Chandrasen, Abhirarm and Alexander, Nicholas and Daryanto, Ahmad (2016) Sojourner consumer behaviour : the influence of nostalgia, ethnocentrism, cosmopolitanism and place attachment. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.
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Abstract
In today’s interconnected world, increasing numbers of consumers are becoming involved in an internationally mobile lifestyle. During this transitional event, these international consumers become temporary residents in a foreign host country. Transient consumers are formally known as sojourners. Despite the recognition that sojourners’ international mobility is contributing to the development of multicultural marketplaces worldwide, there is a paucity of empirical evidence on their consumer behaviour. As opposed to other border crossers, sojourners do not travel with the intention of settling down in the host country. Thus, their psychological profile differs from that of permanent movers and, consequently, there is a need for a separate study of sojourners as consumers. To this end, this thesis builds on the notions of home and host countries from the consumer acculturation theory. Specifically, the influence of psychological values relating to sojourners’ home and host country on their consumer behaviour is examined in two investigations. Using structural equation modelling and related statistical methods, the findings from the two investigations add to the development of the knowledge on this consumer group. The home country investigation shows that nostalgia and ethnocentrism are two influential drivers of sojourners’ buying intention towards products from home. Importantly, it is also found that the length of stay in the host country and the product category determine the extent to which the two values shape sojourner consumer behaviour. The host country investigation reveals that sojourners’ level of place attachment to a host country is a useful predictor of sojourners’ origin recognition accuracy of the host country’s brands. This is an important finding, as brand origin recognition accuracy has been found to influence attitudes and intentions. The two investigations contribute to the consumer acculturation theory by uncovering the influence of the country-specific psychological values that drive consumer behaviour. The findings on the influences of values and demographic characteristics provide practical means for marketers to target sojourners as customers.