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Introduction

This research attempts to examine the impact of loyalty program on hedonic consumption and emotional branding among U.S. Hispanics. I attempt to compare how consumer behavior can vary across cultures. Especially, this paper illustrates how other-focused loyalty program can affect customer behaviors with regard to emotional branding and hedonic consumption in the context of two different cultures. Furthermore, this study compares Hispanic and non-Hispanic consumer behaviors in the U.S.

Background

Other-focused loyalty program is associated with two representative collectivistic characteristics, such as family theme-focused and Hispanic community-focused. Research model shows the detail relationship between other-focused loyalty program and U.S. Hispanic consumers’ behavior. This paper categorizes other-focused marketing approach as family-focused and Hispanic community-focused emotions to explain how it functions among U.S. Hispanic customers. U.S. Hispanics tend to emphasize the importance of their family and community. This article argues that other-focused loyalty program may lead to U.S. Hispanic’s hedonic consumption and emotional branding positively. Moreover, I suggest the moderating role of collectivism in this research model. This research model explains that Hofstede’s dimension, including collectivism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance positively moderates the relationship between other-focused loyalty program and U.S. Hispanic hedonic consumption, and emotional branding. Collectivism is U.S. Hispanic’s unique and strong characteristic in terms of cultural dimensions. This research chooses this value as a moderator because it is one of the most distinctive characteristic with regard to U.S. Hispanic’s consumer behavior. In contrast, Non-Hispanics tend to have more individualistic consumer behavior. Using collectivism as a moderator gives us clear insight to examine the moderating effect on the suggested relationship. In sum, this paper expects that collectivism can affect these two relationships positively between other-focused loyalty program, U.S. Hispanic’s hedonic consumption, and emotional branding.

Hypotheses

This paper argues that family and community-focused loyalty program can appeal to U.S. Hispanic consumers in terms of U.S. Hispanic emotional branding significantly. Moreover, I propose that family-focused and community-focused loyalty program can positively affect U.S. Hispanic emotional branding. This paper argues that collectivism has a positive effect on the relationship between other-focused loyalty program and U.S. Hispanic hedonic consumption. I propose that collectivism positively moderates the relationship between other-focused loyalty programs and U.S. Hispanic hedonic consumption. Finally, I propose that collectivism positively moderates the relationship between other-focused loyalty program and U.S. Hispanic emotional branding. Here are hypotheses that this research attempts to test.

  • Hypothesis 1: Family-focused loyalty program can positively affect U.S. Hispanic hedonic consumption.

  • Hypothesis 2: Community-focused loyalty program can positively affect U.S. Hispanic hedonic consumption.

  • Hypothesis 3: Collectivism positively moderates the relationship between other-focused loyalty program and U.S. Hispanic hedonic consumption.

  • Hypothesis 4: Family-focused loyalty program can positively affect U.S. Hispanic emotional branding.

  • Hypothesis 5: Community-focused loyalty program can positively affect U.S. Hispanic emotional branding.

  • Hypothesis 6: Collectivism positively moderates the relationship between other-focused loyalty program and U.S. Hispanic emotional branding.

Methodology

This study attempts to use focus groups analysis to investigate the relationship between other-focused loyalty program, U.S. Hispanic hedonic consumption, and emotional branding. In addition, I conduct focus group analysis to examine the moderating role of collectivism among U.S. Hispanic consumers. This paper attempts to generate the focus group questions through literatures on Hispanic culture beliefs and values and Hofstede’s (1984) cultural dimensions. This article’s main subjects are U.S. Hispanics of Mexican origins located in a city in South Texas. In terms of generation level, this paper attempt to interview first and second generation from U.S. Hispanic immigrants. Education level entails several levels, including undergraduate, graduate, and educated working professionals.

Conclusion

The objective of this research is to examine the relationship between other-focused loyalty program, U.S. Hispanic hedonic consumption, and emotional branding. This article also attempts to find the effects of collectivism on the relationship between other-focused loyalty program, U.S. Hispanic consumption, and emotional branding. This paper suggests propositions in terms of U.S. Hispanic consumption. Other-focused loyalty is the reward program, which focused on emotions associated with a social context. Family and community-focused marketing strategy is closely related to other-focused emotions. This paper proposes that family and community-focused loyalty program can positively affect U.S. Hispanic’s hedonic consumption. Moreover, I argue that other-focused loyalty program can positively affect U.S. Hispanic’s emotional branding. Lastly, this paper examines the moderating role of collectivism in the context of other-focused loyalty program among U.S. Hispanic consumers behaviors including hedonic consumption and emotional branding. Loyalty program is a critical theme and research area in consumer behavior. Previous literatures deal with loyalty program in many ways and this paper attempts to find research gaps and fill them in the context of U.S. Hispanic consumer behavior. This research’s contribution is to examine the impact of other-focused loyalty program on emotion branding, and hedonic consumption. Furthermore, comparisons of two distinctive cultures between Hispanic and non-Hispanic are intriguing approaches to find the impact of collectivism in suggested relationship. This paper suggests that there are consumer behavioral differences in hedonic consumption and emotional branding in two different cultures’ contexts. This paper aims at cross-cultural study and I explain how U.S. Hispanic and non-U.S. Hispanic customers behave differently in the context of loyalty program. U.S. Hispanic culture has uniqueness with regard to collectivism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede 1984).

In this article, among of them, I focus on collectivism to explain its moderating effect on U.S. Hispanic customer’s behavior. This paper uses Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and attempts to use collectivism as the moderating factor that can affect the relationship between other-focused loyalty program and their customer behaviors with regard to hedonic consumption and emotional branding among U.S. Hispanic consumers. Moreover, I expect that future research can expand this paper’s findings to other products and programs in different industries. Future research can apply different immigrants from different backgrounds as this research mainly focuses on U.S. Hispanics from Mexico. The U.S.’s immigrant community consists of diverse country of origins and there should be research gaps that need to be filled in terms of U.S. immigrant community’s diversity.

Future Research and Limitations

This paper fills important gaps from the existing literatures and provides important implications for academics. Propositions extend previous researches applying collectivistic approaches to loyalty program. This article expects that the focus group analysis reflect an underlying U.S. Hispanic culture. Furthermore, I provide evidence that Hofstede’s (1984) culture dimensions can be applied to immigrant Hispanic communities in the U.S. This research suggests that future research should extend this analogy to other immigrant communities worldwide with regard to loyalty program. Moreover, I expect that future research can expand this paradigm to other products and programs in different industries. Future research can apply different immigrant from different backgrounds and this research mainly focuses on U.S. Hispanics from Mexico. U.S. immigrant’s community consists of lots of country of origins and there should be research gaps that need to be filled with accordance with U.S. immigrant community diversity. This study is based on a qualitative analysis, especially for focus group. This type of analysis can be limited with regard to the generalizability of findings. Target focus group subjects are mainly Hispanics from Mexico in South Texas region. This regional characteristic and specific country-origin can cause limitation in terms of generalizability. Future study can test the generalizability of the themes and propositions identified by conducting appropriate quantitative research with regard to addressed limitations. Furthermore, using USA and Mexico’s cultural dimension scores can be limitations with regard to addressing the difference between Hispanics and non-Hispanics in the U.S. This article mainly focuses on Hispanic from Mexico and it analyzes Hofstede’s cultural dimensions score of Mexico and USA. Obviously, Mexico has strong collectivistic characteristic according to Hofstede’s data analysis, however, it has possibility for U.S. Hispanics from Mexico to have a slightly different cultural tendency in terms of collectivism. For example, U.S. Hispanics from Mexico may have been influenced by either internal or external contingencies, including education, cultural distance, and peer pressures from their affiliated groups in the U.S. Thus, future research needs to support the individualistic or collectivistic differences between Hispanics from Mexico and non-Hispanics in the U.S. by using accurate and appropriate data.