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As an exploratory study on rural and urban consumers in an emerging market like China, this paper presents empirical evidence about the impacts of economic development on consumer lifestyles. Chinese rural and urban consumers were found to be statistically different in terms of their attitudes toward the whole marketing mix: product price, brand names, promotions and distribution. Possibly as a result of these disparate attitudes, rural and urban consumers were found to use different products to reflect the improvement of their living standards. All of these previous differences might be due to the fact that rural and urban Chinese consumers have different needs, as indicated by the words they chose to describe their ideal image. These lifestyle differences reveal huge marketing potentials for MNCs and other foreign investors, who will ultimately move into China's relatively untapped rural regions for marketing opportunities.

Retailers' new product acceptance in base of pyramid (BoP) markets is crucial to marketers in this segment. This paper seeks to develop propositions for research on factors that affect retailers in new product introduction. The propositions also aim to make a distinction between urban and rural BoP markets.

The paper provides a broad description of India's BoP market (one of the world's largest BoP markets) to better understand context. It uses literature from developed country context to BoP markets to arrive at research propositions for further research.

The key research propositions derived relate to exogenous and endogenous factors. Exogenous factors relate to store trading area, competitive environment, shopper characteristics and product diversity. The endogenous factors include store atmosphere, assortment and shelf space allocation, price and promotion. The differences across rural and urban BoP markets are highlighted for each proposition.

Understanding differences between rural and urban BoP retailers can help make crucial new product introduction decisions. Considering endogenous and exogenous factors that influence retailer acceptance decisions will make product introduction decisions successful.

BoP literature has been replete with research on marketers and products but less on retailing. This paper addresses that gap. In addition, very few papers make the distinction between urban and rural BoP markets and mostly across countries but not within a country. This paper places the distinction within the country. Finally, explaining how various factors influencing retailing differ in urban and rural contexts and developing propositions is a major original contribution of this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to perform a comparative analysis on the attitudes of rural and urban Irish consumers towards cultured meat.

A mixed methods exploratory sequential design was used. This involved collecting qualitative data first, through group interviews, and using the results of these to design the questionnaires for the quantitative data collection, which was analysed using SPSS 24.0 ®.

Urban consumers were more receptive towards cultured meat and more concerned about the environmental impact of current meat production practices. Rural consumers were more concerned about the possible damaging effect cultured meat production could have on agri-business and the livelihood of Irish farmers. The safety of the technology emerged as the biggest concern for both sets of consumers.

The sample size used for the qualitative research resulted in a 95% confidence level and a confidence interval of 5.55. A larger sample number would give a tighter confidence interval and a more accurate representation of consumers’ attitudes.

This research could give guidance to food companies of how to market cultured meat products towards Irish consumers based on their concerns and their perceived benefits of the technology.

This research added to previous research performed in Ireland showing that urban consumers are more receptive towards new food technologies than their rural counterparts.

This is the first paper comparing the attitudes of rural and urban Irish consumers towards cultured meat and adds to the literature on this emerging subject area.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and compare the meanings, rituals, and the celebration context related to Holy Feasts and New Year, to determine consumption patterns of female consumers during these occasions and compare the results for urban and rural areas.

A qualitative research technique was followed and in‐depth interviews were chosen as data‐collection method. A total of 60 in‐depth interviews were held with females in urban and rural areas of Turkey and the respondents were selected according to Family Life Cycle (FLC) categories. Data were analyzed through content analysis.

The findings indicate that six meanings were associated with Holy Feasts and New Year. All meanings except for those which are neutral or negative are more intensely observed for Holy Feasts. Besides, rigidly ritualized Holy Feast celebrations were observed in rural areas whereas these consumers do not have deep inspirations to celebrate New Year. Urban consumers display westernized rituals specifically for New Year and it is also seen that consumption patterns differ for urban and rural consumers.

The generalization of findings is limited to the selected urban and rural areas. The second limitation lies in the fact that this exploratory study also makes a preliminary attempt to develop a deeper understanding for only two specific occasions.

The study has significant implications as to how the investigation of transformation and reinterpretation of meanings, rituals and consumption patterns offers an opportunity to identify the marketing strategies without disregarding the differences and similarities between urban and rural areas in the case of sacred and non‐sacred occasions which may also be a reference to analyze the secular‐religious tensions.

Assessing the changing natures of both sacred and Christian oriented non‐sacred occasions in Turkey as a hybrid society, emphasizing the similarities and differences in urban and rural areas and generating suggestions for marketing practitioners by analyzing the consumption tendencies constitute the originality of this study.

To identify factors that could influence consumer perceptions relating to meat production and areas where further development would be of assistance to British agriculture.

Qualitative semi‐structured interviews of a quota sample of Scottish meat purchasing consumers.

Results indicate that consumer views on meat production vary widely and that while there are some differences between rural and urban consumers the differences are rarely simple. Views were expressed on a variety of factors including livestock producers, agricultural production, certification and traceability. Relatively few consumers were routinely concerned with assurance labels. Consequently, knowledge of underpinning standards was limited. Primary sources of meat were the major supermarket groups with a distinct bias towards older consumers among those who preferred to shop in small butchers shops. Attitudes towards producers were mainly positive but some consumers remained sceptical about producer behaviour during hard times.

While more research would clearly be required to consider a broader spectrum of UK consumers, these current data indicate that consumer understanding of food information and indeed their interest and credibility of the current systems is a subject that would benefit from much wider research. The practical implications for the development of Government policy and for the idividual producers are substantial and would benefit from considerable clarification.

Prior research concerning meat production and the views of consumers is limited. Theses findings have implications for future sector‐based communications to consumers, in that equal emphasis should be given to both rural and urban consumers. More collaborative communications measures must be implemented to ensure consumer awareness/understanding of underpinning assurance label standards and bring about loyal purchase preferences for British produce.

Following the upheavals of the revolutionary era, the People's Republic of China's consumer culture is somewhat over 20 years old. This research aims at discovering and thus better understanding what Chinese consumers value most among their possessions. In turn, this finding should help better understand the contemporary Chinese culture.

The general research approach utilized in this effort is qualitative. All data were collected through at‐home, in‐depth personal interviews, following established guidelines outlined by Lincoln and Guba, and Wallendorf and Belk. A snowball sampling resulted in the participation of 20 rural and 20 urban households.

Participants' demographic profile ended up matching well the national profile in terms of income, and the gender and age make‐up of the rural and urban samples were not significantly different. Four categories emerged to comprehensively represent all the favorite products identified by the participants: entertainment, functional, hedonic, and mementos. In addition, a numerically significant number of participants could neither think of a favorite product nor possess one. As developed in the paper, conventional typologies, such as Hofstede and Triandis' collectivism‐individualism do not account well for the results observed in this study. Rather, the study turns towards Lu's research and suggestion that using instruments developed by Western cultures suffer from methodological defects when applied to Chinese behaviors. This research then defines the Yi, a Confucian value related to benevolence, morality, righteousness, and the Li, a Mohist/Legalist value related to utilitarianism and profit, and suggests that the two better help understand the findings and support observations.

The nature of qualitative research clearly limits the generalization of its findings, and therefore to offer more definitive results, future efforts would have to consider other methods. Also, and while great care is taken to ensure the validity of the data collection process, there is always the possibility that some respondents may not have been as candid or truthful as would be hoped. However, and altogether, findings from this research do match well what public media have often been reporting, and what frequent casual observations point out.

China's contemporary culture is rapidly changing, somehow breaking away from traditions, yet retaining core values and reshaping them with modern, sometimes alien inputs. This research clearly indicates what motivates the younger generations, raised in a nation governed by an all‐controlling Communist party that orchestrates an openly capitalistic, materialistic societal development. Such apparent contradictions, the result of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” may be puzzling to some in the Western world but are not so with today's Chinese consumers.

This research is unique in its topic and research approach, given that it deals with Chinese consumers, the largest block of consumers in the world. It offers a perspective, not yet considered within the marketing and consumer research literature, that seems to explain well what is observed.

The purpose of the present study is to examine how local consumers disassociate themselves from migrants' acculturative practices and negotiate their identity through the symbolic consumption of fashion.

Data for this interpretive study were obtained via phenomenological interviews with locally-born Chinese youth in Guangzhou, China, to examine their acculturative consumption practices as well as their subjective experiences of perceived threats to their lifestyle imposed by the influx of outsiders. Snowballing and purposive sampling methods were adopted in recruiting the research participants.

Data analyses revealed that local consumers adopt three dissociative strategies (stigmatization, avoidance and self-assertion) in order to ascribe meanings to their fashion consumption practices as a means of resolving identity conflicts and differentiate themselves from the migrant consumers.

This research offers a single perspective (i.e. that of local-born young consumers residing in Guangzhou) on the locals' attitudes aimed at distinguishing and negotiating their identities in an intercultural setting via specific fashion-clothing choices. This research has theoretical implications for the consumer acculturation theory and identity negotiation.

Findings yielded by the present study have important implications for commercial companies focusing on fashion consumption, in particular for marketing practices aimed at rural-urban identification and youth market segmentation.

This study contributes to the existing discussion on consumer acculturation by offering an intracultural perspective to the understanding of local consumers' responses to migrants' acculturation. It also provides managerial insights for fashion retailers, prompting them to rethink their market segmentation strategies to address population mobility in the marketplace and better understand how it alters the in-between social relationships that result in different consumption patterns and practices.

This study contributes to the existing discussion on youth consumer acculturation theories by offering an intercultural perspective to the understanding of local consumers' responses to migrants' acculturation attempts. It also offers managerial insights for fashion retailers, prompting them to rethink their market segmentation strategies to address population mobility and better understand how it alters the social relationships that result in different consumption patterns and practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine spending pattern of Chinese migrant workers from rural regions to urban cities from a social identity perspective, which stems from Chinese Hukou system (household registry system). This study proposes a theoretical model for consumer utility function (a combination of economic utility and social utility) which takes into account the choice of social identification.

This study focusses on the influence of rural and urban identification on consumption patterns of Chinese migrant workers. These assumptions were verified based on a survey with 650 samples in Shanghai, one of the most developed cities in China.

Results indicate that affirmative social identification has a significantly positive effect on the level of consumption for migrant workers. High level of rural identification has a more significant impact than urban identification on survival consumption including food, medicine and family support. On the other hand, high level of urban identification has a more significant impact than rural identification on development consumption including education for children, training and recreation. Besides, there are significant interaction effects between income and identity on consumption, which confirms the identity effect on classical economic model and is in line with identity economics’ arguments.

This study outlines the importance of social identity in both economics and marketing domains and proposes a theoretical model which advances understanding of a model on similar lines proposed by Akerlof and Kranton’s (2000) and Benjamin et al. (2010). Empirical tests with Chinese migrant workers’ data present that their consumption patterns are influenced by their level of social identifications.

This paper aims to investigate Kazakh rural and urban consumers' preferences for different agritourism experiences.

The empirical study adopts a survey data-based approach relying on a questionnaire data collection technique.

The paper highlights significant differences and similarities in the structure of individual preferences of urban and rural customer segments regarding different agritourism offerings.

The research is limited by the sample, which covers only two consumer segments presented in the Kazakhstan context. The paper provides managerial implications for agritourism service providers, who are doing or planning to start entrepreneurial activities in rural areas, marketing researchers focusing on product development, and policy makers working out regional development strategies through implementation of tourism stimulating projects.

This study contributes to the advancement of the limited research investigating customer experience theory as applied to agritourism.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how perceptions of truthfulness of television advertising and perceptions of brands vary among urban and rural children in Mainland China and also to collect information about the basis of judgment children used to determine whether commercials are true.

Descriptive statistics were compiled to give the perceptions of television advertising and brands of the overall sample, as well as the urban and rural sub‐samples. Chi‐square tests and independent sample t‐tests were conducted to examine the urban‐rural difference in perceptions of television advertising and brands. The sample was divided into two groups that were of similar size (age six to nine and age ten‐15). Chi‐square tests were conducted to examine the age difference in advertising perceptions.

The urban‐rural difference in consumer perceptions of advertising and brands indicates that children's development in consumer socialization depends on the environment. Urban respondents were more skeptical towards advertising than rural children. Urban and rural children shared two similarities: older children were less likely to perceive television commercials truthful than younger children. Younger children liked television commercials more than older children.

The three surveyed urban cities were highly advanced in terms of their economies and advertising development compared with all other Chinese cities. The seven surveyed rural counties cannot be generalized to the very poor rural provinces in China.

The study should serve as an advertising guideline for marketers and advertisers that target urban and rural children in China.

This paper offers insights for employing different advertising message strategies to disseminate market information to urban as well as rural children in China.