Challenges in the Era of Globalization - iaabd

Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference © 2011 IAABD
city well known for its rich mix of ethnic minority groups in the United Kingdom. The publicly available
statistics indicate that nearly half (45%) of the non-white in the UK are based in London and comprised
29% of all the residents (ONS, 2001). Hence, the study explores two specific issues which are indicators
of the gap it fills in the literature in relation to the studied context – Black African women as a distinct
important consumer segment, and their clothing consumption as a different significant consumer
marketing topic.
From time immemorial, clothing has been an important element of human life, it is believed that it could
be used to convey the inner self of the users (Moody et al., 2010) and logically could be one of the ways
people express their cultural identities. Meanwhile, women are widely acknowledged as a group of
consumers that has considerable interest in clothing as a fashion product. Hence, this study could robustly
provide additional direction for the relevant academic discourse; extend understanding in the extant
literature and provide valuable implications for marketing practice.
Theoretical Background
Acculturation and Consumption: Theoretical underpinning
A plethora of unequivocal evidence indicates that the world is becoming more multicultural and
increasingly diverse by the day as people migrate from one country to another, and learns several cultural
values in their host cultural environment. This underpins the relevance of acculturation in consumer
behaviour and marketing. With reference to Berry (1980), Martin (2005) traces the root of acculturation
to 1880 in the study of anthropology. In this context it was developed to understand the change that
occurs when two or more autonomous culture interact with each other. This corroborates the view which
indicates that it originated from the traditional concern of social scientists to have an understanding of
how immigrants adapt socially and psychologically, and adjust to new socio cultural environment (Park,
1928; Rogler et al., 1987; Rajagopalan and Heitmeyer, 2005). Hence, acculturation may be defined as the
process an individual or group undergoes in order to modify itself to a new, dominant culture, ranging
from rejection to full assimilation (Phinney, 2003 cited in Chattalas and Harper, 2007: pp353).
Consequently, one may ask, how would Black African women in the UK, a society with different cultural
values, react to consumption of goods and services when compared to the situation while they were in
their home cultural environment? Indeed, exploring this key question deeply is a warranted research
endeavour. As noted by Khairullah et al. (1996) some immigrants might retain a great many of their own
culture’s attitudes, and values and behaviour, others would readily adopt those of the dominant host
culture. In other words, acculturating groups enter into the process of acculturation in different ways and
to varying degrees (Rajagopalan and Heitmeyer, 2005). This lack of clear-cut and uniform behaviour of
people in relation to different cultural values of the host culture makes acculturation not only an intriguing
subject but also a great challenge for marketers that need to devise strategic means of satisfying these
people with disparate needs as recommended in accordance with the tenet of market-orientation (Narver
and Slater, 1990; Solomon, et al., 2009, Gbadamosi, 2009; Kotler and Armstrong, 2010). As shown so
far, individuals vary in terms of their level of acculturation. In the view of Berry (1990) cited in Burton
(1996), four models of acculturation are Integration, Separation, Assimilation, and Marginalization. In
this postulation, Integration describes the scenario where the individuals concerned adopt some of the
cultural values of the host culture while maintaining their own culture whereas, Separation explains the
cases where the individuals refuse to integrate into the host culture. Assimilation depicts the situation in
which the individuals adopt the host culture and forget their original culture over time. Unlike these three,
Marginalization model explains the situation when the consumers or the individuals being depicted feel
rejected by the host culture but they do not want to maintain their original culture. This framework is in
tandem with the explanation of Khairullah et al., (1996) that acculturation is a process in which the ethnic
consumers move along a theoretical continuum from low acculturation, where they maintain the cultural
values of their country of origin, to the high acculturation on the other extreme where the ethnic
consumers have adopted the cultural values of the host culture. Since, this postulation appears all
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