The Role of Consumer Agency in the Globalization Process in Emerging Markets

In emerging markets, the main actors in the globalization process are widely considered to be governments and multinational corporations (MNCs). The authors examine the role of a key player that has largely been left out of the globalization debate—the consumer. Viewed through a lens of consumer agency, the authors outline important factors that influence whether new foreign goods that enter the marketplace are accepted, rejected, or transformed by consumers. This is investigated in the context of the Indian marketplace, an emerging market that has only recently had access to foreign goods. The authors’analysis suggests that consumers are not merely pawns of MNCs or governments. The framework developed to understand the complexities of consumer agency in an emerging market provides the first such effort to guide future empirical consumer globalization research.