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

TLDR

Code‑switching, the mixing of languages within a sentence, is a common practice among bilingual consumers. The study investigates how code‑switching affects the persuasiveness of marketing messages by examining bilingual consumers' responses to different types of code‑switched slogans. The authors assess bilingual consumers' persuasion processes by analyzing responses to various code‑switched message types. A pilot study shows that minority‑language slogans switching to the majority language are more persuasive than the reverse, an effect driven by the salience of the switched word, but the direction reverses when positive associations with the minority language exist.

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.