Consumption of products from heritage and host cultures: The role of acculturation attitudes and behaviors

Abstract

Prior research ignores the specific role of acculturation attitudes in predicting acculturation behaviors and consumption choices across public and private life domains. The study uses self-administered questionnaires to collect data from 530 Turkish-Dutch respondents. The findings underscore the overall significance of investigating domain-specific (public vs. private) acculturation attitudes and subsequent acculturation behaviors. Enculturation (acculturation) behaviors function as a mediating variable in the relationship between acculturation attitudes and consumption of food and entertainment products from the heritage (host) culture. The study is one of the first to investigate the simultaneous effects of acculturation attitudes and acculturation behaviors on the choice to consumer foods and entertainment products from both heritage and host cultures. The article provides managerial implications and future research directions.

The impact of social networking sites on socialization and political engagement: Role of acculturation

“…An emerging stream of research suggests that social media can be an important vehicle for an acculturation process that is influenced by multidimensional and multifaceted cultural orientations (Forbush and Foucault-Welles, 2016) and may reinforce in-group interactions (Phillipps, 2008). Research also suggests that group behaviour is more important than individual behaviour and that social interactions are important indicators of the state of acculturation (Kizgin et al, 2017;Laroche et al, 1998) to the extent that they open the possibility of connecting immigrants to the global community and the host culture.…”

“…When immigrant consumers face discrimination in a host society, they may hold tight to their ethnic identities and favour an enculturation orientation (e.g., Berry and Hou, 2017), so discrimination discourages a sense of belonging in the host culture and reduces immigrants' wellbeing, strengthening the desire to maintain the heritage culture. Alternatively, immigrant consumers may believe that the host society values and rewards hard work, promotes justice, safety and equality for all (Kizgin et al, 2017). Consequently, they may favour acculturation orientation contributing positively to the host society's civic life and political system.…”

The Impact of Social Media on Consumers’ Acculturation and Purchase Intentions

“…Given that the majority of our participants preferred assimilation in language use and showed a preference for acculturation in offline contexts, mainstream and ethnic-minority businesses in the Netherlands can target such consumers in English. Such consumers may believe that the mainstream culture and society value and reward hard work and promote justice, safety, and equality for all (Kizgin et al 2017). Accordingly, businesses can use message strategies that incorporate mainstream cultural values while seeking to connect with their target customers via digital marketing.…”

“…Acculturation refers to the culture change that takes place as a result of contact with culturally dissimilar people, groups and environments (Berry 1992;Laroche and Jamal 2015), whereas enculturation refers to the process of learning one's own culture (Kizgin et al 2017;Schwartz et al 2010).…”

“…While previous research acknowledges the role of agents of culture change (Askegaard et al 2005;Kizgin et al 2017;Peñaloza 1994), it largely ignores the role of social media in influencing acculturation outcomes and consumption choices.…”