Need for and Development of a Consumer Acculturation Tool: Index Development and Scale Refinement

摘要

With many cultural groups immigrating and transferring their entire lives into the U.S.,there is of ten a degree of adaptation to the new cultural environment.Cultures are constantly interacting and when someone moves to a new cultural environment,it is likely that someone may adopt behaviors and values of the host social cultural group.This is called acculturation and individuals will vary on how much they acculturate.Assimilation is a process,with a desire to adapt being a precursor for acculturation(Bun and Kiong 1992).Someone may not currently be at their desired level of acculturation,but they may have a strong desire to acculturate or assimilate.If marketers understand a consumer's desire to acculturate,then they can serve them based on how they wish to be served,not on their current level of acculturation or even on how they look(ethnicity).While there are many scales to measure immigrants'acculturation,none of the existing tools conceptualize assimilation as a process;specifically,they do not measure an individual's desire or propensity to assimilate to the host environment.This research addresses this gap in the conceptualization and measurement of assimilation.