Cross-Cultural Consumer/Consumption Research: Dealing with Issues Emerging from Globalization and Fragmentation

Abstract

To understand the effects of globalization and fragmentation, macromarketing scholars need insights about links between individual consumer behavior and societal outcomes. The challenge in this regard is to create a program of macrooriented cross-cultural research. This article offers a crosscultural consumer behavior research framework for this purpose. The framework encompasses four key areas of consumer behavior that are related to the forces of globalization and fragmentation, including the environment, identity, wellbeing, and market structure and policy. A discussion of these substantive areas is followed by a suggested macro- microoriented research agenda and a call for paradigm plurality in pursuing this agenda.