ASPECTOS PSICOSOCIALES DE LA CEGUERA: DIFERENCIACIÓN DE

Consumer acculturation theory has developed useful and profound knowledge of ethnic subcultural consumer behaviour. Existing concepts of immigrants’ consumer acculturation mainly focus on understanding the concept of acculturation strategies and state one outcome, which is that acculturation does not lead to assimilation (Peñaloza, 1994; Oswald, 1999). Askegaard et al. (2005) has contributed to the post-assimilationist perspective in a non-North American context. Assimilation assumes that individuals will gradually lose their ethnic identity. Ethnic consumers do not take a position on one acculturation category based on their culture (i.e. home or host) (Peñaloza, 1994;

Oswald, 1999; Askegaard et al., 2005; Ustuner and Holt, 2007).

The literature uses various phenomena to describe the ethnic consumers. However, the concept of consumer acculturation research showed a gap in the operationalisation and conceptualisation of the concept. This gap is also acknowledged in recent literature. An analysis of the content of the most respected journals in the field (Journal of Consumer Research (JCR), Journal of Marketing (JM), Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), European Journal of Marketing (EJM), International Market Research (IMR), International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM), Association of Consumer Research (ACR) and Journal of Business Research (JBR) showed that research with ethnic consumers is underexplored. Since the year 2000, less than 150 papers have been published in these journals. Furthermore, references of these papers are lacking in recent literature. Overall, the papers are biased towards the US, Canada, and Australia, with an increased interest in enhancing ethnic consumer’ research in the UK. Professor Padilla (2015) indicated at the Ethnic Marketing Conference in Montreal, Canada that acculturation research with ethnic consumers lacks in recent operationalisation of acculturation research.

The literature review found that the first limitation is the use of acculturation measurements of the 20^th century in 21^st century research. Secondly, acculturation levels and outcomes are old instruments from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Immigrants can prefer all four outcomes of acculturation in their consumption choice, but differ in their life domain because acculturation is context-sensitive. Research should enhance consumer acculturation and ethnic marketing in any subgroup. Ethnic marketing is distinct from cross-cultural and multicultural marketing (Cui, 1997). Therefore creating marketing strategy to reach an ethnic target group and reach ethnic consumers requires operationalisation and conceptualisation of Immigrants’ consumer acculturation models with new instruments that add to knowledge.

Firstly, authors agree to consider the bidimensional measurement approach to ethnic consumers, and therefore, Immigrants’ consumer acculturation research. The bi-cultural approach is central to the home and the host culture. Secondly, the extension of two dimensions appears to differ in literature. The domains, ethnic identity and media usage are applicable, but not equal to all groups. The concept of acculturation depicts an independent process of the home and the host (Berry, 2009). Research shows a gap based on the methodological approach to conceptualise consumer acculturation. Studies on Immigrants’ consumer acculturation and integrative concepts remain underdeveloped (Lerman et al., 2009). Any subcultural or ethnic study provides different outcomes of consumer acculturation (Askegaard et al., 2005; Ustuner and Holt, 2007; Jafari and Golding, 2008). The complexity in consumer acculturation research and difficulties in the operationalisation of the concept has made their application difficult (Luedicke, 2011).

This is mainly due to the lack of a framework from which to study consumer acculturation.

Consumer marketing literature encompasses geographic, demographic, decision-making process, behaviour, personality, lifestyle, psychographic, segmentation, etcetera. (e.g.

Aaker and Fournier, 1995; Kotler, 2003; Jung and Kau, 2004). These different approaches make it difficult for marketers to select and implement strategies in order to treat consumers as a heterogeneous group instead of homogeneous (Bock and Uncles, 2002). Holland and Gentry (1999) state that:-

“companies targeting an ethnic market do not limit themselves merely to the use of the group’s native language in their advertisements, but draw on a full range of communication tools and cultural symbols” (p.5).

Language use is a good measurement, however, it should be combined with other behaviours (Jun et al., 1994; Lerman et al., 2009) and may underlie other domains (O’Guinn et al., 1986). For example, language at home (Valencia, 1985), with friends and family (Van de Vijver, 2007) or language of preferred media (Hui et al., 1992). Today, most ethnic subcultures have access to at least one mother-language television station, as with satellite-TV broadcasting services and internet, ethnic subcultures are reached (Craig and Douglas, 2006).

Literature suggests that the strength of ethnic identity influences the level of acculturation (Peñaloza and Gilly, 1999). In understanding the process of acculturation’s influence on immigrants’ consumer behaviour, ethnic identity is considered as part of the acculturation process. Ethnic identity has been measured in studies of consumption (Deshpande et al., 1986; Ogden et al., 2004) and used in acculturation scales as an indicator of the degree of acculturation (Laroche et al., 1990; Hirschman, 1981; Deshpande et al., 1986;

Donthu and Cherian, 1994). Palumbo and Teich (2004) argue that minority groups in Europe will not lose their identity gradually and assimilate, but rather that immigrants will in fact hold on to parts of their culture even though they will accept and adapt to European ideals and values. Ethnic identity has shown a widespread role, which varies among group members (Oswald, 1999; Xu et al., 2004; Cleveland and Chang, 2009;

Cleveland et al., 2013).

Culture has been identified as the biggest and most powerful influence in cross-cultural consumer behaviour (Cleveland and Laroche, 2007). Marketing research emphasises that the inclusion of culture is advancing academic discipline (Steenkamp, 2005; Douglas and Craig, 2006). The patterns of national culture help explain the differences in consumer behaviour across nations and these differences in adoption are ascribed to individual nations’ cultures (De Mooij, 2000; Takada and Jain, 1991). A host of variables have been shown to influence the acculturation process, including age, motivation for migration, social support, and ideologies in the host country about how immigrants should adapt (Berry, 1997, 2001). Behavioural measures include ethnic friendship (Xu et al., 2004), acculturation agents (Peñaloza, 1994), ethnic identity (Laroche et al., 1998;

Askegaard et al., 2005), and culture (Oswald, 1999). There is criticism however, that researchers have relied on a variety of instruments to measure acculturation (Lerman et al., 2009). Immigrants are not equal in culture and history (e.g. non-Western and Western), ethnicity (e.g. Hispanics, Turks, Asian) and the host culture they live in (e.g.

United States, United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands) which all influence their attitudinal situation. Therefore, immigrants cannot be classed as equal (Arends-Tóth and van de Vijver, 2009; Luedicke, 2011). Consumer acculturation and ethnic marketing has

increased our knowledge of ethnic consumer segments. The contribution of further research and the operationalisation of the acculturation concept should enable marketers to implement marketing strategies and reach these ethnic consumers who are growing in size.

2.5.1 Summary

The aim of this chapter has been to review the concept of immigrants’ consumer acculturation. This has involved examining the literature on the concepts of ethnic marketing, acculturation and its influence on consumer behaviour. The review examined the literature on ethnic marketing, culture, acculturation, consumer acculturation and values.

Section 2.2 examined the concept of ethnic marketing. The concept of ethnic marketing suggests that acculturation should be studied in the consumption context of ethnic consumers within countries. This section elaborated that culture is the most influential concept in ethnic marketing and consumer behaviour.

Section 2.3 first examined the concept of acculturation. This is further examined in the context of consumption i.e. consumer acculturation.

Following the concept of consumer acculturation, section 2.4 examined and considered various factors influencing immigrants' consumer behaviour. The studies reviewed presented a bidimensional model of acculturation and identified life domains, ethnic identity and values associated with the dynamic process of acculturation influencing ethnic consumers. This section considered immigrants consumer behaviour in an acculturation context.

Section 2.5 outlined the gap in theory and therefore, the literature review on acculturation, consumer acculturation and values provides a theoretical background for the next section, which presents a conceptual framework for the research and introduces the hypotheses.

Based on the literature review, the following will be used to design the concept of the impact of acculturation on Turkish-Dutch immigrants in the Netherlands, Immigrants’

consumer acculturation and the hypotheses for this study. To understand the complex phenomenon of Immigrants’ consumer acculturation fully and to develop the concept, the

objective is to assess consumer acculturation phenomena i.e. dimensions (Turkish and Dutch), domains (private and public, language, friendship), ethnic identity and media usage. Some of the relevant theoretical issues will be repeated for the development of hypotheses in order to achieve greater coherence in the presentation of the study. The hypotheses will address the gaps found in literature. Firstly, a scale of acculturation from psychology will be applied, including the bidimensional measurement of life domains, to have an integrative approach to measure acculturation (Ogden et al., 2004; Van de Vijver, 2006). Secondly, individual values (i.e. reference to country of origin and country of host) is addressed to examine bi-culturalism (Kara and Kara, 1996). The concept of home and host culture (Oswald, 1999) is compared to examine the culture influence on immigrants’ acculturation impacting consumer behaviour. Ogden et al. (2004) argued the lack of integrative approaches to measure acculturation and empirical research is required to identify indicators of consumer acculturation and to test the validity of scales.

This study uses several measures, including demographics, use of language in communications, ethnic identity, media consumption, as well as individual values, as the antecedent of consumer behaviour, and simultaneously to operationalise consumer acculturation. A study of ethnic consumers like the non-Western Turkish in a mixed society such as the Netherlands, a Western country, is largely under-explored.