Globalization, Identity, Culture and Consumer Behavior: A Cross-Cultural Study of Chilean and Canadian Consumers

Abstract

Alongside the changes characterizing the economic and political environments, globalization is also affecting the social and cultural landscapes of peoples worldwide. For international marketers, a critical yet under researched topic concerns the effects of globalization on culture and ensuing consumer behavior. Multinational corporations are challenged to efficiently institute a marketing orientation across different cultures, and this might entail the identification of within-country segments (vertical segmentation), and possibly, the detection of between-country segments (horizontal segmentation) that can be served with a similar marketing strategy. To effectively do so, it is crucial to first discern which consumption behaviors are most likely candidates for convergence worldwide, which are possibly diverging, and which entail novel behaviors resulting from the transmutation of global and local cultural forces. For a marketing strategy to successfully appeal to target consumers, product attributes need to be harmonized with consumer attitudes and values, the latter of which are largely shaped by culture.