Social Anchoring - An alternative understanding of migrant consumers' experiences

Moving beyond acculturation, we present an alternative understanding of ethnic migrant consumers’ lived experiences by leveraging social anchoring theory, and taking an asset perspective. We identify significant reference points, i.e. social anchors among first-generation middle-class British Indian women. Our phenomenological interview data reveals that in addition to providing psycho-social stability, interactions between social anchors influence ethnic migrant consumers’ wellbeing, hybrid identity projects, and temporal imaginings. Additionally, we develop theoretically relevant categories of social anchors – central, peripheral, structuring, and underpinning – based on our empirical findings