Special Session: Multicultural marketplaces (Theoretical and empirical ground advances)

Several disciplines such as sociology and human geography have recognized that the new era of ‘superdiversity’, where social actors all evolve in ‘lived multiculture’ (e.g., Neal, Bennet, Cochrane, & Mohan 2013; Vertovec 2007; Wessendorf 2013), poses new questions and requires theoretical development. Similarly, in marketing and consumer research, several authors have pointed to the need to distinguish between international and multicultural marketing (e.g., Askegaard, Arnould, & Kjeldgaard 2005; Craig & Douglas, 2006; Jamal 2003; Laroche, Papadopoulos, Heslop, & Bergeron 2003; Yaprak 2008). Large proportions of contemporary marketplaces become increasingly culturally diverse – in terms of their populations’ composition, the cultural origin of the marketers and brands active in the marketplace, and their consumers’ exposure to brands, advertising, media and ideologies from multiple cultural origins. Such continuous multicultural interactions and experiences facilitate the integration, appropriation and, in some cases, transformation of cultural meanings from other marketplaces to consumers’ lived multiculture realities in a given marketplace (Cayla & Eckhardt 2008; Demangeot, Broderick & Craig 2015; Eckhardt & Mahi 2004; Kipnis, Broderick, & Demangeot 2014).

While international marketing research has primarily focused on cultural differences between geographically distant markets and, more recently, on the globalization of markets (Akaka, Vargo, & Lusch, 2013; Cavusgil, Deligonul, & Yaprak, 2005), multicultural marketplaces pose new questions and require theoretical development to reflect and cater for the complexities brought about by the unprecedented magnitude of cultural heterogeneity and interconnectedness in the majority of contemporary national markets. The purpose of this special session is to spotlight some of the recent theoretical and empirical advances in the ‘multicultural marketplaces’ research stream. The session brings together studies that each deploys different research lenses addressing four areas (identity complexity, intergroup conviviality, differentiation of socio-political contexts and multicultural adaptiveness) recently posed as requiring development in the multicultural marketplaces paradigm (Demangeot et al. 2015).

Specifically, the study by Cross, Harrison and Thomas distinguishes unique phenomenological complexities of multiracial consumer identity and discuss whether and how advertising representations of multiracial populations affect these consumers’ perceptions of acceptance by the marketplace. Regany and Emontspool consider how the ethnic-focused product representation practices by retail spaces elevate recognition of cultural difference by consumers within one multicultural marketplace, contributing to the rise of new intergroup barriers. Johnson, Cadairo and Grier, conversely, consider the role of country-level ideological stances on cultural diversity in driving differential consumer responses to ethnocultural-specific meanings represented in restaurant environments. Finally, Galalae, Kipnis and Demangeot propose the concept of consumer psychological mobility to capture and explain variations in consumers’ capacity to adapt and adopt multicultural living as a consistent, active practice extending beyond cultural consumption tourism. The session highlights that mundane intersection of multiple cultural meanings and varying contextualizations of lived multiculture within societal ideologies facilitate emergence of new individual and group discourses informing distinctly different consumption expectations and practices. This necessitates innovative approaches to recognize and account for these differences. By empirically identifying specific challenges faced by marketing researchers and practitioners and debating their theoretical implications the session contributes to advancement of consumer behaviour and marketing research in multicultural marketplaces’ contexts.