Search results

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.

Extant research addressing how consumers respond to electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) remains limited. Even less attention has been devoted to examining the trustworthiness of consumer reviewers with different ethnic backgrounds. The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of reviewer ethnicity, review valence and social distance (to three different ethnic groups) on perceived reviewer trustworthiness, brand attitude and purchase intention toward a product evaluated by reviewers of three ethnic backgrounds.

The study adopted a 2 (review valence)×3 (reviewer ethnicity) design; 398 participants were randomly assigned to one of the six conditions. A mock product-review web page for each study condition was created to manipulate review valence and reviewer ethnicity.

Results show that while review valence, reviewer ethnicity and social distance each had a significant effect on perceived reviewer trustworthiness, only review valence had an influence on brand attitude and purchase intention. The interaction between reviewer ethnicity and review valence also had a significant effect on perceived reviewer trustworthiness, brand attitude and purchase intention.

The current study is the first to apply social distance theory to explain cross-cultural perception of trust, as it extends and updates the original social distance scale to broaden its empirical relevance to contemporary society via an eWOM marketing context. As social distance is a fluid and timely concept to study the diverse ethnic cultural environment, the current findings carry strong implications to future research in a wide variety of digital communication and marketing contexts, among others.

While it is essential to further research the growing diversity in western metropolitan cities, little is currently known about how the members of various ethnic communities acculturate to multicultural societies. The purpose of this paper is to explore immigrants’ cosmopolitanism and acculturation strategies through an analysis of the food consumption behaviour of ethnic consumers in multicultural London.

The study was set within the socio-cultural context of London. A number of qualitative methods such as in-depth interviews, observation and photographs were used to assess consumers’ acculturation strategies in a multicultural environment and how that is influenced by consumer cosmopolitanism.

Ethnic consumers’ food consumption behaviour reflects their acculturation strategies, which can be classified into four groups: rebellion, rarefaction, resonance and refrainment. This classification demonstrates ethnic consumers’ multi-directional acculturation strategies, which are also determined by their level of cosmopolitanism.

The taxonomy presented in this paper advances current acculturation scholarship by suggesting a multi-directional model for acculturation strategies as opposed to the existing uni-directional and bi-directional perspectives and explicates the role of consumer cosmopolitanism in consumer acculturation. The paper did not engage host communities and there is hence a need for future research on how and to what extent host communities are acculturated to the multicultural environment.

The findings have direct implications for the choice of standardisation vs adaptation as a marketing strategy within multicultural cities. Whilst the rebellion group are more likely to respond to standardisation, increasing adaptation of goods and service can ideally target members of the resistance and resonance groups and more fusion products should be exclusively earmarked for the resonance group.

The paper makes original contribution by introducing a multi-directional perspective to acculturation by delineating four-group taxonomy (rebellion, rarefaction, resonance and refrainment). This paper also presents a dynamic model that captures how consumer cosmopolitanism impinges upon the process and outcome of multi-directional acculturation strategies.

Cross-cultural influences are important considerations in the international marketing of luxury brands. These influences have predominantly been understood through cross-national approaches and the lens of glocalisation. The purpose of this paper is to study augments these paradigms by advancing the view of luxury brand markets as confluences of multiple cultural beliefs.

A hermeneutic analysis of 24 in-depth interviews was conducted with luxury brand consumers in New Zealand.

The findings describe two cultural beliefs that convey divergent meanings and shape luxury brand consumption styles in a multicultural marketplace. More specifically, the authors illustrate that consumers can be influenced by and shift between both local and foreign cultural beliefs in a single national market.

The study offers a situated account of the New Zealand luxury market. Other cultural beliefs may be in operation in different national markets.

This paper makes three contributions to the international marketing of and cross-cultural considerations for luxury brands. First, the authors illustrate that cultural diversity must be considered not only at the cross-national level, but also at the intra-national level. In particular, the authors show that the global-local dichotomy in cross-cultural luxury branding needs to be augmented with the local-foreign dimension. Second, this is the first study in this area to empirically demonstrate the impact of multicultural marketplaces on luxury brands, where consumers emerge as contextual cultural shifters. Third, the authors advocate a shift from the prevailing glocal approach to a new multicultural approach in luxury branding.

Studying the cultural dynamics of expatriate amateur theater in Brussels, the purpose of this paper is to investigate multicultural marketplace development in global cities.

The paper performs an interpretive analysis of the expatriate amateur scene from an ethnographic perspective, combining observations of rehearsals and performances, in-depth interviews with actors, directors and audience, and secondary data.

The fluidity of global cities allows their inhabitants to engage in creative processes of cultural experimentation, performing a continuous back-and-forth movement between hybridization and pluralization. The former creates enough homogeneity for the expatriates to feel targeted; the latter ensures a level of cultural diversity necessary to satisfy their cosmopolitan aspirations.

The paper points to the important role of global cities for cultural experimentation. Such cities are not only an interesting market for culturally diverse products, but also experimental hubs. Managers willing to address multicultural marketplaces might target these markets with dynamic cultural offers that ensure a balance between rendering a product globally appreciated and recognizable, and maintaining a cosmopolitan appeal for consumers in search of diversity.

Drawing on global cities as markets in continuous reconstruction and subject to cultural experimentation, the paper turns the attention of the research community to the collective, reflexive, and experimental aspects of symbolic consumption. It shows how arts and cultural products represent valuable contexts for international marketing research, providing original insights into market dynamics and cultural experimentation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how country of origin and consumer ethnocentrism pertain to first-generation immigrants, who often identify with two or more countries.

After a pretest to validate the modified consumer ethnocentrism scale, the main study used a series of scenario-based experiments and compiled data from 419 members of four distinct first-generation immigrant communities.

Non-ethnocentric immigrants favor the products of economically advanced countries. Ethnocentric immigrants favor the products of their home and host countries relative to foreign products, regardless of the economic standing of foreign countries. When home and host countries represent significantly different degrees of economic advancement, both ethnocentric and non-ethnocentric immigrants favor the products of the more advanced country.

Apart from the individual effects of country of origin and consumer ethnocentrism, the interplay between the two effects can yield important insights. There are other ways to operationalize multicultural identity beyond studying first-generation immigrants. Researchers should go beyond nationality and incorporate other forces of cultural diversity.

For both ethnocentric and non-ethnocentric immigrants, the product that benefits from both effects is the most preferred, and the product that benefits from neither of the two effects is the least preferred. Where the product benefits from one but not the other effect, the two effects hold roughly equal power for ethnocentric consumers, but COO dominates CE for non-ethnocentric consumers.

The paper presents a critical evaluation and extension of the respective literatures investigating familiar constructs in multicultural settings.

The purpose of this special issue is to extend the growing research on the challenges and opportunities facing services marketers in an increasingly culturally diverse global marketplace.

The nine papers included in this special issue use a variety of research methods (e.g. case study, experiments and surveys), participants (e.g. customers, employees and online panel members) and service settings (e.g. fast food, post office, weight loss, bank, home loan, personal fitness and offshore outsourcing).

All the nine papers highlight the importance of studying the unique perspectives of the customers and employees involved in intercultural interactions in diverse service settings in marketplaces and societies that are either already or have recently become multicultural.

The findings from the nine papers have useful implications for future research on services marketing in multicultural markets, although these may not always be generalisable beyond the unique context of the studies reported in each of these papers.

All the nine papers also present some useful directions for services marketing managers in the multicultural markets, to help them understand and manage the expectations of their culturally diverse customers, as well as employees.

This special issue is unique because it is one of the first attempts to understand the unique challenges and opportunities for services marketers in the growing multicultural global marketplace, from a theoretical, as well as empirical, point of view.

This study aims to develop and examine a model that links the foreigner service orientation, defined as indigenous consumers’ preference for service environments popular among foreign versus local consumers, to both foreigner and local comfort in intercultural service encounters.

The authors collected cross-sectional survey data from 516 indigenous consumers in Qatar.

According to the findings, although foreigner comfort is positively related to their service orientation, local comfort is negatively related to foreigner service orientation. The results further indicate that the relationships are intensified when cosmopolitanism or collective narcissism is high and when consumers are alone in the service setting.

Service firms can use the findings of this research to create a meaningful service environment based on consumers’ orientation to the in-group and out-group.

The examination of the foreigner service orientation addresses the possibility that consumers might prefer foreign consumers to local ones in service environments. This research also addresses the dearth of research on customer-to-customer intercultural service encounter.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the cognitive and affective dimensions of COO and the owned-by/made-in cue combinations in first-generation immigrant markets.

The cognitive and affective dimensions were manipulated in a scenario-based experiment administered on 261 Mexican Americans in three product categories.

The cognitive and affective dimensions each have a distinct impact. When the two dimensions combine, the effect is stronger within the specialty product category, followed by the shopping product category, and, to a lesser extent, in the convenience product category.

The cognitive dimension was represented by the country’s degree of political, economic and technological development, whereas the affective dimension was traced by examining immigrants who identify with the emotional and symbolic meanings associated with countries involved in the country of origin (COO) message.

Managers should pursue emerging COO research whose concepts and designs are congruent with today’s global consumer culture. The authors find support for the stand-alone effects of made-in and owned-by COO cues, as well as the effects of the cognitive and affective dimensions of COO. When COO messages combine both made-in and owned-by cues, the cognitive and affective dimensions may work synergistically, depending on the product category.

This study adds to the nascent literature that recognizes the multiplicity of consumer identities, and bridges the gulf between the conventional COO research and the increasingly multicultural nature of the marketplace.

Previous literature has reported inconsistent findings regarding the impact of uncertainty avoidance (UA) on intercultural experiences. This includes positive, negative and insignificant associations between UA on the one hand and cosmopolitanism or comfort with intercultural service encounters (ICSE) on the other hand. The purpose of this paper is to participate in addressing these contradictions. More specifically, this study examines how UA affects expatriate cosmopolitanism as well as approach of service environments patronized by local customers by introducing two moderators: national identification and perceived discrimination.

The authors propose a conceptual model based on the results of a literature review. The authors test it with survey data collected from Indian expatriates (n=341) living in Qatar, using structural equation modeling.

The results corroborate the moderating role of national identification. Under low identification, expatriate consumers engage in a prospective form of uncertainty management, leading them to adopt a more cosmopolitan stance. Under high identification, their uncertainty plays an inhibitory role, reducing their cosmopolitanism and negatively affecting their approach of service places patronized by local consumers. Perceived discrimination did not moderate the impact of UA as expected on either cosmopolitanism or approach.

This paper extends the prior research on UA by testing how two moderators could activate either a prospective or an inhibitory form of uncertainty. It also contributes to research on ICSE, by focusing on customer-to-customer interactions in a multicultural marketplace.