Homeownership as a Sign of Immigrants’ Consumer Acculturation: The Role of Region of Origin

ABSTRACT

One of the limitations highlighted by the consumer acculturation literature is the lack of empirical research to identify better constructs or indicators of consumer acculturation. In this article, the use of homeownership by immigrants in the host society is proposed as an indicator of advanced consumer acculturation. The decision to own a home by a minority group, such as immigrants, represents a key landmark in the process of adaptation to the new culture and a commitment with the host country's values and culture. The empirical case used is the immigrant population of Spain. The sharp rise in its foreign-born population during the last decade and the significantly higher homeownership rates of natives in comparison with other countries makes the Spanish scenario a relevant case study. The results obtained show homeownership is linked to features associated with highly acculturated consumers. Moreover, the analysis conducted reveals important differences in the way immigrants from different origins advance in their consumer acculturation processes and suggest distinct approaches when marketing to these groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Acculturation
• homeownership
• immigration
• consumer behavior
• cross-cultural marketing

Notes

1. Encuesta Nacional de Inmigrantes (2007).

2. All future references made to “immigrants” here on in this article will be referring to economic immigrants.

3. Using European Union 25 (EU-25) definition: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Netherlands, and United Kingdom.

4. In a LOGIT model, the marginal effect of an independent variable on the probability of occurrence of a phenomenon under study directly depends on the specific value that the density function takes, which in turn depends on the actual values of the set of explanatory variables, X.

5. Notice the odds ratios for this age-on-arrival range have reached a value lower than 1.

6. These results are consistent with other studies for the United States (Myers & Lee, 1998) and Germany (Sinning, 2010).

7. Even today their composition is male-predominant. Table 2 shows 65% of this group of immigrants are male, while the other two groups under analysis show more balanced populations in terms of gender distribution.

8. For lengths of residency greater than 20 years, the odds ratios should be interpreted with great care since there are a very limited number of observations under that category.