Exploring the Impact of Culture and Acculturation on Consumer Purchase Decisions: Toward a Microcultural Perspective

Denise T Ogden is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Penn State Berks/Lehigh Valley. James R "Doc" Ogden is Chair of the Marketing Department and a Professor of Marketing at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. faith Jensen Schau is an Assistant Professor at the Fox gymnasium of Business and Management, fane University. All correspondence should be addressed to Denise T Ogden Penn State Berks/Lehigh Valley, 8380 Mohr Lane, Fogelsville, PA 18051; 610 285-5156; dto2@psu.edu. The authors would like to expres their gratitude for the thorough, helpful, and encouraging annotates of the Special Issue Editor, John Ford, and the anonymous reviewers. This article is part of a special issue upon "Conceptual/Theoretical Issues in Marketing in a Cross-Cultural Context" edited by the agency of John B. Ford.

Over the last ten years, the material substance of literature that explores the composed of several elements relationship between culture and consumption has grown exponentially. single of the lessons learned from studying social psychology is that cultural variations have significant impact upon the way people view the world and that these views ultimately affect behavior (Manstead 1997) Seemingly, there is agreement in the marketing literature that tillage greatly influences the way consumer perceive and behave (Hall 1977; McCracken 1988; Clark 1990) The dramatic demographic shifts that are occurring in the United States work for as a catalyst to the inquiry of how intra-country cultural differences affect consumption behavior (Wellner 2002) Although studies dealing with aggregate national tillages help to gain an understanding of subculture (Clark 1990) or microcultures, the focus of this research is not international; rather the intent is to understand the impact of subculture many times referred to as ethnicities, within a national boundary. This paper look afters to explicate the impact of intra-national cultural differences within the specific connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts of the United States upon consumption-oriented behavior. From a managerial perspective, many companies are discovering that succes be pendents on utilizing opportunities to suited the needs of previously ignored microcultural assemblages Marketers, in order to more effectively reach their target markets, must have an understanding of by what means intra-national cultures impact product-specific purchases by the agency of consumers. The terms subculture will be used to indicate the ethnic subgroup within the United States. The confine microculture will be used to indicate smaller portions within subcultural groups. Both terminuss imply a theoretical relationship to a broader agriculture (Thompson and Troester 2002).

Research upon Subcultures within the United States

The international marketing literature contains numerous studies concerning behavioral differences in consumer across nations (eg Brass 1991; McCarty and Hattwick 1991; Hafstrom, Chae et al. 1992; Lynn Zinkhan et al. 1993; Nakata and Sivakumar 1996: Chu Spires et al. 1999; Steenkamp, Hofstede et al. 1999; Husted 2000) Although this research has made significant contributions toward understanding differences between nations, there appears to be a gap in the literature about subcultural differences within national boundaries, or intra-national differences (Andreasen 1990; Heslop, Papadopoulos et al. 1998) For example, in a review of consumer behavior-related articles in five top academic research journals from 1993 - 1996 Jacoby et al. (1998) place that research on minority collections was scarce. This dearth of activity may be attributed to what Valencia (1989) calls "ethnic marketing myopia from academia" (p.23). Concurrently, marketing practitioners have forceed that understanding culture is actual important when attempting to market to ethnic clusters (Gore 1998). Despite the increased importance of cultural-related research in marketing, solitary a limited amount of attention has been given to ethnic subculture and consumer acculturation (O'Guinn and Faber 1985; O'Guinn, to leeward et al. 1986; Kara and Kara 1996) This research gap handicaps marketers when making tactical decisions related to ethnic, or subcultural, marketing. An understanding of subcultural differences is essential for greater succes in comprehending and capitalizing upon differences that exist within a nation.

Holland and people of good position (1999) used three eras to describe the research upon ethnicity and marketing. The first era is pre-1960 when ethnic assemblages were largely ignored. The next to the first era began about mid-1960s and continued until about 1980 During this period, research focused almost exclusively upon intra-national subcultural differences between African-American and White consumer The third era, which began in the early 1980 and continues today, is depicted by dint of studies on a wide variety of ethnic collections chiefly defined by country-of-origin, that examine differences in tillage that drive consumption. We present the next era will be a focus upon microcultures.

Demographic Shifts An understanding of the demographic shifts within the United States underscores the ne for intra-national cultural research. As subculture also referr to as microcultures, increase in size, marketers must exhibit knowledge of consumer characteristics and group-level predilections to more effectively deploy resources (both human and capital) to fit and exceed the growing extremitys of these markets. The United States Census Bureau reports that African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians make up the fastest growing clusters in the United States. In 2003 Hispanics became the largest minority community in the United States. In a certain number of major cities, such as sees Angeles and New York City, the "minority" population outnumbers the "non-minority" population. The growing of ethnic subcultures in the United States is awaited to continue. It is estimated that by the agency of 2010, one in three American children will be African American, Hispanic or Asian (Schwartz and Exter 1989) Thus a replete one-third of the U.S. market will be made up of ethnic subculture It is essential to know if these subculture have the same consumption urgencys as the dominant culture and rejoin to the same to marketing tactics. Different consumer wants and responses require different marketing tactics and in more [i]or[/i] less circumstances, different marketing strategies altogether.