Sustainable Migrant Consumers: Recall the Past and Shape the Future

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In our contemporary multicultural world, there is continuous movement of people, products and companies across borders. When moving into a new environment, people have to adapt their behaviors and engage in the new cultural products and services in order to conduct their daily practices. They acquire, use and exchange products and services to create social and cultural meanings in their possessions. This has made consumption becoming both an economic and a cultural phenomenon. However, the knowledge on the consumption in the global reality of inter cultural interaction is still far from satisfactory. To have a better cross-cultural understanding, identity negotiation and consumption experiences of people who move across borders need to be explored. Migrants offer the unique opportunity to clarify two issues of interest in the cultures of consumption: the cultural meanings and the identity-constructive consumption. Moreover, previous research suggests the need to study how these migrant consumers socially construct the culture of consumption they are encountering. This study investigates the meanings of possession rituals that migrant consumers acquire and their role in the construction of identity. We focus particularly on migrant consumption during the transitional periods. Participant observation, in-depth interviews and artefacts reveal how the roles of consumption take part in structuring consumers’ social and cultural identities and their well-being.

Stream: Cultural Sustainability

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Theeranuch Pusaksrikit is a PhD candidate in the Department of Marketing International Business and Strategy at the University of Manchester, UK. She earned a MBA from Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada in 2002. Her primary area of research interest is in the study of self-acquisition consumer behavior and how ethnicity and gender shape the consumption rituals.

Professor Kang joined Manchester Business School in June 2000 after serving nine years on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She received her BSc from Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea; her MSc from Colorado State University, USA and a PhD from the University of Minnesota, USA. At UW - Madison she lectured on consumer behavior, consumer research and retail management topics at graduate and undergraduate levels. She was elected as a member of the Teaching Academy at UW - Madison. Her research centers on expanding our knowledge of the effects of culture in the marketplace as well as influences of ethnicity and acculturation on marketing practices and consumer behavior. She is currently involved in projects investigating consumer shopping values and market segmentation. Professor Kang received several national/international awards for her research and actively publishes her work in various academic research journals, including International Marketing Review, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, International Journal of Commerce and Management, International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, Journal of Small Business Management and Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.