Consumer Acculturation in Multicultural Environments

Consumer acculturation describes how individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds adapt their consumption behaviours, preferences and identities when encountering a multicultural marketplace. This process unfolds across multiple dimensions: psychological adjustment, social integration and economic engagement. Individuals navigate between heritage norms and host‐society influences by adopting, modifying or rejecting products, brands and rituals. Acculturation may lead to hybrid consumption patterns, fusion cuisines and transcultural creative practices that reflect both personal identity and broader societal trends. Digital and social media platforms accelerate exposure to cultural symbols, enabling real-time negotiation of taste, style and values. From large metropolitan centres to dispersed rural enclaves, understanding these dynamics is crucial for policymakers, marketers and community organisations seeking to foster inclusion, support economic participation and promote social cohesion. Practical applications span from tailored product design and communication strategies to community outreach programmes that reinforce cultural well-being and mutual recognition.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Research from all publishers

Recent qualitative work has introduced two acculturative orientations—essentialism and boundary spanning—to explain how South Asian diasporas negotiate food consumption in both personal and occupational contexts. This study reveals how individuals draw selectively on cultural repositories to manage social and professional identities in multicultural settings. Recent investigation of Taiwanese migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic highlights a “coping paradox” whereby well-integrated individuals were compelled to re-evaluate their attachment to host institutions. Disruptions to public health structures forced a shift towards separation strategies, underscoring the complex interplay between crisis contexts and cultural adaptation. A novel concept of boundary interweaving examines how market actors—including consumers, sellers and policymakers—jointly construct new cultural boundaries in food markets. This multi-level analysis demonstrates that interwoven boundaries foster social inclusion and enhance quality of life by encouraging collaborative rituals across macro, meso and micro strata of the marketing system.

Consumer Acculturation in Multicultural Environments publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in consumer acculturation in multicultural environments across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Acculturation: The process through which individuals adopt, adapt or resist cultural elements of a host society while retaining aspects of their heritage culture.

Biculturalism: The simultaneous identification with and internalisation of two distinct cultural frameworks.

Boundary spanning: Strategies by which individuals bridge or traverse cultural divides to integrate elements from multiple cultures.

Essentialism: A framework positing that certain cultural attributes are intrinsic and unchanging within a cultural group.

Boundary interweaving: The creation of novel cultural boundaries through interaction among diverse market actors across different system levels.

References

1. (Im)migrants’ appropriation of culture: Reciprocal influence of personal and work contexts. Journal of World Business (2023).
2. Acculturating again: Taiwanese migrants' enduring COVID-19 coping paradox in the UK. International Marketing Review (2023).
3. The Impact of Social Media on Consumers’ Acculturation and Purchase Intentions. Information Systems Frontiers (2017).
4. Towards a framework for understanding ethnic consumers’ acculturation strategies in a multicultural environment. International Marketing Review (2019).
5. Boundary Interweaving: The Boundary-Making Strategy for Multicultural Coexistence in Marketing Systems. Journal of Macromarketing (2024).