Advertising to Bilingual Consumers: The Impact of Code-Switching on Persuasion

Journal of Consumer Research · 2005 · Volume 31 · Issue 4

Abstract

Building on a sociolinguistic framework, our research explores the impact of code-switching on the persuasiveness of marketing messages. Code-switching refers to mixing languages within a sentence, a common practice among bilingual consumers. We investigate how responses to different types of code-switched messages can provide insight into bilingual consumers' persuasion processes. A pilot study reveals a code-switching direction effect such that minority-language slogans switching to the majority language result in greater persuasion than majority-language slogans switching to the minority language. The effect is attributed to the salience of the code-switched word in the slogan. Study 1 explores this code-switching direction effect in more detail and shows that when associations toward the minority language are positive, the code-switching direction effect is reversed.

Keywords

Advertising, Attitudes, Cross-Cultural Research, Language, Experimental Design and Analysis (ANOVA)

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