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Mobility and the Transnationals

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Transnational Marketing and Transnational Consumers

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Abstract

Mobile professionals who constantly move through different national boundaries and cultures were called “circulating consumers”. However, these should fall under our wider category of ‘mobile consumers’ and named ‘transnational mobiles’. Hence movement and mobility is appropriately taken into account as key segmentation variables to identify such mobile consumer groups

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ger and Belk (1996) used the term “consumption scape” in another context.

  2. 2.

    See Cohen et al. (2009) and O’Leary (2009).

  3. 3.

    Following the New York attacks there was a sharp decline in visitor numbers in 2001 and 2002.

  4. 4.

    Available from http://www.unwto.org.

  5. 5.

    “Transnational entrepreneurs” are an interesting group, for example. They are defined as entrepreneurs who undertake cross-border business activities (see Özden and Schiff 2005). These are considered in relation to ‘brain drain’ and ‘brain circulation’ and even called astronauts as they spend substantial amount of time on airplanes (Saxenian 2002 and 2006, p. 318).

  6. 6.

    It seems most focus is on white collar office professionals but one should remember that there are other professionals such as plumbers, mechanics, medical staff who are very mobile too, although these are unlikely to be transnationally mobile.

  7. 7.

    In the UK, earning requirement for eligibility in high skilled immigration category can be as high as £45,000 minimum (UKBA 2007).

  8. 8.

    http://www.regents.ac.uk/ipo.aspx.

  9. 9.

    New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE) is a community-based organization and worker center that helps new immigrants build social, political, and economic power in their communities and beyond (www.nynice.org).

  10. 10.

    Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Centre supports grassroots organisations (www.cdp-ny.org).

  11. 11.

    See http://www.ncfh.org/docs/fs-Migrant%20Demographics.pdf.

  12. 12.

    These visas are issued to individuals aged up to 30–35 in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

  13. 13.

    This seems an overestimation compared to what Sirkeci (2009) claims (i.e. £30 bn) but the point is to show that there is significant market.

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Sirkeci, I. (2013). Mobility and the Transnationals. In: Transnational Marketing and Transnational Consumers. SpringerBriefs in Business. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36775-5_3

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