Migrant Consumers Research Articles

The Development of the E-Commerce Market in Poland in the Conditions of Intensification of Migration Processes

The impact of the war in Ukraine and migration has affected the e-commerce markets of the recipient countries, presenting both opportunities, in the form of an increased consumer base, and challenges, such as the lack of a clear development vision. This paper aims to investigate the influence of migration processes on the development of e-commerce in Poland and examine the feasibility of using forecasting methods by e-commerce companies under these conditions for future activity planning. To fulfill the research objective, the following tasks were addressed: investigating the current state of e-commerce development influenced by migration processes; exploring modern migration processes and their impact on global economies; assessing the impact of migration from Ukraine on the Polish market; and analyzing a Polish online store to develop a model for forecasting data and planning activities under the influence of migration processes. To achieve this goal, three models were constructed: a multiple regression model to assess the level of migration processes’ influence on e-commerce; a neural network to forecast sales for a Polish e-commerce store; and cluster analysis to identify clusters of goods most affected by migration processes. The study analyzed the nuances of modern migration processes and assessed the reverse effect of migration as a driver of e-commerce development. Migration stimulates e-commerce by altering consumer behavior and logistics routes, increasing exports and imports, and fostering the spread of digital entrepreneurship. Using data from a Polish online store, the study modeled the impact of market changes on the company’s operations and identified the most significant factors. Thus, the analysis explored the impact of migration on e-business in Poland through constructed models. Regression analysis revealed that migration processes have contributed to the development of the Polish online store’s sales, thanks to the increase in migrant consumers and rising price levels. A neural network was developed with machine learning, incorporating macroeconomic and demographic factors into its forecasting typology. Cluster analysis was employed to examine the online store’s assortment, identifying clusters by sales volume and migrants’ influence. The analysis determined that, following the onset of the migration movement, categories experiencing a surge in demand from refugees, such as baby food products, appliances, telephones, furniture, and communication devices, saw the most significant growth.

Home culture consumption as ambivalent embodied experience

PurposeThe consumer acculturation literature argues that reconstituting familiar embodied practices from the culture of origin leads to a comforting sense of home for consumers who move from one cultural context to another. This paper aims to extend this thesis by examining further dimensions in migrant consumers’ experiences of home culture consumption.Design/methodology/approachThis paper analyses data gathered through multi-modal depth interviews with Southeast Asian skilled migrants in New Zealand through the conceptual lens of embodiment.FindingsBuilding on Dion et al.’s (2011) framework of ethnic embodiment, the analysis uncovers home culture consumption as multi-layered experiences of anchoring, de-stabilisation and estrangement, characterised by convergence and divergence between the embodied dimensions of being-in-the-world, being-in-the-world with others and remembering being-in-the-world.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper underscores home culture consumption in migration as an ambivalent embodied experience. Further research should investigate how other types of acculturating consumers experience and negotiate the changing meanings of home.Practical implicationsMarketers in migrant-receiving and migrant-sending cultural contexts should be sensitised to disjunctures in migrants’ embodied experience of consuming home and their role in heightening or mitigating these disjunctures.Originality/valueThis paper helps contribute to consumer acculturation theory in two ways. First, the authors show how migrants experience not only comfort and connection but also displacement, in practices of home culture consumption. Second, the authors show how migrant communities do not only encourage cultural maintenance and gatekeeping but also contribute to cultural identity de-stabilisation.

There is no place like home: Poverty and the squatter house

AbstractThe house is one of the most important possessions in individuals' lives and consumers perform several practices in order to turn this spatial product into a home. Building on the existing research on home and home possessions, the article challenges the western romantic notion of home by investigating poor migrant consumers' lived experiences with a spatial product that has material deficiencies and it is perceived as inferior by the members of the dominant host culture. Accordingly, this study explores how migrant and at the same time poor consumers turn the squatter house into a home. Through an ethnographic research, the research findings show how spatial, material, symbolic, social, and temporal dimensions shape the private sphere of home and how consumers individually and collectively negotiate all these of forces in order to turn the stigmatized dwelling into a home.

Exploring Life Satisfaction Among Subsistence Migrant Consumers: A Case in China

This article adds a new dimension of mobility among subsistence consumers to investigate their well-being during the process of rural–urban migration. Using social production function theory as the theoretic perspective as well as a mixed method, the authors identify three essential drivers that influence the life satisfaction of subsistence migrant consumers: financial resources, social connection, and sense of control (the last of which also mediates the relationship between social connection and well-being). Findings show that family closeness and social comparison orientation moderate the main effects of financial and social resources on life satisfaction. Family closeness enhances the positive effect of financial resources, while social comparison weakens the positive effect of social connection. This research contributes to the literature on subsistence consumers by introducing social production function theory into the subsistence marketplace and adopting a mixed approach to uncover the complexity of the perception of life satisfaction among subsistence migrant consumers.

Exploring Life Satisfaction Among Subsistence Migrant Consumers: A Case in China

This paper adds a new dimension of mobility among subsistence consumers to investigate their well-being during the process of rural-urban migration. Using social production function (SPF) theory as the theoretic perspective and a mixed method, the authors identified three essential drivers which influence the life satisfaction of subsistence migrant consumers, i.e., financial resources, social connection, and sense of control which also mediates the relationship between social connection and the well-being produced. Findings also show that family closeness and social comparison orientation moderate the main effects of financial and social resources on life satisfaction. Family closeness enhances the positive effect of financial resources, while social comparison weakens the positive effect of social connection. This research contributes to the literature of subsistence consumers by introducing social production function theory into subsistence marketplace and adopting a mixed approach to uncover the compl...

Does language homophily affect migrant consumers’ service usage intentions?

PurposeThis paper investigates how language homophily between service providers and migrant consumers affects migrant consumers’ intentions to engage with financial and medical service providers.Design/methodology/approachThree empirical studies were conducted with migrant consumers living in Chile, England and the USA. Participants were presented information on service providers, and language homophily was manipulated between subjects. In the high (low) language homophily condition, service providers were described as having (not having) the ability to speak the native language of the migrant consumer.FindingsLanguage homophily was found to increase migrant consumers’ expectation of control over a service encounter and, in turn, increase their intention to use a provider’s services. Collectivism was identified as a boundary condition. Among high collectivist consumers, language homophily did not affect service usage intentions; however, language homophily did positively affect service usage intentions among low collectivist consumers.Originality/valueThis work extends prior research on service provider language by finding a positive effect of language homophily on service usage intentions and by identifying mediating (i.e. expected control over the outcome of the service encounter) and moderating (i.e. collectivism) mechanisms for this effect.

Chinese relationship management: a qualitative study of banking in New Zealand

This study investigates the relational factors and motivations of Chinese migrant consumers towards financial service providers in New Zealand. Using convergent interviews, a deeper understanding is developed of immigrants’ relational behaviour with service providers. These relationships with service providers are significantly influenced by traditional Chinese values and guanxi and relational embeddedness plays an important role in how they are developed. The research contributes a better understanding of the interplay between Eastern and Western cultures in service relationships among immigrant groups. A general theory of the Chinese perspective of customer relationship management is developed. The implications for how marketing practitioners manage their relationships with migrant customers are explored.

National identifications as determinants of the reception of country-of-origin sensitive advertising

Purpose – This paper aims to empirically analyze the extent to which advertising reception among consumers with a migration background (German-Turks) is influenced by a person’s strength of national identifications with his/her country-of-origin (COO) and with his/her country-of-residence (COR). The focus is on Turkey-sensitive advertisements (ads) of telecommunication service suppliers in Germany because such communication measures are quite common and about three million German-Turks constitute an economically important group. Design/methodology/approach – Measures of COO and COR identification as well as of three ad reception criteria were obtained in a survey of 291 German-Turks and analyzed via moderated regression models. Findings – Strength of COO identification was a significantly positive predictor of the frequency with which participants remembered Turkey-sensitive ads for telecommunication services. Additionally, COO identification related significantly to two criteria that capture facets of attitudes toward such ads. By contrast, COR identification acted partly as a moderator which attenuated links between respondents’ COO identification and two ad reception measures. Nevertheless, German-Turks with a strong COR identification (i.e. “accultured” consumers) were still receptive to Turkey-sensitive telecommunication services ads even if their self-image was simultaneously strongly dependent on their COO. “Alienated” German-Turks who identify neither with their COO nor with their COR were least responsive to ethnic ads. Practical implications – The research indicates that marketing practitioners should not use uniform communication measures to address migrant consumers with a specific COO but segment this target group further by simultaneously considering their members’ COO and COR identifications. Originality/value – The contribution of this paper results from the simultaneous inclusion of both COO and COR identifications as factors explaining differences in reactions to communication measures among migrant consumers which share the same COO. Furthermore, the scarcity of empirical work on reactions of German-Turks to ethnomarketing is reduced.

Migrant Consumers’ Attitudes towards Homeland Products

This work investigates the determinant factors of migrant consumers’ willingness to buy products originate from their home country. The unit of analysis in this study was Malaysian migrants in the UK and the analysis was based on 330 usable data gathered through an online survey. The results indicate that the migrants’ willingness to buy their homeland products was significantly and positively influenced by the migrants’ levels of national identity. This finding suggests that the stronger the migrant consumers’ association to their origin identity, the higher their willingness to purchase homeland products. The study provides a support that the migrant consumers’ positive attitudes towards homeland products were not determined by the migrants’ degree of ethnocentrism. The present study has implications for consumer behavior and marketing in multicultural societies.

Shopping behavior of rural consumer migrated to urban area in the Indian context - An emerging market

The urban- rural inequality in market, as well as customer characteristics bring a major difference in shopping behavior and consumption pattern of the two communities. In India, a sizeable number of persons migrate from rural to urban in search of job opportunities, work, education, marriage and personal reasons. From the marketing perspective, migration leads to new market opportunities. And so, marketers have to come out with appropriate strategies to attract and retain migrants. In India a limited research studies has been done in this regard. Convenient sampling technique is used in this study. The survey was conducted among 74 students who have migrated from rural to urban region. They were selected from 3 different engineering colleges. The results reveal that the migrated consumers consider the following dimensions when shopping in the urban environment: they are shopping conscious, enjoy urban shopping environment, price and quality conscious, and compare different shops when buying. They want shopping to be recreational, price worthy, perfect and buyer oriented. They are unhappy with poor shopping environment, if any. These dimensions describe the factors to which the migrant rural consumers give importance in the urban shopping environment. Key words: Rural, urban, buying behavior, migration, migrants.

Navigating the primordial soup: charting the lived worlds of the migrant consumer

Examines two important streams of migrant consumer research, specifically the contributions made by the study of cultural values and migrant acculturation. Noting the inadequacies of focusing on just one single perspective, reports an interpretative research conducted with ethnic Chinese migrant consumers. Emergent themes are extracted to illustrate the lived worlds of migrant consumers as they negotiate their way in a new society.

Becoming Canadian: Understanding How Hong Kong Immigrants Change Their Consumption

l / THEN PEOPLE MOVE TO A DIFFERENT CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT, how do V V they change their consumption? Do they keep their old spending habits? Do they purchase the same set of products that they used to own? Do they practise value-laden activities in their new home or continue those of their home country? Until recently there have been few direct studies on how people change their consumption due to cultural contacts.' This type of change in consumption can be defined as consumption acculturation, the process that describes how people as consumers from one culture interact with, and are influenced by, another culture.2 The growing literature in acculturation suggests migrant consumers may change their consumption behavior in many ways.3 For example, the migrant consumers may (1) assimilate to the norms of the majority culture, giving rise to the melting pot model; (2) reject the majority norms and retain their original consumption habits; or (3) selectively adapt to the majority norms. To understand why and how people choose among these options, previous research has focused on personal characteristics. These characteristics