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The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework that highlights the reinforcing nature of global consumer culture (GCC). In doing so, this paper highlights a dialectic process in which consumers trade-off, appropriate, indigenize and creolize consumption into multiple GCCs.

The approach is conceptual with illustrative examples.

GCC is a reinforcing process shaped by global culture flows, acculturation, deterritorialization, and cultural and geographic specific entities. This process allows consumers to indigenize GCC, and GCC to contemporaneously appropriate aspects from myriad localized cultures, producing creolized cultures.

Marketing research and practices need to shift away from the dichotomous view of global and local consumption fueled by a misleading view of segmentation. Instead, marketers should focus on identifying the permutations of emerging GCCs, how these operate according to the context and accordingly position their marketing mix to accommodate them.

The proposed model reviews and integrates existing literature to highlight fundamental research directions that present a comprehensive overview of GCCs, its shortcomings and future directions.

The purpose of this article is to chronicle the publication events in the 1980s and 1990s that framed the development of the series of controversies in marketing that are known as the “philosophy debates”.

The article uses a participant’s retrospective approach.

The article finds that seven publication events are key to understanding marketing’s philosophy debates. The seven are the publication of the “little green book” by Grid, Inc. in 1976; the philosophy of science panel discussion held at the Winter American Marketing Association Educators’ Conference in 1982; the special issue of the Journal of Marketing on marketing theory in 1983; three articles on the “critical relativist perspective” by the Journal of Consumer Research in 1986 and 1988; the “blue book” by South-Western in 1991; a trilogy of articles on truth, positivism and objectivity in the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Consumer Research in 1990-1993; and an article on “rethinking marketing” in the European Journal of Marketing in 1994.

Chronicling the key publication events enables readers to understand what the debates were about and provides readers a starting point for further investigating the issues in the debates.

This paper responds to calls for a new raison d’être in the field cross-cultural management (CCM) and culture-sensitive studies of international business (IB) more broadly. It argues that one way of addressing the crisis of confidence in the field is to develop a line of inquiry focussed on corporate-driven cultural globalization. This paper also proposes a theoretical approach informed by international political economy (IPE) and postcolonial theory and outlines a research agenda for future work on cultural globalization.

The paper is a desk-based analysis that draws on relevant research in the wider social sciences to insert cultural globalization into the CCM/IB field’s intellectual project.

The paper finds the field of CCM and culture-sensitive IB studies more broadly to be almost exclusively focussed on studying the impact of cultural differences. Surprisingly, little attention has been devoted to the phenomenon of corporate-driven cultural globalization.

The paper redirects the field and presents a research agenda, calling for studies on the role of four related actors in cultural globalization: MNEs, global professional service firms, business schools and CCM/IB researchers themselves.

CCM/IB scholars may be able to reorient themselves towards the phenomenon of cultural globalization and, in so doing, also seize an opportunity to contribute to important debates about it in the wider social sciences.

The paper suggests possibilities for renewal by redirecting CCM/IB towards the study of cultural globalization and by encouraging the field to develop a postcolonial sensibility in future research on the phenomenon.

This study focuses on an inventory and typology of consumer dispositions towards “place” and relates it to the underlying theories, inputs and outcomes of place images and attitudes, aiming to unclutter a crowded research landscape by providing a holistic perspective of product/brand place associations.

The paper draws on extant literature to identify, analyze and discuss the consumer dispositions, theories and other elements related to place.

In total, 32 dispositions, 10 inputs to image formation, 28 permutations that complicate the understanding of place images, and 18 outcomes are discussed, providing a comprehensive perspective of the images of, and behaviours towards, various types of places from neighbourhoods to countries and beyond.

Of the large number of constructs and combinations among them that are discussed, some have been studied fairly extensively, but most comprise “the road(s) less travelled”. The paper identifies relevant research gaps and numerous opportunities for new research.

Managers are aware and act upon some of the inventoried dispositions but can benefit by considering the complete array of constructs and concepts that are discussed.

Individuals’ dispositions towards various places help to shape their self and social identities and are important in their daily life and consumption behaviour.

The study brings together for the first time a complete inventory of place-related dispositions alongside a wide range of related theories and concepts, thus advancing our knowledge of the nature and role of the country and other place-related images of products and brands.

Rethinking marketing should start with answers to three questions: Why has our discipline made so few original contributions to the strategy dialogue? Why have we focused on dysfunctional, rather than functional, relationships, i.e. on unsuccessful marketing practice rather than successful practice? Why do qualitative studies lack acceptance in marketing? I suggest that the fact that marketing has viewed itself as an “applied discipline” has significantly contributed to our making so few original contributions to the strategy dialogue. Furthermore, the “applied discipline” view has contributed to our focusing on dysfunctional and unsuccessful, rather than functional and successful, relationships. Finally, the lack of acceptance in marketing for qualitative methods has resulted from advocates of those methods embracing relativism, constructionism and subjectivism. In general, the time for obfuscation and obscurantism masquerading as profundity has passed; the time for reasoned rethinking is just beginning.

A first objective is to add insight into how constructs of ethnocentrism, xenocentrism and cosmopolitanism relate to each other. Knowledge of how these constructs overlap or work together in affecting consumer preferences will offer global marketers insights for designing appropriate marketing strategies. The second objective is to extend this knowledge by examining the correspondence of these three constructs to a nomological network of dispositional concepts pertinent for product positioning and market segmentation. The third objective is to empirically examine the extent to which the measures, construct structure and associative relationships are robust in different national research settings. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Surveying British and American consumers, this study examines and analyzes the correspondence of these identity-relevant constructs within a nomological net of pertinent concepts: consciousness-of-kind, global consumption orientation, materialism and natural environment concern.

The hypothesized negative links between CET-XEN and CET-COS, and the predicted positive connection between XEN-COS were all confirmed on the latent factor results for the combined data set. The negative correlation between CET-XEN was of a considerably lower magnitude than that for CET-COS.

To date, no research has used an identity theory framework and simultaneously examined in a cross-cultural context the interrelationships of consumer ethnocentrism consumer xenocentrism and cosmopolitanism – and their differentiating linkages to a multiplicity of consumer dispositions.

This paper seeks to contribute to the debate on the usefulness of institutional theory to critical studies. It pursues this topic by exploring some of the possibilities for allocating local authority funds more fairly for poor residents. This paper aims to shed light on the institution of budgeting in a democratically elected local government under austerity.

This paper uses world culture theory, the study of the devolution of cultural authority to individuals and organisations through which they turn into agentic actors. Based on a field study of Newcastle City Council’s (NCC’s) budget-related practices, the paper uses the notion of actorhood to explore the use of fairness in austerity budgets.

This paper documents how new concerns with fairness gave rise to new local authority practices and gave NCC characteristics of actorhood. This paper also shows why it might make sense for a local authority that is managing austerity budget cuts and cutting back on services to make more detailed performance information public, rather than attempting to hide service deterioration, as some prior literature suggests. This paper delineates the limits to actorhood, in this study’s case, principally the inability to overcome structural constraints of legal state power.

The paper is suggestive of ways in which local government can fight inequality in opposition to central government austerity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first qualitative accounting study of actorhood. It coins the phrase fairness assemblage to denote a combination of various accounting technologies, organisational elements and local government practices.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a retrospection on the importance, origins and development of the research programs in the author’s career.

The study uses an autobiographical approach.

Most of the articles, research monographs and books that constitute this research and publishing efforts can be categorized into seven distinct, but related, research programs: channels of distribution; marketing theory; marketing’s philosophy debates; macromarketing and ethics; relationship marketing; resource-advantage theory; and marketing management and strategy. The value system that has guided these research programs has been shaped by specific events that took place in the author’s formative years. This essay chronicles these events and the origins and development of the seven research programs.

Chronicling the importance, origins and development of the seven research programs will hopefully motivate and assist other scholars in developing their own research programs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which young urban Nigerians in Lagos have become acculturated to global consumer culture and the impact of acculturation on consumer ethnocentrism and materialism.

A total of 165 young Nigerians living in Lagos completed a survey. The survey scales consisted of seven different dimensions of global consumer acculturation, ethnocentrism, materialism and demographics. All scales had strong reliabilities.

Nigerians were acculturated to a large degree in terms of cosmopolitan tendency, exposure to marketing activities of multinationals, English language usage, social interactions, and global mass media exposure. However, openness to emulate global consumer culture was moderate and identification with global consumer culture was very low. Acculturation affected consumer ethnocentrism and materialism to some extent.

Only one segment of consumers in Nigeria was examined. Because the original scale for global consumer acculturation lacked psychometric rigor, we revised it using psychometric purification.

Nigerians may be in a state of transition as they adapt to global consumer culture. Nigerians may have some resistance in adapting to global consumer culture given ideological, nationalistic, and socio-economic conditions. International marketers must realize that a level of “glocalization” is required attuned to the identify and national character of Nigerians. The authors discuss the paradox that Nigerians have low identification with global consumer culture despite their exposure to global forces.

No other research has used the authors’ approach. The paper provides a fresh way of looking at Nigeria as it transitions into a global market and advances our understanding the connection of global consumer culture with ethnocentrism and materialism. The research can serve as a catalyst in looking at global consumer culture in Africa and in BRIC countries.

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.