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) Framework2 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, twocountry 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.

Introduction

Understanding the influence of cultural identity on consumption preference and choice has long been an important international marketing segmentation task central to brand positioning success: “In a world where commoditization is an ever lurking threat, the ability to link your brand to a particular type of consumer culture is seen as an important way to differentiate yourself” (Steenkamp, 2014 p.15). This task is becoming more complicated as the cultural diversity of most markets continues to increase (Sobol, Cleveland, & Laroche, 2018). For example, it is projected that US White population will decline from 63% in 2010 to 46% by year 2050 while Hispanic and Asian groups are expected to grow from 16% to 30% and from 5% to 8% respectively (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2013). In the UK, there are six sizeable (e.g., over a million people) and growing ethnic groups co-residing with the White British population (UK Census, 2011) with cities such as Birmingham being home to over 180 nationalities (Elkes, 2013). In the emerging economy of Brazil, 47.7% of the population is White, 7.6% Black and 43.1% Mixed race (BBC, 2011).