In the wake of the global pandemic of obesity of the young generation in Europe, with varying prevalence depending on culture and television advertising consumption, the role of marketing communications in the process needs to be re-addressed. Hence, the manner in which the food and beverages are promoted to children in various geographical settings becomes crucial concern for not only parents and teachers, but also society as the whole, represented majorly by regulatory bodies. Previous research within the theme of the correlation between TV advertising and youth obesity have focused on the reaction of children and parents to the advertisements targeting children, mostly disregarding the actual content of the ads, the level of their influence on children and specific context in which this interaction occurs.

Terror management theory (TMT) highlights the impact of death related thoughts on consumers’ decisions in everyday life (Hayes, Schimel, Arndt, & Faucher, 2010) and the various coping behaviors they adopt to manage this terror-related anxiety. Individuals exposed to man-made (e.g. terrorist attacks, wars) or natural disasters (e.g. earthquakes, tsunamis) are obliged to mitigate the awareness of their eventual death or mortality salience (MS). MS plays a significant role in shaping individuals consumption behaviors, particularly in terms of materialism and ethnocentrism. This study aims to address (1) how MS-induced feelings impact consumers’ consumption criteria, preferences and behaviors, and (2) what contextual and cultural factors ought to be considered in this regard. Nineteen focus groups in total were conducted in Japan, Lebanon and the UK. Based on grounded theory approach, we found that consumers’ feelings based on their traumatic experiences exhibit some similarities and differences depending on their own historical, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds. Future research should include more countries and take into account a variety of cultural backgrounds. Moreover, as Japan, Lebanon and the UK represent three of the most prominent religions, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity respectively, religiosity may be a relevant concept in defining and interpreting MS in a cross-cultural context.

With increasing competition in the global marketplace and the shift marketing activities from product-centered to consumer-centered, companies make efforts to collect information on overseas markets and global consumers prior to the initiation of new marketing activities. The concept of customer equity has been introduced as a tool to continously secure customers and create profits in the future. These trends also play an important role in the fashion industry since many fashion brands are growing into global companies, but need to adapt their innovative marketing strategies to different market environments, such as cultural settings. For this reason, more understanding of the individual consumers and the responses to marketing strategies is required. Furthermore, the trend cycle of SPA brands tends to be very short, so corporate profitability is highly sensitive to consumers’ attitudinal changes. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of cultural value in the global customer equity model focusing on SPA brands. For that, fashion SPA brands which are active globally will be selected and surveys will be distributed in several countries in order to compare and analyze the impact of cultural value on customer equity. The expected results of this study will contribute to the global market segmentation in terms of improved marketing efforts. Marketers will be able to understand which one of the three customer equity drivers – relationship, value, brand – is most important to the cultural setting. Furthermore, the findings will indicate which cultural value is most dominant in the respective country to direct marketing approaches towards these values. Through this improved knowledge over customers, companies can lower their marketing investments, analyze the individual profitability of customers to their company and communicate in more efficient ways to the customers. By gaining more knowledge about the consumer behavior in the respective country, SPA brands will be able to better understand product preferences and purchase patterns and therefore plan product style and life cycles in more efficient ways, which is crucial in such a fast continously changing marketplace. In this way, this study extends the research scope towards a cultural perspective on customer equity.