Yes / Purpose – 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.
Design/methodology/approach – 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.
Findings – 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.
Research limitations/implications – 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.
Practical implications – 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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/17293 |
| Date | 09 September 2019 |
| Creators | Dey, B.L., Alwi, S., Yamoah, F., Agyepong, S.A., Kizgin, Hatice, Sarma, M. |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, Published version |
| Rights | © 2019, Bidit Lal Dey, Sharifah Alwi, Fred Yamoah, Stephanie Agyepongmaa Agyepong, Hatice Kizgin and Meera Sarma. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode |
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