Indigenes’ Responses to Immigrants’ Consumer Acculturation: A Relational Configuration Analysis

Abstract Consumer research commonly conceptualizes consumer acculturation as a project that immigrants pursue when adjusting their consumer identities and practices to unfamiliar sociocultural environments. This article broadens this prevailing view by conceptualizing consumer acculturation as a relational, interactive adaptation process that involves not only immigrant consumption practices but also indigenes who interpret and adjust to these practices, thereby shaping the paths of possibility for mutual adaptation. Based on a Fiskenian relational configuration analysis, the study shows how indigenes in a rural European town interpret certain immigrant consumption practices as manifestations of a gradual sell-out of the indigenous community, a crumbling of their authority, a violation of equality rules, and of indigenes being torn between contradictory micro- and macro-social morals. The article contributes a broader conceptualization of consumer acculturation, highlights four sources of ethnic group conflict in a consumer acculturation context, and demonstrates the epistemic value of Fiskenian relational configuration analysis for consumer culture theory.