Consumer Multicultural Identity Affiliation: Reassessing Identity Segmentation in Multicultural Markets

The increasing intra-national diversity of many modern markets poses challenges to identity
segmentation. As consumers require greater recognition of their diverse identities from brands,
marketing science and practice are in search of theories and models that recognize and capture
identity dynamics as impacted by cultural influences both from beyond and within national
market borders. This paper extends consumer acculturation theory into multicultural market
realities and offers a Consumer Multicultural Identity Affiliation (CMIA) Framework5 that
distinguishes and integrates three key types of intra- and trans-national cultural influences
informing identity dynamics. By examining consumer cultural identities within the CMIA
framework in a mixed-method, two-country study, we show that gaining such an integrative
view on cultural identity affiliations uncovers greater diversity and complexity (mono-, bi-, or
multi-cultural) of consumer segments. We conclude with discussing future directions for CMIA
applications to support marketing managers, scholars and educators dealing with culturally
heterogeneous markets.