Consumption Crossover and 'Ethnic' Markets

Crossover Dreams, this is the title of one of few contributions on consumption crossover. This expression describes a daily phenomenon: the consumption by the culturally dominant group of services, products, brands, experiences that belong to the minority group. Grier, Brumbaugh, and Torton in the cited article, explore the other side of immigration, and by so doing, they remind us that culturing processes are not only about "the others".

Italians increasingly consume exotic foods, music, art, design, alternative medicine, clothing and accessories. Only a few decades ago, it would have been unimaginable to wear a Peruvian wool sweater (possibly signed by Prada, like in the latest collection of the Milanese fashion firms, dubbed "Made in Peru", eating fresh mango for breakfast listening to Macedonian music, swallowing sushi for lunch, work with colleagues of various nationalities, taking salsa and tango lessons, ending the workday sipping a mojito while lying on a futon. The presence of a larger number of foreign consumers has inevitably enabled firms to cater to ethnic markets. At the same time, Italians have observed and tested new forms of consumption, often being favorably struck by the experience. In a recent research study of ours (Factory Outlet Center: brand relations and place attachment), it emerges that Italians attracted to exotic consumption are led by a desire of escaping the strictures of daily life. For some, it's a form of consumption that has high social meaning, since it differentiates them from the crowd. If Veblen once told us that the leisure class was imitated due to a need for social homologation, today there are people who want to feel different, and for reasons independent from income. On the other hand, there are embracing ethnic consumption for more intimate motivations, as ideological act in favor of openness to new cultures and protection of the rights of minorities. One could quip: "I eat Chinese and I defend the right of the this ethnic group to remain in my neighborhood".

Consumption crossover works both on the demand- and the supply-side. Companies can enhance the appeal of "ethnic" offerings, by working on strategies to make the target explicit, with testimonials and highly evocative symbolic communication. The receptiveness of consumers depend on which ethic group they belong to, the desire of distinction, the search for variety. Also the context of public vs private, individual vs communal ethnic consumption can alter the choice to advertise one's consumer choices. To conclude, a final provocation. The tendency to consumption crossover affected Italians well before immigrants came in droves to live here starting two decades ago. For a much longer time, we have been consuming Japanese technology and American Food, Anglo-Saxon retail formulas, not to mention the social networks craze. But we never qualified this as "ethnic" consumption. Could it be that we, as consumers, are subconsciously creating hierarchies among world cultures, by labeling "ethnic" only consumption related to cultures that we consider inferior? Consumption is about a lot more than just market stories.