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The current study seeks to explore ethnic diversity in Britain by investigating the strength of ethnic identity and acculturation levels of two British ethnic minority groups – Indians and African Blacks. The study also aims to examine the role of demographic characteristics in explaining the strength of ethnic identity and acculturation levels between the surveyed ethnic groups.

The study utilized a survey research design. Data was collected using a personally administered structured questionnaire from a convenience sample of 365 married ethnic members.

The results of t‐tests revealed that both Indians and African Blacks are strong ethnic identifiers and highly‐acculturated. Further results based on step‐wise regressions showed that age and income offer more explanatory power of ethnic diversity among African Blacks and Indians respectively.

The study highlights the complexity and importance of ethnicity in the development of multicultural strategies in Britain.

Research relating to ethnic diversity in Britain is relatively limited and of the very few studies available, there has been more emphasis on qualitative research approaches. This study also offers findings on ethnicity at a time when there is growth in the population of ethnic markets in Britain.

This paper aims to explore the effectiveness of ethnically targeted ads in developing consumer–brand relationships through an application of social identification theory and elaboration likelihood model among African American consumers in the service sector.

Study 1 used a 2 (service type: hedonic vs utilitarian) × 2 (strength of ethnic identification: high vs low) between-subjects experimental design. Study 2 used the same experimental design, procedure and ads as Study 1.

Taken together, the findings from these two studies demonstrate how ethnically targeted advertising, in conjunction with service type, can influence consumer–brand relationships. The results showed that those with high strength of ethnic identification had more brand love, as well as higher intentions to spread positive word-of-mouth, purchase intention and brand loyalty for hedonic services, but that this effect was not significant for utilitarian services.

The environments in which advertisements appear (e.g. in an in-store display or a magazine advertisement) is important, and consumers’ reactions to targeted ads in various environments should be considered in future research. Future studies should also examine the role of individuals’ personality traits and level of acculturation in determining their relationships with brands.

Across two studies, the authors demonstrated that ethnic ads are more effective for African American individuals with high level of ethnic identification especially for hedonic services.

Considers the pluralistic cultures which exist within a nation and outlines the history of previous research into this field. Introduces the concept of embeddedness which means that the society within which a person lives will influence their behaviour. Discusses intracultural differences and presents some research strategies for looking at the ethnic consumer.

Upon arrival in the host country, immigrants undergo a fundamental identity crisis. Their ethnic identity being questioned, they can be classified into four states – assimilation, integration, separation, and marginalization. This is suggested by the ethnosizer, a newly established measure to parameterize a person's ethnic identity, using individual information on language, culture, societal interaction, history of migration, and ethnic self-identification. In what state individuals end up varies among immigrants even from the same country. Moreover, the quest for ethnic identity affects women and men differentially. This paper contends that ethnic identity can significantly affect the attachment to and performance of immigrants in the host country labor market, beyond human capital and ethnic origin characteristics. Empirical estimates for immigrants in Germany show that ethnic identity is important for the decision to work and significantly and differentially affects the labor force participation of men and women. Women who exhibit the integrated identity are more likely to work than women who are German assimilated; this does not hold for men. However, once we control for selection in the labor market and a slew of individual and labor market characteristics, ethnic identity does not significantly affect the earnings of men or women immigrant workers.

The purpose of this study is to examine the degree of ethnic identity and demographic characteristics (the length of residency in the USA, education, income, age, and origin of ethnicity) in relation to brand purchases for status.

The research is based on a survey of 324 retail customers of Hispanics (n=173) and Asians (n=151) with analysis performed using regression analysis, t‐tests, and ANCOVA.

The stronger an immigrant identifies with his/her ethnic culture, the more likely he/she is to purchase high‐priced branded products for status purposes. Immigrants with higher incomes are more likely to purchase high‐ priced prestige brands. Younger immigrants report a greater propensity to purchase high‐priced prestige brands. No relationship with the dependent variable was found with length of time in the USA, education, and origin of ethnicities of immigrants.

The major contribution of this research is to demonstrate the importance of ethnic identity strength, to reveal the major demographic variables on immigrant consumer behaviors, and to identify means by which practitioners can effectively use ethnicity strength, income, and age to target immigrant consumers.

Reports a study of 214 Chinese Canadian consumers across eight product categories. This study shows that intracultural differences in consumer behavior are inadequately explained by the psychological construct of ethnic identification, and that additional explanatory power is achieved when incorporating the ethnic homogeneity of social ties. The results of the study support the proposition that the ethnic homogeneity of strong social ties exerts significant influence over an individual’s consumption of ethnic products, and is a much more robust predictor variable than ethnic identification. Also calls for a more theory‐based measure for the construct ethnic identification.

This paper aims to empirically analyze the extent to which advertising reception among consumers with a migration background (German-Turks) is influenced by a person’s strength of national identifications with his/her country-of-origin (COO) and with his/her country-of-residence (COR). The focus is on Turkey-sensitive advertisements (ads) of telecommunication service suppliers in Germany because such communication measures are quite common and about three million German-Turks constitute an economically important group.

Measures of COO and COR identification as well as of three ad reception criteria were obtained in a survey of 291 German-Turks and analyzed via moderated regression models.

Strength of COO identification was a significantly positive predictor of the frequency with which participants remembered Turkey-sensitive ads for telecommunication services. Additionally, COO identification related significantly to two criteria that capture facets of attitudes toward such ads. By contrast, COR identification acted partly as a moderator which attenuated links between respondents’ COO identification and two ad reception measures. Nevertheless, German-Turks with a strong COR identification (i.e. “accultured” consumers) were still receptive to Turkey-sensitive telecommunication services ads even if their self-image was simultaneously strongly dependent on their COO. “Alienated” German-Turks who identify neither with their COO nor with their COR were least responsive to ethnic ads.

The research indicates that marketing practitioners should not use uniform communication measures to address migrant consumers with a specific COO but segment this target group further by simultaneously considering their members’ COO and COR identifications.

The contribution of this paper results from the simultaneous inclusion of both COO and COR identifications as factors explaining differences in reactions to communication measures among migrant consumers which share the same COO. Furthermore, the scarcity of empirical work on reactions of German-Turks to ethnomarketing is reduced.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of acculturation on immigrant consumers’ loyalty. The authors posit that the acculturation orientation of immigrants determines their consumer loyalty to both ethnic and mainstream brands and stores.

Using a sample of Hispanic consumers in the USA and consumers from the former Soviet Union in Israel, this study tests a model in which two acculturation continua, original culture maintenance and host culture adaptation, serve as antecedents for immigrants’ consumer loyalty.

Acculturation determines the extent of immigrants’ consumer loyalty. Both acculturation continua are associated with distinct loyalty patterns that are similar across the two immigrant groups.

Despite sampling limitations, the paper demonstrates that immigrants’ acculturation orientation influences their loyalty to ethnic and mainstream brands and stores. Shared by ethnic consumers in two culturally diverse markets, this relationship transcends geographic boundaries.

The results provide insights for marketers with respect to the development of segmentation and positioning strategies and tactical implementations that address the preferences of ethnic consumers.

This paper highlights the importance of understanding the unique needs of ethnic consumers and addressing them. Successful integration of immigrant consumers into the marketplace can also help in their integration into the host society at large.

Findings shed light on the commonalities and differences among immigrant groups in different national settings. The paper highlights the role of cultural transition as a key experience that affects immigrants regardless of specific environmental or situational circumstances.

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.

From a distinctiveness theory and elaboration likelihood model (ELM) perspective, this study aims to investigate the determinants, the direct and indirect effects of ethnic identification on brand attachment, brand love and behavioral outcomes. The authors examine two types of products (high- vs low-involvement).

In a survey, participants were randomly assigned to four conditions consisting of two high-involvement (i.e. a smart watch and a car) and two low-involvement (i.e. a soda/soft drink and a shampoo) stimuli. A total of 192 respondents participated in this study; 39% were male, 61% were female and 90% were 18-22 years old.

In line with ELM, the authors offer evidence that ethnic advertising is more effective for low-involvement products targeted at African American consumers. Results also showed that brand attachment partially mediates the effect of ethnic identification with the ad (EthIdenAD) and brand love. In summary, the structural equation modeling (SEM) results support the efficacy of ethnic-targeted ads for developing brand attachment, brand love and behavioral outcomes.

Using ethnically targeted ads to target minority groups may not be sufficient to increase the efficacy of ads. According to distinctiveness theory, African Americans with different levels of ethnic identification will respond differently to ad attitudes, brand attachment, brand love, identification with the model in the ad and varying degrees of belief that the ad was targeted toward them.

This study examines the effect of ethnically targeted advertising on brand love, and behavioral outcomes with the mediation effect of brand attachment and moderation effect of product involvement. The results of this study suggest several theoretical and practical implications for marketing and brand management, including directions for advertising strategy and consumer–brand relationships.