Expatriate Consumers’ Adaptations and Food Brand Choices: A Compensatory Control Perspective

Abstract

The number of expatriates has been steadily growing during the last two decades. For these reasons, academia has exhibited a growing research interest in expatriates’ food consumption choices. Although interest is there, the extant literature is inconclusive about conditions under which expatriate consumers make trade-offs between host-country (local) and global food products and brands. The present study presents mechanisms that explain expatriate consumers’ compensatory coping behaviors and choices between local versus global food brands. By drawing on compensatory control theory and the person–environment fit framework, the authors test the influence of adaptation efforts and retail system properties on expatriate consumers’ food brand choices. Survey findings from 232 expatriates who currently live in five Middle Eastern countries reveal that a higher engagement in adaptation efforts (acculturation and general adjustment) leads to a dominant preference for local (vs. global) food brands. Moreover, this study illuminates the importance of retail system properties by showing that a host country’s retail system development positively moderates the relationship between adaptation efforts and local food brand choices, whereas retail similarity has a negative impact.

Expatriate’s food adaptation: when does acculturation elicit social identification vs differentiation?

“…Hence, our study enriches the literature on expatriate adaptation efforts by showing that besides social identification effects (Bardhi et al, 2012;Miocevic and Zdravkovic, 2020a;Miocevic and Zdravkovic, 2020b), the differentiation effects should not be ignored (Berger and Heath, 2007;Brewer, 1991;Miocevic and Mikulic, 2021). From the standpoint of practitioners, our study illuminates a novel perspective by suggesting that expatriates are not a homogenous market segment, and therefore, their adaptation efforts occurring in public and private domains might vary significantly.…”

“…The research on acculturation traits of expatriate consumers has been relatively scarce and influenced mainly by the consumer culture theory (Bardhi et al, 2012;Bengtsson et al, 2010;Figueiredo and Uncles, 2015;Gilly, 1995;Thompson and Tambyah, 1999). Some recent studies tap into the impact of acculturation behaviors on food adaptation of expatriates (Bundy, 2017;Miocevic and Zdravkovic, 2020a;Miocevic and Zdravkovic, 2020b;Miocevic et al, 2021b).…”

“…When analyzing consumer behavior outside their homeland, the academic literature has predominantly researched migrants (Luedicke, 2011), while in the past two decades, expatriates have been in the spotlight of academia (Bardhi et al, 2012;Bundy, 2017;Miocevic and Zdravkovic, 2020b;Thompson and Tambyah, 1999). A recent review by McNulty and Brewster (2017) makes a clear distinction between migrants and expatriates.…”

“…Literature on expatriates and their adaptation trajectories has been growing during the past two decades, especially in food consumption. Studies have found that expatriates, like migrants, undergo acculturation within the host country which significantly affects: the localization of their identity (Bardhi et al, 2012;Miocevic et al, 2021b), their increased preference for local food products (Miocevic and Zdravkovic, 2020a), tensions in the choice between global and lesser-known local food products and brands (Bengtsson et al, 2010;Bundy, 2017;Thompson and Tambyah, 1999) and compensatory choices between local and global food brands (Miocevic and Zdravkovic, 2020b). However, the most recent findings indicate that adjustment to the host country does not affect all expatriates equally, hinting that some might engage in differentiation from others by following the optimal distinctiveness principles (Miocevic and Mikulic, 2021).…”

Readable Labels and Moderating Effect of Individual Personality Traits Effect on Consumer Healthy Packaged Food Selection Intention

“…The aforementioned studies revealed that growing interest observed among individuals regarding intake of processed and high calorie packaged food (Miocevic & Zdravkovic, 2020). Therefore, scholars and practitioners suggested to develop sense of healthy packaged food intention among individuals (Baker et al, 2020).…”