Ethnicity and Consumption

Abstract

This paper reviews the literature that explores the relationship between ethnic identities and food consumption, with particular reference to business management studies. It focuses on the food shopping practices of south Asians in Britain in the period 1947 to 1975, to illustrate the need for more historically contextualised studies that can provide a more nuanced exploration of any interconnections between ethnic identity and shopping behaviour. The paper draws on a reasonably long standing interest in ethnicity and consumption in marketing studies, and explores the conceptual use of acculturation within this literature. The arguments put forward are framed by recent interdisciplinary studies of the broader relationship between consumption and identity, which stress the importance of contextualizing any influence of ethnic identifications through a wider consideration of other factors including societal status, gender and age, rather than give it singular treatment. The paper uses a body of empirical research drawn from recent oral histories, to explore how these factors informed everyday shopping practices among south Asians in Britain. It examines some of the shopping and wider food provisioning strategies adopted by early immigrants on arrival in Britain. It considers the interaction between the south Asian population and the changing retail structure, in the context of the development of self service and the supermarket. Finally, it demonstrates how age, gender and socio economic status interacted with ethnic identities to produce variations in shopping patterns.

Educational attainment and housework participation among Japanese, Taiwanese, and American women across adult life transitions

“…This type of housework is traditionally associated with women. Due to differences in the cultural associations of shopping with gender (Hamlett et al, 2008) and the differences in how grocery shopping is done in three countries, we decided to restrict housework to indoor routine tasks only, which all three cultures associate more closely with women than men.…”

Acculturation and consumption: Examining the consumption behavior of people of Afro-Caribbean descent in Canada

“…Researchers have suggested that ethnicity, which refers to people who share the same cultural heritage, has a strong impact on the consumption pattern of ethnic groups, especially when they are away from their home countries (Adekunle, Filson, & Sethuratnam, 2010;Gren, 1999;Hamlett, Bailey, Alexander, & Gareth, 2008). The consumption pattern of ethnic Canadians is not well researched, aside from a few studies (Adekunle et al, 2010; Abdel-Ghany & Sharpe, 1997;D'Astos & Daghfous, 1991;Lee & Tse, 1994;Wang & Lo, 2007).…”

“…Analysis of consumption within a cultural context is complicated, especially in the case of African descendants, with differences as the result of the various countries of origin. Due to this complexity, it is appropriate to study ethnic behaviour by taking into consideration age, gender, socioeconomic characteristics, place, and generational difference (Hamlett et al, 2008;Jackson et al, 2006;Miller, Jackson, Thrift, Holbrooke, & Rowlands, 1998). While considering all these variables, this paper is an attempt to enhance understanding of the consumption behavior of Afro-Caribbean Canadians (AC-Canadians), with an emphasis on the vegetables they consume that come from their respective countries.…”

Status Consumption and Negotiation of Tastes: Anchoring on Ethnic Capital

“…Consumption is a social setting in which consumers, who are cultivated in a socio-historically structured marketplace, position themselves, form relationships, interact and compete for capital, power, and status through products, brand images, and consumption practices (Arsel and Thompson, 2011). Some of the influential consumer research that draws on Bourdieu's sociology focused on habitus (Saatcioglu and Ozanne, 2013), cultural capital and consumer (dis)tastes (Wilk, 1997;Gayo-Cal et al, 2006;Sandikci and Ger, 2010;Bean, 2013, Ustuner andHolt, 2010;Coskuner-Balli and Thompson, 2013), socio-cultural patterning of consumer acculturation (Ustuner and Holt, 2007;Luedicke, 2015;Hamlett et al, 2008), fields of consumption (Arsel and Thompson, 2011), symbolic capital, power and market dynamics (Ustuner and Thompson, 2012;Vikas et al, 2015), subcultures of consumption (Kates, 2002;Schouten and McAlexander, 1995), class structure and consumer identities (Ourahmoune and Ozcaglar-Toulouse, 2012). The findings of these influential studies show that there are still gaps that need to be addressed in Bourdieu's sociology when used to explain social life organized around consumption practices and tastes.…”