Trans-cultural marketing: when intra-cultural and cross-cultural marketing collide

Intra-cultural marketing seeks to identify, segment, and target consumers belonging to sub-cultures within a given culture. Such sub-cultures can be structured around ethnicity, religion, race, gender, or sexual orientation among others. Reflecting on the context of non-heterosexual consumers (LGBTQ+) we argue that a) such intra-cultural consumer sub-cultures are themselves fragmented and internally heterogeneous; b) share inter-cultural aspects such as similar histories of oppression and liberation across cultures (e.g., the lesbian and gay civil rights movement in the US and Europe) and their key events (Stonewall, same-sex marriage legislation); and c) are not classic "cultures" grounded in ancestry, territory, or nationality, but exist both, within a culture and across cultures (e.g., Western gay culture). We theorize the interplay of cultural, intra-cultural, and inter-cultural factors in the consumer behavior of non-heterosexual consumers,and develop a framework for further research on trans-cultural consumer sub-cultures.