The impact of acculturation and country-of-origin image on emigrants’ purchase intention: A cross-cultural analysis

Abstract

The current consumer environment is becoming gradually more diverse and multi-cultural due to increasing emigration flows. To better serve and understand these segments, it is fundamental to comprehend how emigrants’ acculturation levels and ethnocentric behaviours affect consumer behaviour. Drawing on social identity theory and on mindsponge theory, this study’s key research question concerns the effects of both emigrants’ perceptions and judgements towards the home country and of emigrants’ affiliation level with host country culture on consumer behaviour. This study expands the acculturation and consumer behaviour literature by examining how emigrants’ country-of-origin image perceptions and acculturation influence consumer behaviour, assessed through brand identification, perceived quality and purchase intention, considering the moderator effect of consumer ethnocentrism. Although previous literature has explored the role of acculturation on consumer’s purchase intention, this question remains extremely complex. Previous studies suggest that a comparison between countries is helpful to get insights into the role of acculturation on emigrants’ consumer behaviour. However, most of the existing topic-related academic research only collected data from one country. Consequently, the current research focuses on the German, French, and the United Kingdom markets within a cross-cultural comparison that addresses Portuguese emigrants. An online questionnaire collected data from 2103 respondents from the three countries. The statistical analysis was performed with PLS-SEM. The results indicate that although both acculturation and the country-of-origin image affect perceived quality and brand identification, the outcomes of acculturation on consumer behaviour diverge across markets. Furthermore, our results demonstrate the influence of perceived quality and brand identification on consumer purchase intention. The moderator role of ethnocentrism on the influence of acculturation on both brand identification and perceived quality also diverges across markets. The results contribute to the increasing body of research on the effects of the country-of-origin image and acculturation among emigrants’ communities.