The effects of code switching in the level of persuasiveness of advertising and marketing messages on bilingual consumers.

The effects of code switching in the level of persuasiveness of advertising and marketing messages on bilingual consumers.

Stephanos Mosfiliotis

14/08/2022

Bilingualism and advertising are two concepts which are not commonly related, but based on recent statistics they definitely should be. Recent numbers show that more than 50% of the world’s population is bilingual (Grosjean, 2010). However, there has been minimal research concerning bilingual consumers and how bilinguals may differently encounter advertising messages, based on their ability to speak two languages. The research that has been done, is primarily based on code switching; the practice of switching between languages during speech. It is a very common practice between bilinguals, which they use to better communicate and better express themselves during a conversation in a specific social context. This study will attempt to analyse the effects of language manipulation upon bilingual individuals, by implementing the concept of advertising and more specifically bilingual advertising. participants will firstly encounter a manipulation of attitude towards language, before encountering a set of advertising slogans of certain products, in a code-switched format. They will then have to rate the products, based on the persuasiveness of the advertising slogans.

Bilingualism
Code-switching
Language Manipulation
Advertising
Communication
Language Comprehension/Cognition

Firstly, a manipulation of attitude towards the language took place. Participants were presented with a random mock article, either in Greek or English.

Participants were then presented with four audio recordings of advertising messages/slogans of four different products. Slogans were either all in Greek or English and they were presented in the same code-switching direction; from primary to Secondary or from Secondary to primary. A single word was chosen from each slogan and was code-switched to the opposite language appropriately.

Participants were then asked to evaluate the featured products based on the advertising message they heard. Evaluations were obtained through a series of six questions, asking the participant to rate the featured product on a Likert type scale, varying from one to six. These included: “poor/high quality”, “level of appeal”, “odds of recommending the product to others”, “odds of buying the product”, “mediocre/exceptional” and “bad/good”.

Lancaster University

Data/.CSV

Mosfiliotis2022

Katie Alcock

Open

None

English and Greek

Data

LA1 4YF