Globalization And Its Effect On Consumer Behavior

090246000 Trends in Global Marketing Strategies

Changing dynamics of consumer behavior

due to globalization

Cross-Cultural Consumer Behavior

Rosemarie van Alst, vanaalst@lut.fi, 0274505

Susanne Rinn, rinn@lut.fi, 0274411

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Table of contents

1. INTRODUCTION...............................................................................3

2. THE CHANGING DYNAMIC OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR:

IMPLICATIONS FOR CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH..................4

3. CENTRAL AND PERIPHERAL CONSUMPTION CONTEXTS:

THE UNEVEN GLOBALIZATION OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR.....7

4. GLOBALIZATION AND RELUCTANT BUYERS...........................9

5. THE CHANGING CONSUMER IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: A

"META-ANALYSIS"...........................................................................11

6. WILL THE REAL -WORLD CITIZEN PLEASE STAND UP!......13

7. CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN GLOBAL MARKETS...................15

8. SYNTHESIS......................................................................................17

9. CONCLUSIONS ...............................................................................20

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1. Introduction

Nowadays we have are exposed to a lot of influences. These influences could be parts of

the new IT waves or simply from the fact that the borders from country to country

become ever open. In this context it is one of the main points for the future for companies

to have a look on the behavior of the consumers. In the world many different groups of

consumers exist and companies must have a look on consumers and their behavior.

Global and regional consumer segments such as global or Euro-teenagers, mature

consumers, ecologically concerned consumers, etc. are beginning to emerge. At the same

time, the resurgence of ethnic and nationalist identities has resulted in greater market

fragmentation, and has become an important factor impacting the attitudes and behavior

of specific cultural groupings and customer segments within countries (Douglas & Craig,

1997).

This first paragraph shows a duality in the effect of globalization on consumer behavior.

This is used as a starting point for this paper and a central question that can be asked is:

Is globalization making the world one market or fragmentizing the world even

more?

Our report will start with the summary of our main article about cross-cultural consumer

behavior. In the following there are five summaries of different articles, all somehow

related to our main article. In the synthesis a comparison of the different views of the

articles is made. We concentrated our view on the research of these articles to our main

approach "Changing dynamics of consumer behavior due to globalization". In the last

chapter we will give some concluding remarks and we present some fields for further

research.

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2. The changing dynamic of consumer behaviour: implications for

cross-cultural research

S.P. Douglas & C.S. Craig (1997)

International Journal of research in Marketing 14: p.379-395

Consumer researchers are increasingly exploring and comparing behaviour and

cognitions in diverse national environments. New samples of the consumer behaviour are

formed by the fact that it drastic changes within the political borders and in the spatial

configuration of the sales markets for consumer goods, which are connected with strong

sociological-cultural forces. Barriers between markets moved away through regional

integration, and created larger unified market entities. Consumers are increasingly

exposed to a myriad of diverse influences from beyond their national borders, because the

advances in communications technology are shrinking distances and forgetting links

between markets world wide. Traditional definitions of the unit of analysis used in crosscultural

research need to be critically re-examined in view of the changing consumer

landscape.

There are different changing dynamics of consumer behaviour in the world. In the

following a few are introduced. The first changing dynamic are the massive waves of

migration which are taking place, as consumers from emerging market economies are

moving to industrialized economies. The second one is that consumers are becoming

more mobile and travelling more both for pleasure and business. One of the results of this

changing dynamic is that the consumers are becoming exposed to the products, lifestyles

and behaviour patterns of consumers in other countries. There are some reasons, for

example that barriers come down (European Union) and consumers and goods