Digital consumer culture and digital acculturation

The advent of digital technology has significantly transformed human lives and added new dimensions to our consumption behaviours. Responding to these constant changes in socio-cultural dynamics, this commentary defines and theorises digital consumer culture and explains how digital consumer culture facilitates digital acculturation. We pioneer a conceptual framework that explains the reciprocal, iterative and dynamic inter-relationships between digital consumer culture and digital acculturation and spells out the three inherence characteristics of digital consumer culture. These include consumer empowerment, reciprocity between online and offline worlds and decompartmentalisation of identities; together they make digital consumer culture unique. Finally, by identifying and discussing three outcomes of digital acculturation: digital integration, digital separation and digital deprivation, we make further contribution to theories, with the view of generating debates in studying acculturation in the digital age.