A cross‐national and cross‐generational study of consumer acculturation to advertising appeals

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -Previous research on global marketing has typically focussed on marketing strategies across national markets. Yet, the cross-national mobility of individuals has increased heterogeneity within country markets. The purpose of this study is to examine how immigrant consumers perceive advertising appeals in the context of the consumer acculturation process. Specifically, our study focusses on the reactions of Mexican, American, and Mexican-American consumers to puffery-laden advertisements. Design/methodology/approach -Using two-factor theory as our theoretical prism, the study offers salient hypotheses regarding consumer perceptions of puffery-laden advertising appeals, which are then tested in a cross-national experiment in the USA and Mexico. Findings -The results show that Mexican consumers are more susceptible to puffery-laden claims than Americans. In contrast, American consumers are more susceptible to advertising that does not contain puffery-laden claims than their Mexican counterparts. Interestingly, the findings also reveal that Mexican immigrants are highly susceptible to both, puffery-laden and no puffery appeals. The mixed results show that recent Mexican immigrants struggle as they transition to the dominant American consumer culture. First and second generations of Mexican-Americans, however, react to puffery-laden advertisements just as typical American consumers. Practical implications -The paper discusses relevant implications not only for the study of puffery and acculturation of immigrant minority groups, but also for companies engaged in global advertising campaigns in countries with diverse immigrant communities. Originality/value -The paper offers a worthwhile and unique examination of consumer acculturation in an international cross-cultural setting and puts forward interesting insights regarding the application of international advertising strategies.

Green Advertising Appeal and Consumer Purchase Intention

“…For Iranian respondents, 28 of them filled out the questionnaire based on the self-benefit appeal message and 29 of them filled out the questionnaire based on the other-benefit appeal message. Malaysians (representing collectivism) and Iranians (representing individualism) were invited to represent national cultural differences in terms of individualism-collectivism, a factor that might influence purchase intentions when exposed to different advertisement appeals (Aaker & Lee 2001;Hofstede 1991;Jimenez et al 2013;Lau-Gesk 2003).…”

“…Iranian consumers, who are presumably more individualistic (see Table 1), in seeing an advertisement promoting self-benefit would exhibit higher purchase intentions compared to Malaysian consumers seeing the same advertisement (see also Aaker & Lee 2001 In contrast, Zhang (2009) found that salient selfconstrual can shift in response to advertisements among bicultural groups. Other studies have shown that bicultural and recent immigrants are able to temporarily access the independent self when exposed to self-appeals, similarly, for the interdependent culture when exposed to other-appeals (Jimenez et al 2013;Lau-Gesk2003). In other words, it would be interesting to study whether the salient self-construal for both nationalities could shift in response to the advertising appeal types as exhibited through their purchase intentions.…”

Standing out vs fitting in: luxury value perception and acculturation

“…To better understand the impact of such intermingling of cultural and social influences among immigrants, sojourners and natives on consumption behaviors, greater focus on intercultural interactions is required rather than simple comparisons between countries (Tung, 2008;Yaprak, 2008). Similar to how migration from developing countries to industrially developed countries sparks interest in exploring the effect of acculturation on immigrants' attitude toward advertising ( Jimenez et al, 2013;Lee, 1993), country of origin stereotypes (Parameswaran and Pisharodi, 2002), food consumption (Cappellini and Yen, 2013), media consumption (Lee and Tse, 1994) and level of materialism (Cleveland and Chang, 2009), the current research focuses on Chinese consumers' acculturation in the USA and its impact on their luxury value perception.…”

Attributions of service quality: immigrant customers’ perspective

“…Such findings might reflect the contextual specificity of this study, which takes place in an immigration context that may be subject to influences of acculturation and/ or changes in customer expectations. Similar to prior research (Jimenez et al, 2013), this study sought to control for acculturation levels, according to the generational status of the respondents, but they did not indicate any notable influence. Even if they belong to the same generation, immigrants may be heterogeneous in the type and degree of their acculturation (see Berry, 2003 for a categorization).…”

“…"The Austrian culture is very different from mine" and "Turkish customs and culture are very different from Austrian"). The level of acculturation reflected a proxy for generational status, namely, whether the respondents' parents were born in Austria (Jimenez et al, 2013). Cultural importance relied on the single item, "The cultural background of the service employee is an important factor for my satisfaction with a service."…”