Modern and Ethnic Retailing Formats at the Mirror: Shoppers’ Domination, Acculturation, Distinction, and Patronizing

Over an impressively short period of time, the established demarcation between local and foreign markets has mostly evanished in favor of national markets that internally reproduce the multiplication of ethnicities of their dwellers. From a retailing perspective, this has been stretching the boundaries of retailing formats, which now integrate traditional, modern, and ethnic shopping settings. By holding a post-colonial perspective, extant research in retailing has mainly addressed the acculturation of immigrant shoppers to modern retailers. Our ethnographic inquiry, which was conducted on both local and immigrant shoppers in traditional, modern, and ethnic shops in Italy, accounts for a much more blurred and entangled scenario. On the one hand, we observe that local consumers are also getting acquainted to ethnic retailers, thus showing reverse consumer acculturation and crossover consumption. On the other hand, shopping practices of both autochthonous and foreign shoppers include: i) domination, ii) acculturation, iii) distinction, and iv) patronizing. In particular, we contend that patronizing goes much beyond the traditional notion of store loyalty, since it implies shoppers’ attribution of ideological, identity, and political meanings to retailers being patronized. Further, patronizing has more to do with the category of retailing format than with a specific retailing brand. Overall, our work sheds new light on the ethnification of retailing settings and to the political intricacy between retailers and shoppers.