intention.

The study has relevant practical implications, notably for Korean exporters' marketing management and within- and cross-cultural management. The results suggest that countermeasures are needed because Chinese consumers' stable and situational animosities are negatively related to their purchase intention toward Korean cosmetics. Moreover, the findings provide the insight that when foreign firms export culture-sensitive products to a large, multicultural country, their managers should pay attention to within- and cross-cultural differences simultaneously.

Previous studies have shown that the effects of animosity on product evaluation and purchase intention differ depending on the animosity dimension, product type, country and the situation causing animosity, among others. However, the existing literature on animosity has neglected the reality that within-cultural differences in a single large emerging market are relevant to explaining the concept of animosity and its effect on the purchase intention toward culture-sensitive products. Furthermore, none of the animosity studies have touched on the important moderating role of within- and cross-cultural differences between a large and multicultural importing country and a brand's home country in this manner. Therefore, the study fills this gap by empirically examining whether different moderating effects of stable and situational animosities exist for a specific conflict situation caused by a military issue and investigates the causes of these different effects.

In a globalized world, consumers embrace mutually conflicting cultural values rather than making exclusive, either/or choices. As a result, they experience multiple tensions, a phenomenon that can be identified as the consumer cultural paradox. Despite clear interest in the influence of local/global culture on consumers, knowledge of how conflicting cultural elements shape consumer behavior remains limited. To address these issues, the current article seeks to identify higher- and lower-level tensions inherent in the consumer cultural paradox.

Using in-depth interviews, the authors investigate tensions experienced by Chinese consumers of international private education services. This study applies a paradox lens, a tension-based conceptual approach that is well suited for studying consumer paradoxes.

Ten lower-level tensions of the consumer cultural paradox arise in the focal international service context; these tensions in turn form three higher-level tensions.

The study is among the first in marketing to use a paradox lens and empirical research to delineate multiple dimensions of the consumer cultural paradox, then categorize them into lower and higher-level tensions. The findings offer theoretical and managerial implications, in that recognizing the multiple tensions experienced by consumers allows scholars and marketers to gain a better understanding of how consumers perceive and evaluate services from different cultures.

This paper investigates the factors and how they lead to meat choice decisions based on preferred slaughter practices. The literature has established the role of psychological factors and morality perception in meat choice decisions. However, it explores how consumers' behavioural intention is impacted towards alternative meat when consumer guilt is activated in different cultural settings.

This study included in-depth interviews with consumers from India's emerging market due to its multicultural dimension and diverse religious beliefs about meat consumption. The authors conducted 17 interviews to explore antecedents towards non-halal meat choices.

Utilizing the Theory of planned behaviour (TPB), this paper explores research gaps related to meat consumption preferences based on preferred slaughter practices in an emerging market context. The findings uncover and add to understanding meat preferences in varied cultural contexts that affect consumer choices. The authors advance the current understanding of TPB from the perspective of behavioural intention toward non-halal meat.

The study's findings have significant implications for all the organizations/outlets dealing with non-vegetarian food products, whether packaged or fresh and for meat sellers.

The study is unique in identifying the meat choice preferences based on slaughter practice through the extended prism of TPB. The market chosen for this study is one of the biggest consumer markets and its growing continuously.

Due to globalization and latest immigration patterns, ethnic subgroups are emerging in almost all the advanced countries resulting in significant increase in ethnic food consumption; to which many issues are attached which are not adequately addressed in marketing literature. Recently, marketing researchers have started paying attention to different perspectives of ethnic consumption in intra-national contexts. Halal is one of such fastest growing ethnic food in western societies. The purpose of this paper is to quantitatively study Halal food consumption in majority ethnic groups in relation to possible resistances and acculturation in multicultural society of UK.

The questionnaire survey was used to collect data.

The model was developed by using structural equation modeling (SEM) which shows that both consumer animosity and consumer racism negatively affect willingness to buy Halal food by majority ethnic groups whereas ongoing acculturation moderates these relationships.

The main limitation of this study is use of a combination of convenience sampling and snowball sampling.

The findings can guide ethnic researchers and food marketers to devise prudent marketing strategies to deal with ethnic food consumption issues.

This study will bridge a gap in ensuring intercultural harmony by dealing with a market reality.

This work has a potential to instigate future research in much needed area of changing food consumption behavior in multicultural societies and its implications.

This paper seeks to analyze the buying behavior of internet users in two European countries with different cultural backgrounds, Spain and The Netherlands, assessing the influence of online experience factors on the choice of an internet vendor. It also aims to identify and compare the influence of personal and behavioral characteristics on the e‐vendor choice.

The study simulated a realistic virtual shopping activity in the computer laboratory; participants had to complete an online shopping assignment and an online questionnaire.

The findings indicate that the basic traits of the online consumer behavior of internet users in the two countries are quite similar. Most of the disparities observed are attributed to different levels of experience with the internet as a commercial channel.

The outcome could suggest the emergence of a global virtual village, an issue worthy of further research but also of particular importance for global web vendors and website designers. The basic limitation of the study is that it is conducted in only two European countries and refers only to online purchasing of a standardized tangible consumer product.

The findings of the study can be translated to web design guidelines useful to online organizations operating in different cultural or ethnic environments.

The paper presents one of the first studies comparing the influence of online experience factors in two culturally different countries.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal and understand the consumption of functional food model for Malay Muslim consumers in Malaysia. The paper presents a new framework to understand how the majority of Malay Muslim consumers living in multicultural societies make their functional food choices in the modern world.

The data were collected through a self‐administrated questionnaire survey that was distributed using convenience sampling. The items for the questionnaire were identified from a preliminary model derived from the qualitative analysis input using ethnoconsumerist and grounded theory methodologies. Structural equation modelling was used to develop the consumption of functional food model for Malay Muslims in Malaysia.

These findings have practical implications for public policymakers (e.g. government and consumer educators), industrial food practitioners, market researchers and manufacturers who produce, sell or market functional foods in Malaysia.

This research is specific to functional food consumption and Malay Muslim consumers. Thus, the results in this study may not be applicable to cultures in general.

In terms of originality, the empirical findings of this study represent a contribution to the literature in the area of food marketing in developing multicultural countries, because the model is developed in a cross‐cultural context. The model is specific to the Malay Muslim population.