A Study on Acculturation

Introduction

The world is currently characterized by acculturalization where people move from one region to another or one country to another with the central reason of settling. Immigration is regarded as either permanent or temporary movement of people from one area to the next one. Based on the neoclassical economic theory, the prime reason for such movements is largely defined through the demand and supply of labour force. History has it that United Kingdom has been one of the renowned catchment areas for immigrants who moved into the country with different interests. King and Skeldon (2010) indicated that immigrant entrepreneurship is part of the cultural capital that people invest in a different region. Countries like UK, Netherlands and United States would commonly refer to them as ethnic minority entrepreneurs while Scandinavia and Sweden would retain the term immigrant entrepreneur. Most of these host nations would end being affected by immigration due to concomitant social as well as economic changes. Some of the demographic changes seemingly have increased cultural and social diversity across most areas resulting into expansion of the economic and cultural horizons (Hingley et al. 2010).

Substantially, immigrant entrepreneurs have constantly led to conflicts in terms of the lifestyle, values and interests as well. Drori et al. (2009) further noted that immigrant entrepreneurs have impacted consumer behaviours of the hosts in such countries like Sweden and Greece. In a case study done across Europe, most of the immigrants would delve into small new firms as seen in the restaurant industry. Chefs would go to an extend of substituting or experimenting on new dishes as seen in the case of fusion cuisine, traditional sushi served with Caribbean dishes among others. Some of the immigrant entrepreneurs would end being restricted through discrimination that prevails in form of legal qualifications, social prejudice and even language skills. On the basis of ethnic entrepreneurship, three perspectives would always emerge as far as consumer trends and behaviour are put into consideration (Williams and Shaw 2013). The thought of the cultural perspective points at the cultural background that puts the immigrant in the light of entrepreneurship. The structural perspective looks at the immigrant’s predisposition and the economic that enables one to survive as well as make a living.

The mixed embeddedness perspective narrows down to culture and necessity where the business environment has to appreciate and nurture significant and the most supportive factors. The three perspectives are key in defining and determining the influence immigration and immigrant entrepreneurship would have on the way people think, the way they behave and make decisions (Cleveland and Chang 2009). While many studies would focus on the factors that favour and the barriers that impede immigrant entrepreneurship, most of them would still focus on what the outcome will have on the immigrants’ country of origin. Therefore, this leaves behind a research gap that compels subsequent studies to refocus on what immigrant entrepreneurship would influence in terms of the consumer trends, and behaviour as witnessed by some of the business owners (Zeugner-Roth et al. 2015). This reflects on what the business people feel about the cultural values of the hosts and whether they are comfortable with the change.

Purpose of the study

The study has a prime purpose of examining the impact of immigrant entrepreneurship on the host’s consumer behaviours and trends while focusing on the perception of the business owners. The vast coverage will include a history that contains the dynamics in the society and a change in terms of the demographic profile. This also means a significant coverage on the change in terms of values and purchase decisions overtime. While a trend covers a certain period, the research will also pay attention to the nature and the background of the immigrant entrepreneurs. Additionally, whether one group would have more influence over the rest in terms of the product trends and consumer perception. Attention will be paid to changes in the market structure and consumption in United Kingdom.

Study aim

The main aim of the researcher is to conduct a survey that will examine the influence immigrant entrepreneurship has on the consumer behaviour and trends in the hosting country.

Research objectives

The following objectives provide insights into the research. They include To examine the rate of immigration in the country for the past 13 years To explore factors supporting and impeding immigrant entrepreneurship To analyse the nature of industries embraced by immigrant entrepreneurs and their impact To examine the impact of immigrant-entrepreneurial invested industries on consumer’s life To indicate the impact of immigrant entrepreneurship on values, consumer decision-making and habits To determine market and consumer trends influenced by immigrant entrepreneurship in the country

Literature review

Many studies have narrowed down to the immigration trends across the entire world. Based on the International Migration Report of 2017, it is evident that international migrants are growing rapidly over the recent years. The report shows that over 258 million migrants kept moving from one country to another in 2017, a figure that is a bit lower compared to 220 million migrants realized in 2010, as well as 173 million migrants in 2000. The same report shows that in 2017, over 50 million migrants resided in Russia, the United States, Germany, and Saudi Arabia. The United Kingdom and Northern Ireland received nearly 9 million migrants. While the world continues to experience an increase in the international migrants, United Kingdom, based on the international Migration Report, still encounters the same trend in terms of an influx of the migrants. This trend is what is believed to have led to what is currently referred to as immigrant entrepreneurship. Zolin and Schlosser (2013) looked at immigrant entrepreneurship as both a culture and a necessity that creates job opportunities for immigrants who tend be jobless in a foreign country. The authors still argue that there has been a changing economic role for immigrants as far as the understanding of transnationalism is put into consideration. Notably, the scope of international new venture has equally received significant attention as immigrants are set to experience the strategies and the growth of the small and medium enterprises.

Alongside the strategies used by immigrants, Sinnya and Parajuli (2012) shared both the motivating and impeding factors for immigrant entrepreneurship. Some of the impeding factors include the capital requirement. Most of the immigrants from Africa and Asia are poor and would rarely raise enough capital to establish any substantial business in London or any other town in the United Kingdom. Ethnicity also plays part in the sense that immigrants fall under the minority group, which has less influence in terms of impacting the market trends in the market. Another factor includes lack of proper knowledge on the history and trends as well as lifestyle of people. Despite the prevalence of impeding factors, most immigrants would go ahead and establish their own business. , Sinnya and Parajuli (2012) indicated the fact the most motivating factor for establishing businesses include the desire of becoming independent and the need for self-employment for the purposes of meeting daily needs. Most of them would pursue self-employment because of the business background attached to the family.

With such a background, one can easily solicit capital before setting up the business. Other immigrants would pursue a business out of ambitions of becoming a prominent business person. Such ambitions are normally mounted with business ideas gained from the prerequisite experience. It is of note that with such ambitions, immigrants would not chase any other business without checking on the nature of the policies and characteristics of the market. This means that immigrant entrepreneurs are limited to few industries believed to bear lesser restrictions as far as market entry is put into consideration. Jennings (2013) indicates that most of the immigrant entrepreneurs would delve into small businesses as a way of supporting their own families with no intentions or signs of further growth. The first industry that is easier for immigrant entrepreneurs is the transportation industry as indicated by Jennings (2013).

In this industry, the common subsectors include warehousing and storage, transportation of passengers as well as cargo. Some of the establishments in the industry include the labour forces, physical facilities as well as the equipment spread. In transportation, employment growth is yet to hit 17.4% while urban transit and bus service will soon hit 15.6% in the United States market. However, the same trend reflects the situation in the United Kingdom. Apart from the transportation industry, food related industry is the most common among many immigrant entrepreneurs because of less capital and easier access to the market. Jennings (2013) did her research in United States where she noted that ethnic food sales almost hit a record of $2.2 billion in the year 2009.

The Mintel industry research reports also show that the growth of diverse populations has led to a steady performance as Mexican and Hispanic foods dominated the market. Immigrant entrepreneurs are said to have explored this area knowing the prevalence of the growing immigrant markets. The last industry that has attracted the attention of immigrants includes the building services industry. Building services include a wide range of services including waste management, cleaning and even constriction. This can as well be done in small scale. With the growth of three industries, it can be postulated that immigrant entrepreneurship can have an impact on the customer purchasing decisions, thinking and behaviour. In a case study conducted in Italy, it could be noted that immigrant entrepreneurship has led to structural transformations and a cultural change in the New World. While Italy would want Italian lifestyle and products with Italian origin, immigrant entrepreneurship seem to shelve a different narrative with habits going global while embracing others. Most of the immigrants would end up carrying their culture with them, which later dictates the kind of food to be sold, nature and design of clothes to be put in the marker and cultural styles that look attractive.

Research philosophical framework

The study of immigrants and immigrant entrepreneurship with the influence they have on consumer trends and consumer behaviour call for an approach that would cater for social and economic elements in the market. Among all philosophies, the suitable philosophy that would be applied in this context revolves around interpretivism (Lewis 2015). The philosophy would largely interpret key elements that integrate human interest across the study. Most of the interpretive researchers would pursue social constructions like shared meanings, instruments, language and consciousness, which will be tilted as one way of adjusting the society to suit the incoming immigrants (Taylor et al. 2015). The philosophy embraces qualitative analysis s it carries a philosophical position of idealism mostly applicable in hermeneutics and phenomenology among others. The selection of interpretivism is accompanied by the fact that the philosophy paves way for analysis of factors associated to both the economic and social context. In case of a primary research or data collected from case studies, the philosophy ensures reliability as well as representativeness of data while observing validity of the details attached to immigrant entrepreneurship.

The research will start from establishing observations before reaching out to theories that can be linked to immigrant entrepreneurship in United Kingdom. With such a trend picked in research, inductive research approach is felt more convenient in establishing a pattern constructed from observations before developing explanations. The approach mainly aims at generating means from the collected data before confirming the patterns and relationships. The key advantage of inductive reasoning revolves around the fact that it does not restrict the research from going for or making use of the existing theory in formulating the research question (Lewis 2015). Secondly, inductive reasoning is characterized by the fact that one has to learn from the resemblances, regularities, and patterns before drawing any conclusions.

Research methods and strategy

Researches are fond of using either the qualitative, quantitative or the mixed methods in defining the research method. Qualitative research bears the descriptive and explorative data while quantitative research embraces numerical data or information. Mixed methods take a combination of the qualitative and quantitative research. In this context, the research is simply adopting the descriptive and explorative style, which suggests the use of qualitative method. Supposedly, finding or determining the influence immigration entrepreneurship has on consumer behaviour is more of an explorative study that digs in the history and looks at whether the history is in line with what is happening at the moment (Taylor et al. 2015).

Notably, qualitative research is basically an explorative research that helps in understanding reasons, motivations and opinions around a phenomenon discovered through the research process (Flick 2015). The choice of qualitative research over the quantitative method narrows down to the fact that the former uses instruments said to be more flexible while giving room for iterative styles to respond to key research questions. Again, the study design for a qualitative research is iterative, which means that research questions and even data collection can be adjusted based on the lessons realized in the course of the research. The research will further adopt the case study strategy where in-depth investigations will help generate or seek enough information that can be attached to a phenomenon (Flick 2015). The strategy suggests that only few cases need attention at a time where case study is deployed.

Data collection method

With adoption of inductive reasoning, interpretivism and qualitative research method, the best method for data collection that can work in line with the collection of tools is secondary data research. This means adoption of document review where journals, books and other documented materials will form a critical source of information for the research process. The method entails systematic data collection from either existing material or the internal records such as monthly reports, financial documents, purchase orders and activity logs among others (Quinlan et al. 2019). Document review is thought to be advantageous in terms of availability. Secondly, record or document review is also thought to be economical and more efficient as far as data collection is put into consideration. Again, one can easily improve on data due to flexibility of the method. However, the method still suffers from credibility and validity of information, given that secondary data is not first-hand information. This means that the researcher never gets in touch with the original source at any point.

Data analysis

In this research, document review has been identified as the key data collection method where the research is meant to access a number of materials. However, identifying key areas across text in each document calls for content analysis, which serves as an analytical tool in this case. Content analysis has been, for a long period of time, been referred to as a research technique that can make valid inferences through interpretation as well as coding textual material (Dang and Pheng 2015). Content analysis also involves systematic reading as well as observation of artefacts and texts that have assigned labels which showcase meaningful pieces or interesting areas of the content. Under most circumstances, texts would be in form of book chapters, interviews, discussions, conversations, books, articles, informal conversations and historical documents among others (Taylor et al. 2015). The key advantage of content analysis in analysing findings behind immigrant entrepreneurship revolves around the fact that the tool gives room for analysis of constructs, which is a difficult task if archival methods are applied instead. Therefore, content analysis saves on time and is almost accurate in terms of comparing and concluding on the findings.

Ethics in research are always important and cannot be left out in the process because of maintaining self-discipline. In this context, the researcher will observe professionalism and common codes that narrow down to honesty, confidentiality, objectivity and respect. As much as the research process will involve less human interactions, it is still important for the research to appreciate and attribute to authors who took time and commitment in sharing their findings (Walliman 2017). This means that the researcher is honesty in terms of specifying the information that belongs to other authors apart from self. The same goes to self-respect while sharing content that belongs to other researchers without permission and attribution.

This chapter includes sections that have data and calls for discussion. The findings could best be arranged in each section that would reflect the data collected analysis and even the discussion that can be appended to each.

This area attracted three important sources that reflected on the rate of immigration in United Kingdom, which gave a true picture of the increasing levels of immigrant entrepreneurship. The first source is the international Migration Report 2017. From the report, it could be found out that both the United Kingdom of Great Britain as well as Northern Ireland received a whopping 12 million immigrants in 2017. However, the figure is far behind the United States, which received 50 million at the same time. The report also established that between 2000 and 2015, there has been a significant growth in terms of immigration showing that Europe’s immigration rate grew by 2%. The second material that supported the findings on the rate of immigration is the Migration Statistics 2018 where the analysis established that the rates can be determined by the stock of people and the flows across the borders. As of the end of 2017, the report establishes that 6.2 million people were staying in United Kingdom with a different nationality. The figure amounted to 9% of the entire population. Immigration in UK, the report shows, has always been greater than emigration since the year 1994. Based on the statistics, immigration increased to 91% showing a rise form 329000 in the year 1991 to 630000 in the year 2017. However, the figure later shot down to 614000 as the end of March 2018. The final source is The Telegraph News, which showed that immigration rates are moving slowly over the last 14 years. The telegraph shows that most immigrants arrive without jobs, which is a reason that drags the rate to 0.6% as of mid-2017. Based on the three sources, it can be concluded that the United Kingdom receives at least 500000 immigrants on annual basis, which indicates that more job seekers, entrepreneurs, and tourists are moving in the country.

Factors supporting and impeding immigrant entrepreneurship

This area further attracted two sources. The first source is a Journal of Comparative International Management written by Chrysostome and Arcand (2009) on the “Survival of Necessity Immigrant Entrepreneurs: An Explorative Study” which looked at factors that both support as well as impede immigrant entrepreneurship. Some of the factors Chrysostome and Arcand (2009) looked at include the ethno-cultural factors. Under the factors, the researchers looked at the ethnic market niche which involves the market that is never invested by the mainstream entrepreneurs. An ethnic market is advantageous to immigrant entrepreneurs in that the entrepreneur has skills necessary in offering the ethnic product. However, this does not happen in a non-ethnic market. Under ethno-cultural factors, the researchers also looked at the ethnic social network, ethnic emotional support and ethnic labour. Apart from the ethno-cultural factors, Chrysostome and Arcand (2009) also looked at the financial factors, which are equally the most impeding factors. Immigrant entrepreneurs would end up having a limited access to financial resources in a foreign country. This can be in terms of the start-up capital as well as emergency loans.

This section, based on the findings, rarely received attention from other researchers that have focused on the UK market. Apparently, most of the materials captured in this area are simply submitted research papers. Only two papers could be relevant in terms of the contributions towards habits and consumer behaviours embedded in the UK market. The first source is a research paper done by De Vries (2014) who focused on beliefs and engagement among consumers as a result of immigrant entrepreneurship. The findings established that changes in consumer values and behaviour can be discovered through migration construct, which embodies the homeland influences, religious values, personal connections and even language. Secondly, settlement construct captures employment fit and societal integration while identity constructs narrows down to skills as well as business capabilities that capture the attention of the hosts.

Lastly, the business construct looks at the financial and human capitals, factors of confidence and opportunity structure aligned along spawn entrepreneurship. Another source is a research paper done by Rasel (2014) who looked at how the market keeps realigning towards fresh tastes and the notion of diversity. Immigrants are known for moving in the market with new styles in terms in terms of fashion, food, and dietary habits in the food industry, technology, and ways of doing business. However, cultural accommodation has made such values and habits expensive for the hosts because of the demand in the market. Best examples include the kimono, a fashion style in Japan that has attracted the host market in UK. Most of the Britons end up appreciating diversity by putting different fashions brought in the market courtesy of immigrant entrepreneurship.

This section sampled findings on consumer and market trends believed to have been fuelled through immigrant entrepreneurship. The first source that qualified for document review in this section is a research done by Chrysostome and Arcand (2009) that focused more the rise of ethnic market in the United Kingdom. This is one of the current consumer trends witnessed in not only United Kingdom but also other global markets across the world. Immigrant entrepreneurs are known for supplying ethnic products in the market, which are likely to attract the attention of the co-ethnic consumers because of the common culture, language and values.

The rise of ethnic market also works in line with ethnic social network described by ethnic connections where market segments would focus more on the country of origin and what the immigrant entrepreneur in a foreign market provides in the market from such a country. Researchers allude to the fact that consumers tend to develop preferences on products that share values, or serve as a reminder to the customer’s beliefs and background. With time, the UK market will have to drop the narrative of social classes and affordability as the key determinants of consumer trends in the market. This means that a better consumption base needs to be constructed for the purposes of embracing diversity while identifying oneself with a variety of cultures.

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Conclusion

To sum up, the research focused more on the impact of immigrant entrepreneurship on the consumption behaviours and consumption trends. Based on this, other areas of focus included factors that support and impede immigrant entrepreneurship, analysis of the industries embraced by immigrant entrepreneurs, the impact of immigrant entrepreneurs on the values and beliefs of consumers, as well as the impact of immigrant entrepreneurship on the consumer and market trends. Along the research process, the research had to rely on the qualitative research method in conducting the document review that resulted in a number of findings discussed in chapter 4. First, the research found out the rate of immigration has been growing with time. Secondly, ethno-cultural factors, financial factors and managerial factors formed part of both impeding and supportive factors as far as immigrant entrepreneurship are put into consideration. On the other hand, immigrant entrepreneurship is noted as the influencing factor for the growth of ethnic market and the rise of co-ethnic consumers.

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