Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
880277 | International Journal of Research in Marketing | 2012 | 9 Pages |
As an increasing portion of the world's population identifies itself as cosmopolitan, we examine whether cosmopolitan identity involves openness and adaptability to new environments or instead favors maintaining a global lifestyle that persists across environments. Based on a field study of expatriates, we find that the expected duration of sojourn is a crucial moderator of cosmopolitan behavior. In short-duration sojourns, cosmopolitans adjust more to new environments than non-cosmopolitans. In long-duration sojourns, non-cosmopolitans adjust more to the host country while cosmopolitans tend to retreat into a global lifestyle. We find that these adjustment choices are correlated with well-being, contrary to the claims in existing literature on expatriates that adjustment should be the preferred behavior regardless of consumer identity.