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Consumer acculturation theory:

(crossing) conceptual boundaries
a
Marius K. Luedicke
a
Department of Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism,
University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
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To cite this article: Marius K. Luedicke (2011): Consumer acculturation theory: (crossing)
conceptual boundaries, Consumption Markets & Culture, 14:3, 223-244
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Consumption Markets & Culture
Vol. 14, No. 3, September 2011, 223– 244
Consumer acculturation theory: (crossing) conceptual boundaries

Marius K. Luedicke∗
Department of Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism, University of Innsbruck,

Innsbruck, Austria
Consumer acculturation theorists have developed an insightful body of literature

about the ways in which migrants adapt to foreign cultures via consumption. The
present paper revisits 14 key studies from this field to highlight its most important
Downloaded by [Brown University] at 05:24 06 November 2012
contributions, critique its conceptual boundaries, and present cases of conceptual

border crossings that indicate an emerging need for a broader conceptualization
of the phenomenon. The paper closes by introducing a model that frames consumer
acculturation as a complex system of recursive socio-cultural adaptation, and
discusses its implications for future research.
Keywords: integration; consumer acculturation; acculturation agents; social
systems; assimilation; nationality; culture; migration; immigration
Emigration to industrialized Western nations has grown significantly in recent years.

Since 1980, the USA alone has taken in 12 million new legal residents (Rytina
2009) and about 10 million unauthorized immigrants (Hoefer, Rytina, and Baker
2009). The integration of individuals with different cultural backgrounds into a
nation’s political, legal, educational, and cultural landscape rates among the top 10
current public policy concerns of many Western nations (NCSL 2008). Bets are that
insufficient integration will eventually produce explosive identity conflicts (Rudmin
2003; Üstüner and Holt 2007), intra-national cultural clashes (Huntington 1993), a
surge of “wasted lives” (Bauman 2004; Davis 2006), and even a demise of democracy
(Barber 1995).
For migrants, border crossings typically initiate an intricate process of socio-cultural
adaptation to unfamiliar economic (income, status), biological (food, health), physical
(urbanization), social (family, friendships, discrimination), and cultural (clothing, reli-
gion, language) conditions that often creates significant psychological stress (Berry and
Sam 1997; Marsh and Sahin-Dikmen 2002; Rudmin 2009; Simons 1901; Tajfel and
Turner 1986). Throughout their acculturation – that is, “what happens to individuals,
who have developed in one cultural context, when they attempt to live in a new cultural
context” (Berry 1997, 5; Simons 1901; Teske and Nelson 1974) – migrants adopt either
assimilation, integration, segregation, or marginalization strategies, depending on their
attitudes towards original and new cultural contexts (Berry 1980, 1997). Some
migrants, for instance, decide to “integrate” by maintaining ties to their original cultures
while adopting some practices and beliefs of their local peers. Others “segregate” by
entirely maintaining their primary socialization without adopting local cultural habits.
∗
Email: myself@mariusluedicke.de
ISSN 1025-3866 print/ISSN 1477-223X online

# 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/10253866.2011.574824
http://www.informaworld.com
224 M.K. Luedicke
In the 1980s, consumer researchers became interested in exploring the complexities

of migrants’ adaptation to Western consumer cultures, that is, to cultural conditions
where the self is largely defined through consumption (Cross 2000). Consumer
acculturation scholars Reilly and Wallendorf (Reilly and Wallendorf 1984, 1987;
Wallendorf and Reilly 1983b), Saegert, Hoover, and Hilger (1985), and Desphande,
Hoyer, and Donthu (1986) established the field of “consumer acculturation research”
by assessing the levels of assimilation through differences in consumption choices
vis-à-vis American mainstream consumers. Breaking with these authors’ theory of
gradual assimilation, Peñaloza (1989, 1994, 1995), Oswald (1999), and Askegaard,
Arnould, and Kjeldgaard (2005) established the “postassimilationist” view – that
migrants’ identity projects and outcomes significantly depended on their economic,
social, and cultural capital, leaving some marginalized with shattered hopes and dreams
(Üstüner and Holt 2007) and others assimilated to an ethnic subculture (Peñaloza 1994).
In concert, consumer acculturation research has generated a wealth of knowledge
useful for theoreticians, marketers, politicians, and social activists that seek to better
understand, and potentially act upon, the lifeworlds of migrant consumers under
diverse socio-cultural conditions. While making their contributions, these “path-
making” studies have also contoured the boundaries of consumer acculturation as
a field of research. More specifically, they cumulatively suggest that consumer accul-
turation research revolves around theories about migrant identity projects in times of
transition, about the acculturation agents that are involved in this process, and about
the kinds of outcomes (e.g., integration, resistance, or pendulism) that are produced
under different national–cultural conditions (e.g., in North America, Denmark, or
Turkey).
The first goal of this paper is to discuss how prior studies, by suggesting a bounded
set of phenomena and suitable methods, constrain the realm of possibilities for future
consumer acculturation research. Its second goal is to combine selected cases of
conceptual boundary crossing with indexical empirical evidence from a European
interpretive study to develop a broader model of consumer acculturation. This model
conceptualizes consumer acculturation as a set of interdependent, consumption-
mediated social phenomena that occur within complex networks of socio-cultural
adaptation.
To best deliver on these goals, this paper selectively revisits 14 influential consumer
acculturation studies in the light of the conceptual boundaries that they have collec-
tively built – by providing certain theoretical definitions of identity building and accul-
turation agents, and by focusing on single-sided ethnographic methods – and highlights
studies that have selectively crossed these boundaries. The paper comes to a close with
a discussion about an alternative model of consumer acculturation and a suggestion for
the roads that future research could take.
Consumer acculturation theory revisited

The field of consumer acculturation research was significantly shaped by 14 influential
studies published in Journal of Consumer Research, in Consumption Markets &
Culture, and in Advances in Consumer Research (i.e., Askegaard, Arnould, and
Kjeldgaard 2005; Desphande, Hoyer, and Donthu 1986; Hirschman 1981; Lindridge,
Hogg, and Shah 2004; Mehta and Belk 1991; O’Guinn, Lee, and Faber 1986;
Oswald 1999; Peñaloza 1989, 1994; Peñaloza and Gilly 1999; Saegert, Hoover, and
Hilger 1985; Thompson and Tambyah 1999; Üstüner and Holt 2007; Wallendorf and
Consumption Markets & Culture 225
Reilly 1983a). These studies illuminated and theorized on the actual socio-cultural and
commercial dynamics that are a result of migrants moving between various (low- to
high-income) social contexts. Many of these studies appear to be also interested in
offering practical insights for commercial and political decision making in the interests
of marginalized migrants. These publications were often inspired by sociological and
psychological acculturation theory (often associated with the influential work of
Berry and colleagues (Berry 1980, 1997, 2001; Berry et al. 1989)), but decidedly differ-
ent because of their focus on consumption contexts and (later) interpretive empirical
methods. The 14 studies selected here took a leading role in the development of
consumer acculturation theory by defining its phenomenological scope, its key
theoretical concepts, and its most useful methods.
This consumer acculturation literature broadly follows two waves of research that
are distinct in their goals and methods. In the following outline of these two waves,
the term “local” will be used to describe citizens with primary socialization and a
lengthy family history in the context under study, whereas “migrants” shall refer to
individuals that have crossed national, social, and/or cultural borders within the span
of two preceding generations.
The first wave: assessing migrants’ consumption patterns

Consumer acculturation research started as a field of study interested in exploring why
consumption patterns of immigrant groups differ from those of their local peers and
what these differences reveal about the immigrants’ level of assimilation to a local
cultural context. Wallendorf and Reilly (Reilly and Wallendorf 1987; Wallendorf
and Reilly 1983b, 300), for instance, illuminated that the “consumption behavior pat-
terns of Mexican-Americans cannot be viewed as a simple median between that of the
Mexicans and that of the Anglos,” as proposed by the dominant Berry model (Berry
1997), but that Mexican immigrants, who often immigrate with high hopes of personal
gain, sometimes “over-assimilate” to an internalized, but outdated, Anglo-American
cultural style. Mehta and Belk (1991, 408) reported an opposite, anti-assimilation
effect in a comparison study of favorite possessions of highly educated, upper-
middle-class Indians living in Bombay or the USA. This insightful work revealed
that their informants not only adopted American clothing, food, or furnishing styles
(as predicted by the assimilation model) but also used special Indian possessions for
“hyperidentification” with their native, but outdated, cultural context. Together these
studies demonstrate the influence (and inertia) of imagined original (Ger and Øster-
gaard 1998; Mehta and Belk 1991) and local (Wallendorf and Reilly 1983b) cultural
styles on immigrants’ über- or anti-assimilative consumption.
Building on Hirschman (1981), Desphande, Hoyer, and Donthu (1986) were among
the first consumer researchers to assess behavioral differences not only between ethnic
immigrant and dominant groups but also between consumers of the same ethnic
background. Desphande, Hoyer, and Donthu’s insightful study (1986) demonstrates
that measures of brand loyalty, attitudes towards business, or the use of media not
only differ between ethnic and dominant consumers (as widely recognized in
prior work) but also among ethnic consumers with different strengths of “ethnic
identification.” Much ethnic and immigrant consumption research published after
this work no longer assessed ethnicity via socio-demographics such as consumers’
country of birth, language, or surname, but through self-proclaimed identification
with an ethnic group.
226 M.K. Luedicke
Vis-à-vis the prevailing view in cross-cultural psychology, this first wave of consu-
mer acculturation research demonstrated (a) that the acculturation process does not
follow the expected linear pattern of progressive cultural assimilation but takes
“multiple, simultaneous and less direct paths” (O’Guinn, Lee, and Faber 1986, 579);
(b) that Berry’s model of “level of acculturation” (1980, 1997, 5) ignores empirically
more complex identity outcomes such as over-assimilation or hyperidentification; and
(c) that access to and consumption of institutional “agents of acculturation,” such as
American mass media, can strongly affect immigrants’ assimilation paths and outcomes
(O’Guinn, Lee, and Faber 1986). These important conceptual findings established the
points of departure for the second wave of consumer acculturation theory.
The second wave: exploring consumer acculturation experiences

Peñaloza’s groundbreaking work (1989) marks the beginning of the second wave of
consumer acculturation studies. She is interested in exploring how – rather than

measuring “how much” – immigrant consumers acquire the “skills and knowledge rel-
evant to engaging in consumer behavior” (Peñaloza 1989, 110) in a foreign cultural
context. This influential study on Mexican immigrants in the USA focused on specific
acculturation processes and conditions, that is, “the environment inhabited by Mexican
immigrants and what their lives were like in the United States” (Peñaloza 1994, 36),
that shaped acculturation experiences and outcomes. Using ethnographic, interpretive
methods, the author meticulously described the complexities of immigrants’ lives
between two worlds. The study revealed that, on a functional level, her informants
quickly adopted American products and services that exhibited a high rate of visibility
and social acceptance – such as clothing or automobiles – and also goods and services
that were best attuned to maintaining social ties, for instance, the telephone, food prep-
aration objects, or Spanish media (Peñaloza 1994, 49). However, on a symbolic level,
her participants often consumed these original American objects and services in ways
reminiscent of their Mexican cultural heritage. By combining functional assimilation
with cultural rejection in consumption practices, these informants managed to selec-
tively resist the push and pull of Anglo and Mexican marketers in unprecedented
ways. Peñaloza weaved these novel insights into an empirical model of consumer
acculturation that turned into an important reference point for many subsequent studies.
This study not only carried consumer acculturation theory into previously unused
methodological terrains (i.e., ethnographic inquiry) but also marked the field’s
phenomenological and conceptual scope in three important ways: first, Peñaloza
(1994) conceptualized consumer acculturation as “general process of movement and
adaptation to the consumer cultural environment in one country by persons from
another country” (33). Although the focus on the “general process” of movement
from one environment to another echoes a general directedness suggested by traditional
acculturation psychology (Berry 1997), Peñaloza argues that immigration does not
necessarily lead to assimilation (Askegaard, Arnould, and Kjeldgaard 2005, 161).
Second, the author maintains the focus on exploring influences from two outwardly
distinct but inwardly – to a large extent – homogeneous cultural environments, the
culture of origin and the culture of immigration. In this view, family, friends, media,
and social and religious institutions from both cultures serve as “dual sets of accultura-
tion agents” (Peñaloza 1994, 49),that is, people and organizations that help immigrant
consumers to get along and to reproduce Mexican or Anglo-American cultural norms in
their new cultural context (O’Guinn, Lee, and Faber 1986; Peñaloza 1994, 35).
And third, by modeling consumer acculturation as a process that leads to either of

four “consumer acculturation outcomes” (Peñaloza 1994, 48), Peñaloza echoed a
traditional approach in psychology and in first wave consumer acculturation theory
to assessing acculturation outcomes even though her differentiations were interpretive,
not quantitative. Her consumer acculturation outcomes – assimilation, maintenance,
resistance, and segregation (Peñaloza 1994, 48) – each express, like those in Berry’s
model (1980, 1997), a combination of affirmative and rejectionist attitudes towards
the original and foreign cultural contexts. But her Mexican immigrants’ resistance to
American material values and consumption practices moves beyond Berry’s more pas-
sively constructed “marginalization” strategy (Peñaloza 1994). So, together with earlier
consumer research findings (Mehta and Belk 1991; Wallendorf and Reilly 1983b),
Peñaloza’s study (1994) falsified Berry’s claim for a “universalist perspective”
(Berry 1997, 5; Berry and Sam 1997, 296; Rudmin 2003) by highlighting cases that
were not fully captured by Berry’s prevailing four-fold matrix.
Oswald’s research (1999, 303) of Haitian migrants in the USA added another
interesting aspect to the study of consumer acculturation outcomes. By studying how
Haitian immigrants wear and understand clothes and accessories that they associate
with their “home” or “host” culture, she illustrated the instability of acculturation out-
comes, neglected by prior research (cf., Lindridge, Hogg, and Shah 2004). She found
that Haitian migrants used consumption to “swap” between cultures and multicultural
identities, rather than to occupy fixed identity positions. Askegaard, Arnould, and
Kjeldgaard (2005, 168) strengthen these theories of identity outcomes and dynamics
by demonstrating that Greenlandic informants in Denmark “move between” positions
of hyperculture, assimilation, integration, and pendulism. These positions, again, differ
significantly from the strategies adopted by poor Mexican or high culture Haitian immi-
grants in the USA. Lastly, and most recently, Üstüner and Holt (2007) described the
“shattered identity projects” that Turkish migrant women experience in a squatter
camp outside Ankara. As they show, this frustrating outcome results from experiencing
modern (vs. postmodern) cultural conditions in which migrants without sufficient finan-
cial and social capital have no means to manifest their pre-migration imaginations of
upward social mobility (Luedicke and Pichler 2010).
Oswald’s study (1999) added another key conceptual element that significantly
shaped subsequent consumer acculturation theory. For theoretical purposes, Oswald
borrowed Berry’s constructs of “home culture” and “host culture,” originally created
to measure an immigrant’s tendency to accept or reject either of two homogeneous
systems of meaning. Whereas Peñaloza (1994) referred to these realms carefully as
“culture of origin” and “culture of residence” to avoid compromising on potential
cultural diversity, many post-1999 studies readily adopted Oswald’s dualistic home/
host notation without questioning its reductionist make (see Askegaard, Arnould,
and Kjeldgaard 2005 for a critique).
For better illustration, Figure 1 summarizes the central antecedents, resources,
influences, and outcomes established by the existing body of consumer acculturation lit-
erature. It represents the prevalent, cumulative conceptualization of consumer accultura-
tion as a process throughout which immigrants move from physical border crossings to
consumer acculturation outcomes, drawing on acculturation agents as they go and
coping with the socio-cultural conditions that they cannot control. More specifically,
the figure arranges the individual migration antecedents noted by Peñaloza (1994)
(left boxes); the discursive elements, cultural models, and acculturation agents high-
lighted by Peñaloza (1994), Oswald (1999), and Askegaard, Arnould, and Kjeldgaard
228 M.K. Luedicke
Figure 1. A synthesized model of consumer acculturation phenomena.
(2005) (lower middle boxes); the broader socio-cultural conditions analyzed by Üstüner
and Holt (2007), the processes and practices addressed by all authors, and the range of
consumer acculturation outcomes and movements between them that researchers have
identified in distinct empirical contexts (right boxes). Importantly, the existing sche-
matic models reflect a general directedness of acculturation processes, even though
this assumption is frequently theoretically and empirically rejected.
As the above model illustrates, these influential studies have cumulatively defined
the phenomenological scope of consumer acculturation theory, which concepts are key
to making sense of its empirical observations, and how consumer acculturation
phenomena are successfully studied. The following section discusses three influential
decisions that enabled a significant theoretical progress but also raised subtle concep-
tual boundaries for future acculturation research projects.
The impetus to frame theoretical decisions as conceptual boundaries was fired by
empirical data selected from a broader study of migrant and non-migrant consumer
relations in Germany and Austria. The study collected relational narratives of partici-
pants to better understand the influences of consumption practices on intercultural
relations. Select data from these narrations open the sections below to provide a
sense of (not proof for) the social complexities that can emerge when migrants and
locals compete for market-based (identity) resources.
Conceptual boundaries
Respondent: Last weekend, I drove to Munich in my 3-series BMW convertible. I went

with my friends. We were listening to music [Turkish hip-hop], cruised downtown, with
an open rooftop. We had a great time. Girls loved it too.
Interviewer: Did you ever receive any responses from people while driving your car?
R: It happened once. A couple of German guys. They look at my car and flip me off [show
the middle finger] and shout, “Look at his car” or so.
I: What happened then?
R: I wanted to jump out of the car. My friends held me back. I would have killed him
[expressed with a kind of gangster coolness]. Really. He doesn’t know me, I don’t
know him. And he flips me off??! (Akim, 22, Germany, parents immigrated from Turkey)
This noteworthy story told by Akim, a 22-year-old, second-generation Turkish-

German, BMW enthusiast from Berlin, recounts an overt conflict between a group of
German (“local” as defined above) and Turkish-German (“migrant”) consumers over

the locally acknowledged cultural styles of driving a BMW convertible car in Berlin.
The quote points at an embedded, multi-directional, and sometimes actively contested
acculturation experience. And it suggests a central role of symbolic consumption prac-
tices and brand enthusiasm for representing and developing inter- and intra-cultural
relations between migrants and locals. Although the second wave of consumer accul-
turation research has occasionally noted such embedded experiences and interactions
with locals, it has neither empirically explored nor theoretically unpacked or included
them in the conceptual models of consumer acculturation. As the following sections
will discuss, existing theory has – potentially owing to its conceptual boundaries –
thus far paid scant attention to locals’ responses to migrants’ consumption behaviors;
to potentially influential intercultural relations between migrants, other migrants,
locals, and other locals; and to what happens to the identities of locals, migrants, and
their brands when these diverse groups build their consumer identities on the same
(symbolic) market resources.
One: identity construction
We had been driving in the left-hand lane, but the other guy got stuck at road works in the
right-hand lane. I had not seen him, nor did my friend. He honked like crazy as we drove
by and he yelled at us “Why don’t you go back to Turkey!” I was soooo frustrated. It was
the first time I’d heard something like that. And I’m not from Turkey. (Said, 55, Berlin,
born in Iran)
The first conceptual border concerns the question if and to what extent migrant identity
construction depends on the discourses and practices in the social environment in which
it occurs. The consumer acculturation literature has established a view akin to an “indi-
vidual-level, voluntarist” model of identity construction (Üstüner and Holt 2007, 54).
In this view, migrants can mix and match “goods to forge a new identity” up to the
point where they “wear their ethnicity as a kind of garment that can be purchased,
sold or discarded, or traded as the situation demands” (Oswald 1999, 314). From
this perspective, mass media, extended family, peer groups, institutions, and consump-
tion practices serve migrants as overtly available but non-agency resources for individ-
ual and group identity projects (Askegaard, Arnould, and Kjeldgaard 2005; O’Guinn,
Lee, and Faber 1986; Peñaloza 1994).
The extent to which migrants adopt or reject certain discursive elements and cultural
models from home, host, and transnational cultural contexts allows researchers to judge
the “outcome” (Peñaloza 1994) of their acculturation projects, or their “identity
position” (Askegaard, Arnould, and Kjeldgaard 2005; Üstüner and Holt 2007)
between two cultural systems. When prior studies specified the identity outcomes of
over-assimilation (Wallendorf and Reilly 1983b), hyperidentification (Mehta and
Belk 1991), hyperculture, pendulism (Askegaard, Arnould, and Kjeldgaard 2005), or
resistance (Peñaloza 1994), they bolstered this belief that each migrant can actively
select “a particular identity project from the range of discourses that are available”
(Üstüner and Holt 2007, 42).
The resulting view is of an identity construction process that (a) occurs largely
shielded from interactions with the broader social environment and (b) results in distinct
and identifiable identity outcomes. This view imposes two boundaries on consumer
acculturation theory.
230 M.K. Luedicke
(a) Identity construction is conditioned

Philosophy (Sartre 1969), social identity theory (Brown, Tajfel, and Turner 1980; Tajfel
and Turner 1986; Turner, Brown, and Tajfel 1979), acculturation psychology (Berry
2001; Leong 2008), sociology (Nagel 1994), and consumer research (Avery 2007;
Kates 2004; Schouten and McAlexander 1995; Zaltman 2000) have long established
the idea that human identity can only be constructed in relation to a social environment.
Sartre (1969), for instance, generally maintained that to fully realize all structures of their
being, humans depend on observations of and interactions with other humans. In more
specific consumer research, Muñiz and O’Guinn (2001, 419) reported that brand commu-
nity members build social hierarchies through elaborate legitimization practices. They
show that the outside definition of a person’s “social fit with a society’s or community’s
shared norms” (Suchman 1995, 574) constitutes an important social process “whereby
members of the community differentiate between true members of the community and
those who are not, or who occupy a more marginal space.” The core members’ granting
of access to their inner circles is similarly bound to a stereotypical construction of roles –

a typical newcomer, or a fan of the oppositional brand – and how members of the com-
munity relate to them (Muñiz and O’Guinn 2001). The human use of stereotypes is also
important for acculturation theory because such shared beliefs of others that build and
“simultaneously disavow or mask” (Bhabha 2004, 110) socio-cultural differences can
significantly affect consumers’ acculturation projects.
Acculturation psychologists Nesdale and Mak (2000, 483) address this issue by
measuring the main drivers of identification with the host culture for migrant groups.
Collecting data from six migrant groups in Australia, they diagnosed that host
country identification is firstly driven by the immigrants’ attitudes towards the local
culture and society, but secondly and thirdly “by the degree of acceptance by
members of the dominant cultural group [and] the success immigrants experience in
the new country.” In effect, their participants’ host culture identification significantly
depended on “the extent [to which migrants] feel accepted and welcomed as new
members of the community, particularly by members of the dominant cultural group”
(cf., Leong 2008; Ward and Masgoret 2006). Ruggiero, Taylor, and Lambert (1996)
explained that, in consequence, discrimination by locals in public settings, job
markets, housing markets, and dealings with the police significantly leverage migrants’
tendencies to maintain their cultural heritage.
This interdependency of migrant identity construction, local stereotypes, and
attitudes towards immigrants did not go unnoticed in consumer acculturation theory.
Peñaloza (1995, 89), for instance, acknowledged that a “significant part of the infor-
mants’ consumer acculturation processes entailed learning who they were and how
they were valued in the United States system” and that learning “one’s place in
society, that is, how people see each other and attribute membership in particular
social categories, was an integral part of consumer acculturation” (Peñaloza 1994,
47). Askegaard, Arnould, and Kjeldgaard (2005, 163) reported on a different
outcome of external identity construction. One Greenlandic immigrant in Denmark
complained in their interview about getting “a little tired of all these Greenlanders”
that were (for her) unwilling or unable to adopt to Danish professionalism as well as
she did. The informant perceived collaboration with such compatriots as “kind of a
job,” that is, an additional, potentially avoidable, and tiring part of her work.
Yet, even though such cases of conflict-laden social interactions have been reported
in prior studies, their potential influence on consumers’ acculturation projects were not
explored or considered relevant enough for inclusion in consumer acculturation models.

Yet if acculturation is indeed a process of give and take to a greater or lesser degree
(Simons 1901; Teske and Nelson 1974) and, thus, a multi-directional process of
socio-cultural adaptation, a focus on identity building that depends mainly on migrants’
emerging attitudes towards migrant and local cultural habits but not on actual social
interactions with local peers may capture only one side of a broader, multi-sided
system of influences. As in the above case of Akim, Jafari and Goulding’s inspiring
research (2008) on the “torn self” of Iranian immigrants in the UK suggests that
migrant identity construction is also perhaps less voluntary than previously suggested.
(b) Identity outcomes are contingent upon context and perspective

The theoretical focus on identity outcomes perpetuates, in part, the traditional psychol-
ogy of the acculturation framework made popular by social psychologist Berry and his
colleagues. Consumer acculturation researchers added important qualitative nuances to

their quantitative measures without, however, abandoning its general logic of determin-
ing an identity position (i.e., assessed by a predominance of beliefs, values, and
consumption practices) somewhere between migrant and local cultural contexts.
Historically, the psychologists’ search for identity outcomes was motivated by the
desire to understand which acculturation strategy was the least stressful for migrants
and, thus, to provide guidance for political decision making (Berry 1980, 1997,
2001; Rudmin 2007). However, this project has, despite significant efforts, failed to
produce consistent results (Boski 2008; Rudmin 2003, 2007).
According to Rudmin’s sweeping critique in “Acculturation Alchemy” (2007),
acculturation psychologists have frequently misread and ignored prior findings in an
attempt to establish the potentially morally privileged outcome of integration as the
least stressful. In fact, acculturation “outcomes” are difficult to measure with quantitat-
ive methods since their evaluation is – as consumer acculturation theorists have
demonstrated – largely contingent upon specific contexts (see Rudmin 2007 for a
critique) and it may be different for the different roles that consumers adopt (see Jun
et al. 1994 for a review). Lastly, the level of acculturation stress is, according to
various authors, more dependent on situational factors such as job opportunities or
media exposure than on a priori attitudes towards migrant or local cultures (Jafari
and Goulding 2008; Jamal and Chapman 2000; Lindridge, Hogg, and Shah 2004;
Seelye and Brewer 1970; Üstüner and Holt 2007).
First and second wave consumer acculturation researchers introduced various iden-
tity outcomes in extension of the Berry model (Askegaard, Arnould, and Kjeldgaard
2005; Mehta and Belk 1991; Oswald 1999; Peñaloza 1994; Üstüner and Holt 2007;
Wallendorf and Reilly 1983b). But they have seldom focused on the psychological
or communal favorability of these outcomes; nor have they developed implications
for political or social remediation as suggested by Jun et al. (1994). If acculturation
outcomes cannot be seen as having more or less favorable results at individual and com-
munity levels, how can the continued search for yet another context-specific identity
outcome be both theoretically and practically useful? Üstüner and Holt (2007, 55)
and Jafari and Goulding (2008) recently demonstrated that the search for identity
outcomes yields important theoretical and practical insights if (1) such outcomes fre-
quently appear under similar (but not unique) bundles of socio-cultural conditions;
and (2) they can reasonably be linked with individual and social identity consequences.
More precisely, Üstüner and Holt revealed that rural Turkish migrants to suburban
232 M.K. Luedicke
Turkish squatters experienced “shattered identity projects” under dominated, modern

cultural conditions and argued that these frustrations may eventually turn into collective
resistance against the dominant class (as witnessed before in the Paris banlieue or the
Burnley race riots).
Another important difference in Üstüner and Holt’s (2007) and Jafari and Goulding’s
theorizing (2008) is that they highlight identity conflicts that are not defined by the
migrants’ level of acceptance or rejection of contextual cultural models, but by the
level of fulfillment of their individual aspirations, hopes, and morals. When migrants
experience, for instance, a “torn self” (Jafari and Goulding 2008), they are (sometimes
temporarily) betwixt and between opposing morals, public policies, religious prescrip-
tions, and popular discourses that make it difficult for them to find a suitable way of
consuming certain objects. For instance, wearing the veil is an option for Iranian
women in the UK rather than a duty, as in Iran. This alone produces for these informants
a troubling need to make a decision. But wearing a veil is also often associated with
Islamic terrorism, adding further complexity to the identity issue. A “shattered identity
project” (Üstüner and Holt 2007), in turn, appears when migrants cannot access sufficient
economic, cultural, and social capital to live up to their socio-cultural aspirations. Such
identity conflicts appear largely unrelated to the migrants’ original attitude towards the
UK’s religious freedom, or Iran’s religious prescriptions, so that these momentary iden-
tity positions need to be assessed on a different scale.
Thus far, few consumer acculturation studies have chosen to explore specific, but
globally paralleled, sets of economic, social, and cultural conditions in the mode that
Üstüner and Holt (2007) propose and to show how they evoke, more than other con-
ditions, certain identity conflicts that deserve public attention. Existing theory did
also not sufficiently address how local citizens perceive the acculturation efforts and
outcomes of migrants and respond to their evaluations in certain ways.
Two: acculturation agents
In the Schauplatz [a news show on Austrian television] an older lady from our village was
interviewed walking her dog on a street close to our mosque. She said something like
“You see? Not even my dog likes the Turks!” I was baffled . . . I know this woman.
My 5-year-old plays with her dog almost every day!! . . . Maybe the ORF has paid her
for saying that? I would have paid her more for not saying that. It was so frustrating!
(Erkan, 35, Austria, parents immigrated from Turkey)
The second conceptual boundary concerns the idea, scope, and theoretical use of
“consumer acculturation agents” (Peñaloza 1994) as a core concept for addressing
the social “forces involved in the consumer acculturation process” (O’Guinn, Lee,
and Faber 1986, 579). Acculturation agents were originally defined as “those individ-
uals or institutions who serve as sources of consumer information and/or models of
consumption behavior” (Peñaloza 1989, 116), including family, peers, mass media,
schools, churches, and companies. Immigrants draw from two distinct sets of such
agents – “home” and “host” (Oswald 1999) – when they adapt to foreign cultural con-
ditions (Berry and Sam 1997; Peñaloza 1994). In their 2005 study, Askegaard,
Arnould, and Kjeldgaard challenged the dualistic home/host construction of accultura-
tion agents by demonstrating that cultural discourses and models from “transnational
consumer culture” also serve immigrants as socio-cultural templates, thus constituting
a third set of acculturation agents. This and other (e.g., Jafari and Goulding 2008)
theoretical findings suggest that each micro-cultural context under study provides
another combination of social discourses and cultural practices that influence how
migrants come to see themselves and their relations to diverse social peers.
The theoretical merits of this broad conceptualization of acculturation agents rest
undisputed. However, the definition of acculturation agents as a largely passive and
robust set of discourses (or systems of meaning) could (a) direct attention away from
exploring interactions with peers and narratives that actively exert agency on migrants
– for instance, which are self-motivated, potentially self-interested, and not always sup-
portive; and (b) exhibit a tendency to essentialize “home” and “host” cultures as stable
systems of meaning that remain unaffected by migrants’ consumption discourse and
practices rather than as emergent social constructions (Nagel 1994). By broadening
the category of acculturation agents to include, for instance, cultural models of time,
space, having, being, and consuming (Askegaard, Arnould, and Kjeldgaard 2005),
acculturation theorists (c) complicated the task of capturing and theoretically differen-
tiating other types of acculturation influences, that are not “agents” in a strict sense and
influence acculturation in different ways.
Ad (a) agents are active influencers

Parsons and Bales (1955, 191) originally define “socialization agents” as parents, peers,
and social institutions that play a forming role in a child’s socialization process. These indi-
viduals or collectivities are full participants “of both the relevant interaction systems,”
interact directly with the socializing person and the social environment, and have a
certain degree of control of the (child’s) socialization process. This definition renders
the socialization agent as a significant and dominant individual (or group) that exerts
strong direct influences on the socialization outcomes (Dollard and Miller 1950;
Parsons and Bales 1955, 192) and who potentially follows their own (educational) agenda.
In line with this original idea, consumer acculturation researchers have explored not
only the interactions of migrants with close relatives and other social peers from the
migrant subculture (Askegaard, Arnould, and Kjeldgaard 2005; Oswald 1999; Peñaloza
1994) but also with “ethnic” marketers that participate in both interaction systems
(Peñaloza and Gilly 1999). These individuals and groups explain, guide, support,
and set examples for migrants interactively, just like Parsons and Bales’ socialization
agents. But many studies following Peñaloza (1994, 39, 46) rely exclusively on ethno-
graphic accounts from conversations and observations of migrant cultures and beliefs.
From Peñaloza’s set of informants, for instance, only three participants “had sustained
contact with Anglo-Americans at their job site” and none reported sustained social
contact with Anglo-American social peers.
Consequently, in consumer research the role of acculturation agents, and particu-
larly those that do not seek to facilitate positive intercultural relations, remains
largely under-addressed. Indexical evidence from many consumer acculturation
contexts suggests that co-workers, the sales personnel of local supermarkets, direct
neighbors, fellow brand enthusiasts, and other outside individuals and groups may
affect migrant consumers’ acculturation experiences as much as close friends,
family, and school peers noted in previous studies. But they likely exert influence in
different (sometimes more subtle) ways. As the above quote suggests, random social
observers sometimes reveal their attitudes about migrants and their (BMW) consump-
tion so bluntly that migrants’ attitudes towards local individuals and how much they
should be imitated is not likely to remain unchanged.
234 M.K. Luedicke
An alternative, more limited, but more precise view of the acculturation agent as a
theoretical concept would concern the active, agentic influences of human beings and
organizations that often impose their beliefs and values upon migrants. Such human
agents do not necessarily need to be supportive and friendly as the close social peers
that were previously recognized as agents, nor are their personal views independent
from those of migrants. More likely, migrants and their (unsolicited) human accultura-
tion agents are enmeshed in recursive webs of behaviors, observations, evaluations, and
responses that change the attitudes, values, and consumption behaviors of all parties
involved (Bhatia 2002; Jamal and Chapman 2000).
Ad (b) agents are dynamic and complex

Consumer acculturation research typically squarely anchors migration phenomena as
movements between two distinct and apparently homogeneous cultures. Following
the social–psychological research tradition (Berry 1997), Wallendorf and Reilly

(1983b) use the term “host society” (vs. society of immigration), and in so doing
imply that host citizens and institutions (and researchers) perceive migrants through
cultural models associated with being a “host,” that is, promoting a welcoming,
caring attitude towards a guest and a temporary granting of extra-ordinary rights and
appreciation. The authors also entrench the concept of “dominant culture” which
emphasizes, even more than the model of a host culture, the presence of power imbal-
ances and social differences.
This conceptualization has attracted severe criticism. Rudmin (2009), for instance,
condemned the use of these summary notions for exhibiting a “colonialistic subtext,”
Askegaard, Arnould, and Kjeldgaard (2005, 162) criticized the reification of
“census-style ethnic categories,” and Al-Azmeh (1993) charged these authors for pro-
moting “culturalism,” that is, a stereotypical condensation of a more complex, multifa-
ceted system of different cultures into “one culture.” Even though this theoretical
culturalism has proven useful for modeling consumer acculturation processes, such a
condensation of diverse geo-political spheres, racial differences, local (sub-) cultures,
and historicized social systems into two distinct “cultures” also produces problems
(and opportunities) for subsequent theorists. The potential consequences for consumer
acculturation theory are four-fold.
First, focusing on “culture” in the traditional sense of a largely “homogenous
system of collectively shared meanings, ways of life, and unifying values shared by
a member of society” (see Arnould and Thompson 2005, 869 for a critique) suggests
a potentially outdated degree of structural and ideological stability. It also seduces
researchers to essentialize a cultural system as naturally given, rather than historically
built and contingent. The focus on the home/host dualism also takes away the possi-
bility that migrants and locals acculturate not less to a national “host culture” with
its dominant attitudes, values, and norms (cf., Berry 2001; Jun et al. 1994; Singh
and Hu 2001; Thompson and Tambyah 1999) but more to multiple localized or
virtual (sub-) cultures that dynamically change as consumerist fashions come and go.
In the alternative view, cultural adaptation can occur without crossing national
borders, while crossing national borders can appear without a need for adaptation.
Whereas Turkish migrants can encounter insurmountable socio-cultural barriers
within their own country (Üstüner and Holt 2007), cosmopolitan techno music enthu-
siasts or surfers may cross national boundaries almost without leaving their subcultural
system (Canniford 2005; D’Andrea 2009; Deleuze and Guattari 2000). Differentiating
Mexican from Anglo-American, Greenlandish from Danish, or Iranian from UK

“culture” is, of course, useful for the purposes of these studies, but also potentially
misleading if it comes to transferring insights to other contexts or deriving marketing
or public policy implications.
As Sandıkcı and Ger (2010), Ger and Østergaard (1998), and Wamwara-Mbugua,
Cornwell, and Boller (2008) show, migrants not only acculturate to the predominant
social and cultural norms but also to distinct social, religious, or ethnic subcultures
which are their primary social “landing points” (Graves 1967). Ger and Østergaard
(1998, 52), for instance, argue that their Turko-Danish student participants engage in
many subcultures of Odense, Denmark:
These consumers neither behave alike nor do they simply adapt or resist. They negotiate
and mix different styles of clothing depending on the situation and the people around
them. Degrees of assimilation/adaptation, resistance/persistence, and hybridization/syn-
thesis vary within one person depending on the context.
This multiplicity of potential (sub-) cultural identifications seems to deserve more

attention in order to better understand the conditions under which certain cultural
and social realms appear to be attractive targets for integration and assimilation (e.g.,
a local economic system, soccer league, or BMW brand community), whereas others
(e.g., a local drinking culture or a materialist lifestyle) evoke segregation or marginali-
zation behaviors. Social psychologists working in the tradition of psychology (vs.
sociology) typically tend to gloss over these complexities by focusing on quantitative
acculturation outcomes in the dualistic scheme (see Rudmin 2003). Second wave
consumer acculturation theory is significantly more context-sensitive, but risks
falling prey to distortive methodical abstractions when adopting such constructs.
Secondly, the prevailing consumer acculturation models have not differentiated the
levels of social integration and the respective acculturation opportunities and barriers
that they entail for migrants. For example, in most studies, migrant consumers seem
to learn quickly how to master basic provision and consumption tasks in their new cul-
tural context (Peñaloza 1994). However, it appears that they find it more challenging to
become accustomed to the legal, educational, religious, and political spheres of these
societies. Understanding the multiple overlapping cultural meanings, values, practices,
social relations, and (consumerist) subcultures that characterize and organize a postmo-
dern consumer society appears to be quite difficult even for cosmopolitans with high
cultural capital (Appadurai 1996; Arnould and Thompson 2005; Fuchs 2001;
Hannerz 1996). In effect, migrants may consider themselves fully integrated into a
certain realm while locals may still see them as foreign and non-integrated (Ger and
Østergaard 1998).
Thirdly, consumer acculturation research has documented how poor migrants play
with high status goods (e.g., make-up) associated with the consumerist lifestyle to
which they aspire (Üstüner and Holt 2007). But owing to the definition of acculturation
agents as models, discourses, people, or institutions, prior theory has remained rather
silent about what happens to intercultural relations when migrants actively and con-
spicuously consume and culturally redefine the complex symbolic meanings of
market-based identity resources such as shopping locations, neighborhoods, or sacro-
sanct local brands. For migrants, using sophisticated fashion brands, for instance, in
a way that produces the intended status effects in the foreign cultural context (unlike
in the BMW example above) may require yet another level of semiotic literacy and
236 M.K. Luedicke
consumerist skill that has not yet been explored in acculturation theory. Matters become
even more complicated if these systems of meaning are recursively adapted in response
to migrants’ status-seeking consumption practices (e.g., some German respondents
claim to avoid buying the older 3-series BMW models for their “Turk car” image).
Fourth and lastly, establishing home or host culture as an almost robust collection of
values, beliefs, and practices directs the empirical gaze away from the postmodern
fluidity of Western cultures (Bauman 2000) that now change at unprecedented rates
(Fuchs 2001). Acknowledging what Luhmann (1995) calls the “re-entry” of the distinc-
tion into the system – a mechanism through which a social system reflects upon its own
boundaries – it appears particularly relevant for consumer researchers to study not only
how and why migrant and local consumers adopt to changing cultural meanings and
consumption practices but also how they mutually affect these meanings and practices
under consideration of their specific intercultural relations (Cross 2000; Fuchs 2001).
Ad (c) non-agentic influences matter too

The introductory quote of this section implies that (negative) mass media communi-
cations can significantly alter habitual relations between migrants and locals by
evoking and reproducing the derogatory cultural stereotype of the disliked Turkish
immigrant. By focusing mainly on close human and distant cultural agents (e.g.,
friends, family, home/host culture), the existing body of literature has sacrificed
some of the potential of identifying more distant human, and non-cultural acculturation
forces, and how they affect acculturation experiences. Prior theory demonstrates that,
for instance, particular inter-group relations (Berry 2001; Ward and Masgoret 2006),
different perceived distances between migrant and local cultural systems (Jafari and
Goulding 2008; Jun et al. 1994), occupational opportunities (Simon 2009), changing
associations with traditional apparel (Sandıkcı and Ger 2010), social status and mobility
options (Mehta and Belk 1991), gender ideals (Özçaglar-Toulouse and Peñaloza 2010),
and brand-specific consumption practices (Luedicke and Giesler 2009) are also key to
acculturation processes. These aspects constitute non-agentic, systemic forms of influ-
ences that potentially affect acculturation experiences in important ways.
Oswald (1999), for instance, recognized that local and ethnic goods are used as
resources for migrant identity construction, but does not dig deeper to show that
these objects and their meanings are often also resources for local consumers’ identity
construction. The above BMW-related encounter shows how a migrant’s “culture shop-
ping” (Oswald 1999) does not evoke a robust brand meaning. Rather, through mutual
observation and adaptation, the meaning of the BMW brand recursively adapts to the
meanings added by migrant and local brand enthusiasts. A conceptual disentangling
of the diverse human, symbolic, or material acculturation agents that exist in specific
contexts may help to bring to the surface such potentially important effects and
allow for a better understanding of the role of (unwillingly) shared consumption
resources for multi-directional cultural adaptation.
Three: single-perspective theories
In the 3-series BMW coupé that I drive [a model which appears to be most frequently
driven by young Turks] I quite often get funny looks and stupid lines from friends, like
“Hey, nice Turk car!” But I got it from my mother, so how could I complain? (Field
notes, Christian, 31, Germany)
The above noted conceptual boundaries are firmly connected to the use of single-
sided (not sited) ethnography as a dominant method for interpretive consumer accul-
turation research. All leading interpretive consumer acculturation studies considered
here are built on in-depth empirical accounts concerning the beliefs, values, behaviors,
and experiences of one group of migrants, their families, and their direct social net-
works. Using a wealth of ethnographic methods, consumer researchers were able to
evoke informants’ acculturation experiences and, sometimes, how they developed
over time. However, since these methods produced accounts solely of the migrants’
perspective, identity outcomes cannot be assessed other than by researchers comparing
the informants’ implicit or explicit attitudes and behaviors with extant social theory and
their own internalized knowledge about Danish, American, or urban Turkish cultures.
This methodological approach entails broadly established advantages for accultura-
tion research, but also has two potential problems. First, the interviewers are typically
firmly invested in the “dominant culture” and themselves convey high cultural capital
and academic credentials. As Ger and Østergaard (1998, 49) have noted in their meth-
odological context, the status of the interviewer can discourage participants from
talking freely about controversial intercultural experiences and latent conflicts if they
are “sensitive to their status as immigrants and wanted to impress an older Turkish
professor as bona fide Turks who are at the same time modern and well-adjusted
TurkoDanes.” And second, this approach also means that the researchers – who them-
selves typically have migrant or local primary socializations – largely take their own
(local) culture for granted rather than empirically exploring how other local citizens
interpret and react to migrants’ acculturation experiences. In consequence, researchers
have built a migrant-centric, single-sided (though multi-sited) theory of consumer
acculturation. As the above data excerpts suggest, however, a multi-perspective
empirical approach may reveal a set of “Doppelgänger” (Thompson, Rindfleisch,
and Arsel 2006) identities for locals, migrants, and brands that produce more or less
subtle tensions in the everyday social interactions of these groups.
A single-perspective ethnography is also not perfectly suited for illuminating how
legitimacy is granted and acculturation efforts are constrained by local consumers,
advertisements, politics, or business representatives. Certainly, the discourses and prac-
tices that migrants observe, and thus can reiterate in interviews, are key to understand-
ing acculturation experiences, but empirically exploring how local citizens invest
resources and narratives to construct certain views of “the nation’s ‘other’” (Peñaloza
1994, 32) is equally important for understanding how these others subtly construe the
boundaries of migrant acculturation.
The above example of the Turkish-German BMW enthusiast reveals that the infor-
mant is, from his perspective, firmly integrated into the German society. He has a secure
job, drives a high status Bavarian car, and still maintains cultural ties with expatriate
Turkish culture. From the outside perspective, however, the same migrant seems to
be construed as an almost ridiculous figure that tries to impress others but fails to
fully understand and correctly imitate German consumer symbolism. From the perspec-
tive of these outside identity constructions, the “integrated” diagnosis of this informant
begins to appear as more contingent upon the observer than previously accounted for.
This empirical focus may have come about because of consumer acculturation
theory’s roots in the paradigm of quantitative migration psychology (see above), and
because traditionally, consumer culture theory often draws its insights from anthro-
pology-inspired in-depth accounts (Arnould and Thompson 2005). In line with the
early Berry model (1980), consumer acculturation models approach and represent their
238 M.K. Luedicke
cases from the perspective of a migrant that arrives with certain cultural, social, and econ-
omic capital, engages in acculturation practices, and arrives at certain identity outcomes
under certain conditions. However, unlike Berry’s more recent and more complex work
(Berry 2001, 617), consumer acculturation theory continues to largely neglect outside
social influences, shared consumption resources, and the complexities of adaptation to
different social systems and sub-cultural groups within a foreign social environment.
Nevertheless, ethnographic methods, and particularly the interactive ethnographic
approach promoted by Canniford (2005), are perfectly suited to explore and disentangle
these multi-directional complexities (cf., Jamal and Chapman 2000; Leong 2008).
Boundary crossings
The above section has discussed how 14 key studies on consumer acculturation have
advanced the knowledge on consumer cultural adaptation, and, in so doing, shaped
the boundaries of this important field of research. It has been argued that by suggesting
migrant identity construction as being largely voluntary, by theorizing acculturation
agents as under-complex and robust, and by focusing on single-sided ethnographic
accounts, these studies have not yet sufficiently investigated how and to what extent
consumer acculturation occurs within reflexive and mutually influential networks of
socio-cultural adaptation. As Chrikov (2009, 87) notes in another context, it:
is widely accepted in the literature that this [psychological] form of social psychology
considers individuals and their intra-subjective experiences of sociality as basic units of
social psychological analyses (ignoring the role of the inter-subjectively created symbolic
forms and meanings that regulate people’s actions).
The “psychological social psychology” approach to acculturation studies promoted by

Berry and colleagues (Berry 1980; Berry and Sam 1997) appears to have been influential
in the history of consumer acculturation theory. Therefore, this body of literature has
largely neglected the more systemic market-, society-, and consumption-related
aspects that together define a specific “culture of migration” in any given context of study.
If one shared goal of consumer acculturation theory is to understand and conceptu-
alize the various forces that define, allow, facilitate, or complicate consumer accultura-
tion under specific cultural conditions, and to provide empirical insights for progressive
social change, it appears useful to approach consumer acculturation from a perspective
that crosses the above boundaries.
Ideally, such alternative frameworks inspire consumer researchers to explore the
reflexive interactions between local and migrant groups that compete for (or share) con-
sumption spaces, services, objects, symbols, and natural resources (Appadurai 1996); to
illuminate the ways in which outside social observers construct ideological spheres of
legitimacy for migrants and establish a specific culture of (im)migration; and to study
how migrants and locals weave market resources into these discourses and practices.
The model would also inspire researchers to specifically explore which consumer beha-
viors facilitate and which inhibit intercultural adaptation (Berry 2001; Bouchet 1996),
and how migrants and locals respond to uplifting and frustrating social experiences that
emerge when consuming sacrosanct brands and symbols of the other group.
The existing body of literature features two important studies that have ignored the
predominant model and tried alternative approaches. Thompson and Tambyah (1999,
238), for one, abandoned the Berry tradition by adopting a post-structuralist mode of
analysis (cf., Foucault and Gordon 1980). Rather than exploring outcomes, these
authors illuminated how highly skilled professional migrants construct “cosmopolitan”

identities from narratives of traveling and dwelling, and between ideals of nomadic
mobility and cultural adaptability. This study revealed a spectrum of countervailing dis-
courses that guide consumer identity constructions in such contexts (i.e., well-educated,
professional, high cultural capital, temporary migrants), thus acknowledging the
contingency of momentary outcomes (see Askegaard, Arnould, and Kjeldgaard 2005;
Lindridge, Hogg, and Shah 2004). Üstüner and Holt (2007) deviate partially from the stan-
dard model by focusing on a pervasive socio-cultural pattern rather than on culture-
specific acculturation agents. This study yields important insights about how certain
socio-cultural patterns limit the development of migrants living in such contexts anywhere
on the planet. These studies provide useful directions for an alternative conceptualization
of consumer acculturation and suggest alternative paths for future research.
The model of recursive consumer cultural adaptation presented in Figure 2 that
results from the above review and critique is one step on the way to rethinking consu-
mer acculturation. It no longer conceptualizes the phenomenon as a single-sided

process of acquiring consumerist skills and knowledge (Peñaloza 1989, 110) but as a
set of migration- and consumption-related discourses and practices of adaptation that
emerge between multiple stakeholders within a larger social system (cf., Sandıkcı
and Ger 2010; Lindridge, Hogg, and Shah 2004).
In this alternative model, consumer acculturation concerns the socio-cultural
discourses, consumption practices, and resources that affect how locals and migrants
construct their identities in a circle of mutual observation, translation, and recreation
of discourses and practices (symbolized by the outer arrows). Rather than adopting
an individualist or in-group-centric perspective, this model focuses on co-constitutive
social relations mediated by consumption and communication (recall the effects of
brand usage and media reports in data cited above). Following Thompson and
Tambyah (1999), the model proposes to explore socio-cultural discourses within a
given (and ideally typical) social context which are partly shared by migrants and
locals and span a range of identities from socially legitimized to transgressive. For
Figure 2. A model of recursive consumer cultural adaptation to migration.

240 M.K. Luedicke
example, most industrialized societies have cemented discourses of multiculturalism

and integration into their constitutions, political programs, moral norms, and brands.
But they also produce more local and ephemeral, but nonetheless influential discourses
of xenophobia, segregation, and discrimination (Marsh and Sahin-Dikmen 2002) that
affect the cultural adaptation system (see upper boxes).
The model equally highlights the importance of studying consumption behaviors of
migrants and locals that translate these discourses into practices (lower boxes). Such
socio-cultural discourses may evoke flourishing fair trade systems, ethnic stores and res-
taurants, multicultural festivals and the like, but can also be manifest as segregationist and
actively xenophobic consumption behaviors that reiterate classic trickle-down and status
emulation dynamics (McCracken 1986; Veblen 1927 [1899]; Üstüner and Holt 2010).
Together, these migration-related discourses and practices may define the bound-
aries of “legitimate” consumption behavior and access for certain groups in specific
social contexts (consider a new night club that bounces customers that are not part
of the targeted group) and hence affect the acculturation motivations, competencies,
and practices of migrants and locals. In this view, “outcomes” are of interest only as
momentary diagnoses for broader intercultural relations (not individual positions) in
specific contexts. Such outcomes provide an impetus to study the discourses and prac-
tices that have produced these specific inter-group constellations, to ask whether these
constellations also exist elsewhere, and how they could be addressed to better ends. It is
important to scale up the diagnosis of outcomes to the group level because individual
observers are likely to evaluate the intercultural relations between themselves and
others quite differently depending on their own position and situation (Chrikov
2009; Ruggiero, Taylor, and Lambert 1996). Hence, acculturation outcome measures
are likely more reliable (and meaningful) at a group level than at an individual level.
Lastly, since this alternative conceptualization no longer models acculturation as a
progressive, directed process of culture learning but as a circular system of mutual
observation and adaptation, cultural adaptation is no longer a question of voluntary
decision-making but is rather an inescapable fact for all parties. The globalizing consu-
mer cultures thrive on constant change, innovation, fashion, and variation (Bauman
2000), and migrants and locals become co-producers of meanings and practices that
affect brand meanings, and the social desirability of goods (Sandıkcı and Ger 2010).
Relevant to this view is not the specific path or identity outcome but the specific corri-
dors of possibility and what constitutes them (see Üstüner and Holt 2007).
By shedding light on these important aspects, this study hopes to inspire future
acculturation researchers to cross conceptual boundaries and explore why a predomi-
nant form of immigrant social organization is the encapsulated, isolated subculture
that exists at a safe distance to the surrounding society (Davis 2006; Peñaloza 1994,
46; Üstüner and Holt 2007); why migrant consumers are more often than not construed
as a “stigmatized, subordinate group” (see Peñaloza 1994, 47); how locals consume to
integrate, elude, or discredit migrant consumers; how a potential competition for
sacrosanct brands, places, and objects affects intercultural relations; and what kind of
consumption practices may facilitate rather than complicate understanding and inter-
action between local and migrant groups.
Conclusion
A review of 14 influential studies on consumer acculturation revealed a wealth of sig-
nificant knowledge concerning the experiences of, and conditions for, peoples that have
crossed national or cultural borders. It underlined the merits of the prevailing approach
to study consumer acculturation but also critiqued how certain conceptualizations of
identity, acculturation agents, and immigration contexts raised subtle boundaries for
future consumer acculturation studies. Building on the critique, the paper discussed
an alternative model that crosses these conceptual boundaries by imagining migrant
and local consumers as enmeshed in a complex, recursive system of cultural adaptation.
Cultural adaptation has turned into a ubiquitous phenomenon, driven by dynamic
narratives of innovation, novelty, style, culture, and perfection. As these narratives
of change travel with millions of consumers to the most distant social spheres and
produce all sorts of problems and opportunities (Appadurai 1996; Bauman 2004),
consumer acculturation researchers are called upon to reveal how and why certain
socio-cultural discourses, market resources, and consumption practices evoke certain
motivations, competencies, and practices of intercultural adaptation under certain cul-
tural conditions. Their findings can yield inspiring theoretical contributions and signifi-
cant insights for progressive social change.
Acknowledgements
The author appreciates the constructive comments of Eric J. Arnould, Søren Askegaard,
Nil Özçaglar-Toulouse, and Lisa Peñaloza on an earlier version of this research pre-
sented at the International Conference on Immigration, Consumption and Markets at
the University of Lille 2. He also thanks Dannie Kjeldgaard and Per Østergaard for
intellectual stimulation at the University of Southern Denmark.
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Consumer acculturation theory: (crossing) conceptual boundaries

Department of Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism, University of Innsbruck,

Consumer acculturation theorists have developed an insightful body of literature

contributions, critique its conceptual boundaries, and present cases of conceptual

Emigration to industrialized Western nations has grown significantly in recent years.

ISSN 1025-3866 print/ISSN 1477-223X online

In the 1980s, consumer researchers became interested in exploring the complexities

Consumer acculturation theory revisited

The first wave: assessing migrants’ consumption patterns

The second wave: exploring consumer acculturation experiences

consumer acculturation studies. She is interested in exploring how – rather than

And third, by modeling consumer acculturation as a process that leads to either of

Figure 1. A synthesized model of consumer acculturation phenomena.

Respondent: Last weekend, I drove to Munich in my 3-series BMW convertible. I went

This noteworthy story told by Akim, a 22-year-old, second-generation Turkish-

German (“local” as defined above) and Turkish-German (“migrant”) consumers over

(symbolic) market resources.

One: identity construction

(a) Identity construction is conditioned

of access to their inner circles is similarly bound to a stereotypical construction of roles –

explored or considered relevant enough for inclusion in consumer acculturation models.

(b) Identity outcomes are contingent upon context and perspective

colleagues. Consumer acculturation researchers added important qualitative nuances to

Turkish squatters experienced “shattered identity projects” under dominated, modern

Two: acculturation agents

Ad (a) agents are active influencers

Ad (b) agents are dynamic and complex

the social–psychological research tradition (Berry 1997), Wallendorf and Reilly

Mexican from Anglo-American, Greenlandish from Danish, or Iranian from UK

thesis vary within one person depending on the context.

This multiplicity of potential (sub-) cultural identifications seems to deserve more

Ad (c) non-agentic influences matter too

Three: single-perspective theories

The “psychological social psychology” approach to acculturation studies promoted by

authors illuminated how highly skilled professional migrants construct “cosmopolitan”

mer acculturation. It no longer conceptualizes the phenomenon as a single-sided

Figure 2. A model of recursive consumer cultural adaptation to migration.

example, most industrialized societies have cemented discourses of multiculturalism

cant insights for progressive social change.

Boski, P. 2008. Five meanings of integration in acculturation research. International Journal of

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

buyer behavior. Advances in Consumer Research 13: 579– 83.

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