On decomposing the ‘thick’ and the ‘thin’ for measuring cosmopolitanism in multicultural marketplaces: Why unpacking the foreign and global aspects of cosmopolitanism matters

Abstract

Cosmopolitanism as a phenomenon evolved such that in one given locale, individuals’ conceptions of ‘cultural others’ may or may not be constrained to this locale’s boundaries. This can be attributed to many national markets emerging as multicultural marketplaces, for example, environments of intra-nationally diverse cultural composition that are transnationally connected to cultures in other locales. From consumption perspective, such evolution of consumer environments and resultant evolved nature of cosmopolitan outlook inform distinctly divergent expectations and responses to cultural associations assigned to consumer goods and experiences. This chapter reviews these developments against extant consumer cosmopolitanism measurement scales. It posits that multicultural marketplaces’ paradigm necessitates decomposition of these measures to reflect the transnational (‘thin’) and intra-national (‘thick’) dimensions of cosmopolitanism construct.