Globalization, Consumer Tensions, and the Shaping of Consumer Culture in India

Abstract

The authors examine consumer tensions arising in India’s transitional marketplace. These findings uncover cultural characteristics underlying consumption strategies to address these tensions: the danger and immorality of consumption, the distance and inaccessibility of many newly available products, and the desire for sociality and relationships via consumption. Consumer desires sometimes are in opposition to and sometimes in line with local cultural values and norms such as the frugality ideal and Indian rituals and beliefs. The authors present a typology of resistance strategies, discuss how these impact marketplace transitions, and outline implications for macromarketing. This work enhances the conceptualization of how consumers negotiate tensions as marketplaces globalize and demonstrates how consumers can create their own discourses in this process that in turn can shape the marketplace.