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Moreover, many studies have indicated that ethnicity and different levels of acculturation have an influence on buying decision making of ethnic minority groups. (Jamal and Chapman 2000). D’Astos and Daghfous (1991) have also found, in their study conducted with Muslims who live in Canada, that their consumer behavior on searching for information, consumption and product preference varied according to their level of acculturation. Arab Muslims who were highly acculturated reflected in their consumptions their integration with the main culture. On the other hand, who were low acculturated reflected their maintenance of their cultural origin.

Main Body

The basic function of marketing activities is to understand consumers’ wants and needs. Marketers need to understand what underlies their buying decision making process, what motivate and influence them, what they buy and why; and this is the base of consumer behavior which gives support for marketing strategies (Blackwell et al. 2001).

One of the factors which has a great impact on this process is culture, a broad concept which involves language, laws, religion, food customs, music and so on. All these factors are inserted in a society’s values, beliefs and customs and will determine its behavior. As Schiffman and Kanuk (2007) state, culture represents a “society’s personality”. It is a guide for how people can satisfy their physiological, personal and social needs. It gives reference to what is need and what is luxury.

Moreover, as indicated by Solomon (2002), a society is composed by a main culture shared by the majority of the population, but it also has different subculture groups which share beliefs and experiences that make them different from the larger group; and one main subculture group is represented by ethnic background.

Ethnicity can indicate that members of a group will share the same characteristics on the base of their racial origins (Jamal and Chapman 2000). Or it can also indicate that individuals will establish identification according to their ethnic origin (Laroche et al. 1998).

These subcultures groups were created either in the same region due to history, politics and economic forces, as the east-west difference in Germany; or these same reasons have created a process of migration, as the great number of Hispanics in the United States and Muslim community in Europe (Palumbo and Teich 2004). This illustrates how societies are dynamics and the creation of what is denominated by ethnic minority groups is unavoidable.

However, there are many issues related to this process and especially to what happens when different cultures have direct contact. The first issue is what represents an ethnic minority group, who is the minority? As the point made by Solomon (2002) that in United States 70 to 90% of people who define themselves本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。