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1、ADVERTISING TO BILINGUALS: DOES THE LANGUAGE OF ADVERTISINGINFLUENCE THE NATURE OF THOUGHTS?A DissertationPresented toThe Faculty of the C.T. Bauer College of BusinessUniversity of HoustonIn Partial FulfillmentOf the Requirements for the DegreeDoctor of PhilosophyByJaime NoriegaAugust, 2006ABSTRACTW
2、hen targeting bilingual consumers, advertisers have a choice of advertising in a bilinguals native language or in the countrys dominant language. Within the U.S. Hispanic community, for example, Kellogs has a choice of advertising Frosted Flakes in English or in Spanish. But which is the better choi
3、ce and why? This research considers whether the choice of language in advertising to bilinguals may influence the types of thoughts they have in response to an advertisement. The underlying issue is whether advertisers can use language of execution as a strategic variable with which to generate cert
4、ain types of associations that may facilitate persuasion. We consider this issue from a social cognition perspective. We hypothesize that a native language ad may be more likely to elicit self referent thoughts about family, friends, home or homeland, which in turn may lead to more positive attitude
5、 measures and behavioral intentions. Furthermore, we show that these effects are moderated by the consumption context presented in the advertisement.TABLE OF CONTENTSAcknowledgements IiiAbstract ViList of Tables IxList of Figures XIntroduction1Conceptual Background and Hypotheses5Perspectives on Lan
6、guage and Memory5Context and Language6Hypotheses Development8Hypotheses 1a9Hypotheses 1b9Hypotheses 2a11Hypotheses 2b11Study 113Method13Participants and Design13Stimuli and Procedure14Measures15Results16Discussion16Study 218Method18Participants and Design18Stimuli and Procedure20Measures21Analysis22
7、Results25Discussion28General Discussion30Limitations and issues32References34Appendix47LIST OF TABLESTable 1: Model Comparisons46LIST OF FIGURESFigure 1: Full Model42Figure 2: Study 1 Stimuli43Figure 3: Study 2 Stimuli44Figure 4: Results of Final Model45INTRODUCTIONOne of the primary topics of inter
8、est in the U.S. literature on cross-cultural communication has been whether advertising directed at bilingual minorities will be more effective if it is presented in the countrys dominant language or the bilinguals native language. This issue gains a special relevance given the phenomenal growth of
9、bilingual populations in the U.S. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, America has more than 50 million people who speak a language other than English at home. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005), and the trend toward acculturation rather than assimilation means many minorities are choosing to preserve eleme
10、nts of their ethnic identity, perhaps the most distinctive of which is language. Previous research on language choice and ad effectiveness has considered three different perspectives by which to explain why language choice can make a difference in advertising effectiveness for bilingual markets. Bro
11、adly, these three perspectives are: (a) social psychological; (b) cognitive; and (c) affective.The earliest research on cross cultural communication took a social psychological perspective and considered hypotheses related to identity and accommodation. This stream of research presumed that the targ
12、et group was a minority population and argued that an advertisement was more likely to be persuasive if it featured a character similar to the audience or was written in their native language (Whittler 1991, Koslow, Shamdasani and Touchstone 1994, Deshpande, Hoyer and Donthu 1986, Deshpande and Stay
13、man 1989). This effect was thought to occur as long as group members believed the act of translating or otherwise making the ad culturally accessible was a sign that the advertiser acknowledged, valued and respected them. The moderators suggested by this mechanism are anything that enhance or dimini
14、sh these effects. For example, Deshpande and others found that ethnic self identity had an impact on whether or not a native language execution aided ad persuasiveness, such that a native language execution was more persuasive for individuals whose ethnic self identity was high rather than low (Desh
15、pande, Hoyer, and Donthu 1986, Forehand and Deshpande 2001). More recently, cross cultural communication research has taken a cognitive perspective and has suggested that language choice can relate to ad effectiveness through ease of processing. In this regard, Luna and Peracchio (1999, 2001) found
16、that it is preferable to advertise to bilinguals in their first/native language not because of any social or cultural considerations but simply because second language words are more difficult to process for bilinguals. Because conceptual links are harder to come by for second language words than fo
17、r first language words, less of a message will be recalled when it is presented in the subjects second language. The moderators suggested by this stream of research are any elements that would affect the level of verbal processing required by an ad, or the ease of doing this processing. One obvious
18、choice would be language fluency, and Luna and Peracchio also found that high levels of picture-text congruity made the process easier and allowed for better recall of a second language message (Luna and Peracchio 2001; Luna, Peracchio, and DeJuan 2003).In their most recent research, Luna and Peracc
19、hio (2002, 2005) have also considered language effects from an affective perspective. Operating at the level of specific words, Luna and Peracchio have argued that some words have more of an emotional attachment when presented in the native language than its second language equivalent. This may occu
20、r as a result of sociolinguistic differences between cognitively equivalent words across two languages. A bilinguals native culture may value certain concepts (e.g. family, relationships, and religion) more highly than other cultures, and the language in which the meaning of the concept is first lea
21、rned then becomes the prototypical representation of that concept. For example, although a Spanish-dominant Hispanic bilingual may understand the meaning of the word “daughter” and its Spanish equivalent “hija” equally well on a cognitive level, the emotional content of “hija” is believed to be stro
22、nger (Luna and Peracchio 2002, 2005). One possible moderator suggested by this stream of research would be the nature of the appeal of any given advertisement. The impact of affect laden words might be more important when using an emotional appeal as opposed to a rational or functional appeal based
23、on the products attributes. Here, we consider a fourth perspective to explain why the choice of language may have a differential impact on ad persuasiveness, that of social cognition. We argue that each of a bilinguals two languages may cue different associations for the same message, and each langu
24、age execution consequently has the potential to lead to different levels of persuasiveness. In particular, we argue that the two languages are likely to be differentially associated with a bilinguals experiences among family, friends and homeland, and hence differentially likely to cue self-referent
25、 associations with these experiences, with possible implications for persuasion. The moderators suggested by this line of research are any aspect of the stimuli which may somehow relate to this cueing. For the present research, we will look at how the consumption context presented by an advertisemen
26、t may moderate the relationship between choice of language and the resulting thoughts and persuasion.It is perhaps worth noting that all of these research streams suggest that it will be more effective to advertise to an ethnic minority population in their native language. What differentiates these
27、theories and makes each one singularly valuable is that each suggests its own set of moderators. Multiple moderators drawing from different perspectives give us a better understanding of the phenomenon and allow us to suggest a number of different practical applications.The remainder of this paper i
28、s organized as follows: First, we look at different perspectives on language and memory and how language and context intersect. Next, we develop our hypotheses and describe our studies and results. This is followed by a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings. Final
29、ly, we will observe the limitations of our research and the future research they imply.CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESESPerspectives on language and memoryThe general literature on language and cognition tells us that language can serve as an attribute of an experience or even as a medium of expe
30、rience.Experiences are characterized by a number of different attributes which make up any given event. The language spoken during an encounter is just one attribute which is likely to have a distinct linguistic identity. The presence of people who speak a particular language could be considered ano
31、ther attribute which may have a distinct linguistic identity. The extent to which each attribute is uniquely associated with one language, and the number of attributes within an experience which share a distinct linguistic tag may determine to what extent the experience as a whole may be cued by a g
32、iven language. Any given attribute having a distinct linguistic tag has the potential to serve as a pathway through which language might cue the experience as a whole.When language is said to serve as a medium of experience, that means it is intrinsic to capturing the experience; every aspect of tha
33、t experience is infused with a language tag such that language becomes the gateway to that experience, and we can only re-experience it or share it fully in the same language in which it was experienced. Under this view, language becomes a sort of super-attribute. The idea that language can serve as
34、 a medium of experience started out as a philosophical argument which in its strong version suggested that language is so intrinsic to thought as to completely guide comprehension and representation (Whorf, 1956). Even though the strong version of that argument has been discarded, there is common ag
35、reement that language does influence thought. This might be particularly true for social experiences. Language is a tool of social communication; it is intimately tied into how we experience life as social creatures. As Fivush has suggested, “.language is a critical tool of human cognition, one whic
36、h allows us to move beyond individual cognition and engage in culturally mediated cognition” (Fivush 1998, p. 486). The idea that language may serve as an attribute or medium of experience creates a theoretical connection between language and experience; that language may be, at a minimum, one of th
37、e many attributes of an experience that we associate with it. Context and languagePsycholinguistics suggests that context (the people, places, things, and symbols that surround us) can cue the language we use to communicate. For a monolingual, surroundings help determine the proper vocabulary and th
38、e formality with which it should be used. For example, a doctor may speak of a “hematoma” at the hospital, but might refer to the same malady as a bruise while at home. A lawyer is not likely to use slang in the courtroom, but may do so when visiting with friends over the weekend.Bilinguals also use
39、 context as a guide for the vocabulary they should use and the formality with which to use it, but additionally, the context within which bilinguals find themselves can cue which language will be most appropriate. A Chinese-English bilingual getting a room in a Shanghai hotel may handle the transact
40、ion in Chinese whereas that same bilingual in Boston will handle the transaction in English. These examples are a clear indication that context can cue language; however, from an advertising perspective, what we are most interested in knowing is whether language can cue context; i.e. whether differe
41、nt languages can cue different associations.This question has received some attention in the psycholinguistics literature. Research on language dependent memory has shown that for bilinguals, the recall of autobiographical memories may depend on the language with which the memory is cued. In a study
42、 of Russian-English bilinguals, Marian and Neisser (2000) showed that participants shared more experiences in Russian when interviewed in Russian and more experiences in English when interviewed in English, supporting a hypothesis that language of inquiry can cue the language of recall for autobiogr
43、aphical memories. Larsen et al. (2002) went a step further by proposing that bilinguals semantic and conceptual stores can be both language and culture specific. Larsen found that if Polish immigrants to Denmark were asked to recall a life experience in Polish, the reply would more likely be given i
44、n Polish and would correspond to an event experienced in Poland before immigration; whereas if the request was made in Danish, the reply was given in Danish and corresponded to an event experienced in Denmark after immigration. Although these studies provide some indication that language may cue con
45、text, the social conditions of their methodology - i.e., an interviewer making an explicit request for autobiographical memories in a specific language - make the presence of demand effects a distinct possibility. It could very well be that bilinguals assume out of reciprocity that questions should
46、be answered in the same language in which they are made. If this were the case, one could argue that it was the subjects presumption of language expectations on the part of the interviewer which led to the reporting of linguistically matched memories. Likewise, when immigrants were asked about exper
47、iences that might have happened any time in their lives, the language of inquiry may have cued certain experiences in memory, but it also may have been taken as an indication of which experiences were of interest. Furthermore, even if these studies suggest that language has the potential to cue cont
48、ext, they do not provide a clear indication that it can do so spontaneously, because both studies explicitly requested that participants recall an episodic memory.Hypotheses developmentIf language can cue associations, the general literature on information processing suggests that the linguistic diagnosticity of any given association will determine whether or not language cues it. For example, if some type of experience systematically occurs in one language, it is more likely that this
