The Effects of Acculturation to Global Consumer Culture on Impulsive Buying and Attitudes Towards Advertising in General

Scholars assert that even though globalisation receives significant atten-tion, research on the effects of globalisation on consumers’ attitudes and behaviour is lacking (Cleveland et al., 2016) often due to the lack of appro-priate theoretical basis (Taylor, 2010). In an attempt to fill this knowledge gap, scholars proposed a theory to describe the relations between globalisa-tion and consumer behaviour (Alden et al., 1999, Merz et al., 2008). Global consumer culture theory (GCCT) posits that the on-going globalisation of markets has led to the emergence of global consumer culture (GCC) in which consumers are exposed to deterritorialised cultural flows such as a variety of foreign and local brands, media, and technology (Cleveland et al., 2016). Originating from GCCT is the concept of acculturation to global con-sumer culture (AGCC), which focuses on how consumers respond to global market forces (Cleveland and Laroche, 2007) and intends to describe changes in consumer behaviour as a result of the influences of GCC. Re-search which employed AGCC focused mainly on its attractiveness to glob-al marketing managers to aid segmentation, targeting, and communication strategies (Cleveland et al., 2013, Cleveland et al., 2015a, Cleveland et al., 2015b, Cleveland et al., 2016, Taylor and Okazaki, 2015, Westjohn et al., 2016). Scholars have called for more research incorporating GCCT con-cepts such as AGCC to help explain consumer behaviour phenomena more accurately than, for example, the over-researched concept of national cul-tures (Khang et al., 2016, Taylor, 2010). This study extends the literature on AGCC by addressing the effects of globalisation on consumers’ attitudes and behaviour. The current authors attempt to explain whether the level of consumer’s acceptance of global market forces impacts impulsive buying behaviour and enhance positive attitudes towards advertising. The conceptual model is controlled for age, gender, and income as possible covariates, based on previous research that indicated that consumer’s demographics influence buying behaviour and attitudes towards advertising (Kacen and Lee, 2002, Hausman, 2000). Hence, the study will answer two important questions: - Do consumers who are more acculturated to GCC buy more impulsive-ly? - Do consumers more acculturated to GCC hold more favourable atti-tudes to advertising? This paper advances the understanding of AGCC and its relations with consumer behaviour. Theoretically, the authors add to the list of anteced-ents of impulsive buying, and to the outcomes of AGCC. From a managerial viewpoint, the authors suggest that encouraging impulsive buying may be easier with consumers acculturated to GCC, and that advertising may be an effective persuasion tool with such consumers.