Replacing the Acculturation Model

October 1, 2015
By Jose Villa

Hispanic marketing started out in the 1960s as an industry built around language – Spanish language media and advertising to reach recent immigrants to the U.S. During the late 1980s the concept of culture began to replace language as a key strategic foundation of most Hispanic and multicultural marketing.

What is culture? According to Wikipedia, culture is defined as:

“A way of life of a group of people – the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.”

The Acculturation Model

As the multicultural marketing industry shifted from focusing on language to culture, acculturation became the new paradigm. Acculturation describes the process in which members of one cultural group – namely Hispanic and Asian immigrants – adopt the beliefs and behaviors of another group (Hazuda, et al. 1988). The acculturation model was an evolution of the assimilation model that described how 1900s European immigrants actively replaced their home country customs with new American customs. Acculturation describes a process where immigrants acquire a new culture without foregoing another one. It is commonly represented as a three-segment model:

Unacculturated – Immigrants navigating completely within their home country culture.
Partially Acculturated – Immigrants navigating within both their home country and new adopted country’s dominant culture.
Acculturated – Immigrants navigating completely within dominant mainstream culture.




This acculturation model has served as the strategic underpinning of most Hispanic – and Asian – marketing efforts for the last 30 years.

Shortcomings of the Acculturation Model
The acculturation model has started to show some cracks in the last 15 years. It was designed to address immigrant-driven diversity. With most Hispanic population growth now coming from native-born Hispanics, the relevance of a framework designed to explain an immigrant experience has increasingly become irrelevant.

Another knock is that it is overly simplistic, typically focusing on language usage to “flag” acculturation levels. The model is also one-directional and linear, assuming ethnic minority immigrants move from un-acculturated to partially-acculturated to acculturated on a linear, one-way path. Societal norms have also changed among ethnic minorities, particularly among Hispanic Millennials, who now evince different attitudes and beliefs towards culture. Namely they are proud of their cultural heritage and look to embrace it vs. assimilating into “mainstream” culture.

Most importantly, acculturation assumes that culture is tightly tied to ethnicity. For example, that Hispanic culture was something only ethnic Hispanics lived within and embraced.

A New Model: Crossculturalism
What happens when consumers of different ethnic backgrounds, who are not immigrants, not only acculturate, but also embrace multiple cultures, including those outside their ethnic background? This is what we’re starting to see with Millennials (see the Hispanic Millennial Project) and their younger generational cohort Gen Z. The Futures Company has started to define a new model as polyculturalism – the extent to which consumers balance multiple cultures.

I see this new construct as crossculturalism, with a slightly revised definition: “The extent to which consumers adapt and balance multiple cultures.”

Crossculturalism has been shaping trends in music and food for years (think Kogi tacos and reggaeton). It’s what’s starting to happen with language. I believe that this new model – crossculturalism – can provide a much more effective framework to culturally understand and segment younger diverse Millennial and Gen Z consumers, and replace acculturation as the dominant strategic framework for multicultural marketing for the next 20 years.

Source: Think Multicultural

Comments

[Manuel desde NYC]

Accultularion's greatest failing, which you do not mention in your article, is that it presumes the new (American) culture is superior to the family culture the individual has. This presumption of superiority hurts individuality, and generates the belief that human equality means we are all copies of each other in our behavior and preferences.
In fact, just as North America is a paradise for reedom and democracy, immigrants bring owrk values and disciplines that the USA no longer treasures. why? Because every culture constantly evolves, abandoning some old values and absorbing new ones. Immigrants who try to assimilate are always behind the native born in this process of change, and it can be very confusing for them.

What you refer to as CrossCulturization, on the other hand, tends to focus on popularity and marketing, and does not promote individuality and differentiation.

In the twentieth century, great marketing campaigns actually made their brands into values that were then promoted and became standards for Western civilization. These include Pepsi, Coke, McDonalds, IBM, Marlboro, to name a few, who over decades created an ideal that each culture incorporated and made its own. And Jazz and Rock and Roll did much of the same.

Some new immigrants want to leave their old culture behind, throwing out the good with the bad, but a few families and individuals do not do so: they pick and choose from both or all cultures they are faced with, and create their own personal and family cultural framework. One example, is that of the first Cuban migrants of the 1960's, who came to this country and branded hispanic leadership in Florida and New York in a way that still exists.
This process is the result of individual leaders participating in multiple communities and demonstrating/creating the new culture they will live in. They do not play catch up at all, prefering to lead so that others can follow.

[Manuel desde NYC]

This is a fascinating subject, one that has been present in my mind since a number of immigrant Bronx High School of Science student leaders, including me, received letters telling us we were to receive special training because we were "Culturally Deprived". We laughed it off, since we were regularly discriminated against in New York City, but it did leave its mark.

Acculturation’s greatest failing, which you do not mention in your article, is that it presumes the new (American) culture is superior to the family culture the individual has. This presumption of superiority hurts individuality, and generates the belief that human equality means we are all copies of each other in our behavior and preferences.
In fact, just as North America is a paradise for reedom and democracy, immigrants bring owrk values and disciplines that the USA no longer treasures. Why? Because every culture evolves, abandoning old values and absorbing new ones. Immigrants who try to assimilate by learning the new ways are always behind the native born in this process of change, and it can be very confusing for them.

What you refer to as CrossCulturization, on the other hand, seems to be the mixing of cultural traditions and values in the media, and as I see it it does not promote individuality and self expression, tending to focus on popularity and consumption patterns instead.

In the twentieth century, great marketing campaigns actually made their brands into values that were then promoted and became standards for Western civilization. These include Pepsi, Coke, McDonalds, IBM, Marlboro, to name a few, who over decades created an ideal that each culture incorporated and made its own. And Jazz and Rock and Roll did much of the same. They sold products but they also instilled concepts of community, identity, freedom of choice and work ethic that are now globally shared

Some new immigrants want to leave their old culture behind, throwing out the good with the bad, and they lose one or two generations to the process. But a few families and individuals do not do so: they pick and choose from both or all cultures they are faced with, and create their own personal and family cultural framework. One example, is that of the first Cuban migrants of the 1960's, who came to this country and branded hispanic leadership in Florida and New York in a way that still exists.
This process is the result of individual leaders participating in multiple communities and demonstrating/creating the new culture they will live in. They do not play catch up at all, preferring to lead so that others can follow.
Manny Perez, MPA, CAMS