What if Web site editorial content and ads are in two different languages?A study of bilingual consumers’ online information processing

CONG LI1* and SRIRAM KALYANARAMAN2

1School of Communication, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA2School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

ABSTRACT

This study examined banner ads’ communication effects when they were written in the same or different language from the editorial contentof a Web site. A total of 60 bilingual consumers who spoke both Chinese (as their first language) and English (as their second language)participated in an experiment, in which they viewed a designated news story Web site. The editorial content of the Web site and the bannerads on it were written in either Chinese or English. It was found that the participants considered the Chinese Web sites to be more readable.However, they generated higher recalls and purchase intentions for the ads on the English Web sites. Moreover, they revealed more favorableattitudes toward the brands when the ads were written in English than in Chinese. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Bilingualism has been a noteworthy phenomenon around theworld for decades (Grosjean, 1982). For example, the numberof bilinguals who speak both English and Chinese in the USAis estimated to be 2.5 million (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010).Next to Spanish, Chinese is the second most widely spokennon-English language in the country (U.S. Census Bureau,2010). From both demographic and economic perspectives,marketing toward bilingual consumers is an importantissue (Holland and Gentry, 1999). To make better marketingstrategies, profound theoretical understanding of how bilingualconsumers process marketing information is essential.

Several prior studies have illustrated the differences ofinformation processing between monolingual individuals ofdifferent languages (e.g., Schmitt et al., 1994; Tavassoli,1999). The unique characteristics of bilingual informationprocessing have also been explored in several ways (e.g., Lunaand Peracchio, 2001, 2002; Luna et al., 2003). A specialmarketing strategy toward bilingual consumers, code-switchedadvertising, is gaining more attention from scholars (e.g., Lunaand Peracchio, 2005a, 2005b; Luna et al., 2005). In fact, codeswitching is a widely adopted linguistic practice by bilinguals,which refers to the insertion of a foreign word or expressioninto a sentence, resulting in a mixed-language message(Grosjean, 1982). In advertising, code switching generallyconsists of inserting a foreign word or expression into an adslogan (Luna and Peracchio, 2005a, 2005b; Luna et al.,2005). Different types of code-switched ad messages cangenerate different persuasion effects. For example, Luna andPeracchio (2005a) found that minority language ad slogansswitching to the majority language resulted in greaterpersuasion effects than did majority language slogansswitching to the minority language, which was known as thecode-switching direction effect. However, when the

associations with the minority language were positive, thecode-switching direction effect was reversed.

The current study intends to examine how bilingual consu-mers process online information, particularly code-switchedmessages. It differs from prior research in several ways. First,most prior studies examined code-switching effects of adver-tising at a micro level, where coexistence of two languageswithin a single ad slogan was considered to be code switching,no matter what the switching direction was (e.g., Luna andPeracchio, 2005a, 2005b; Luna et al., 2005). The current studymakes the concept of code switching broader and investigatesits effects at a macro level. Coexistence of commercialmessages and editorial content written in two differentlanguages within a mass communication medium (the Internet)is treated as a macro-level code switching. The code-switchingdirection is assumed to be from the editorial content languageto the ad language because ads on a Web site generally takea smaller portion of the space. Second, most prior studies testedthe code-switching effects of ads written in English andSpanish. Given the rising importance of the Chinese languageon the Internet (Internet World Stats, 2009), the current studytests the code-switching effects with English and Chinese,hence enriching the generalizability of prior research findings.Finally, most prior research was focused on advertising in printmedia (e.g., magazine ads). This study tests the effects of code-switched advertising in a computer-mediated communicationsetting, which is significantly different from the traditionalmass media environment (Hoffman and Novak, 1996).

LITERATURE REVIEW

Code switching and the InternetEnglish used to be the dominant language on the Internet. In1996, English was the native language of 80 per cent of Webusers, and nearly all “Netizens” could read it to some degree(Crockett, 2000). However, things have changed. Accordingto a recent Internet language report, only 27.7 per cent ofWeb users were native English speakers (Internet World

*Correspondence to: Cong Li, School of Communication, University ofMiami, Coral Gables, FL, 32146, USA.E-mail: congli@miami.edu

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal of Consumer Behaviour, J. Consumer Behav. (2012)Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/cb.1371

Stats, 2009). On the other hand, the percentage of Chinesespeakers on the Internet had increased to 22.6 per cent(Internet World Stats, 2009). As a result, many portals (e.g.,Yahoo!) are now providing content in several differentlanguages.

Despite the increased presence of bilingual consumers onthe Internet, little attention has been devoted to how Internetusers react to Web sites that are presented in some languagesother than English (Luna et al., 2002). Moreover, research onhow bilingual consumers react to their second languagemarketing messages is still in its infancy (Luna et al.,2003). An important unanswered research question is asfollows: How do bilingual consumers process messagespresented on a Web site but written in two different languages(e.g., their first language vs. their second language)? Indeed,when messages in two different languages coexist on a Website, it can be considered a macro-level code switching.

As a widely employed practice by bilinguals, codeswitching has become home to a vast body of research(Benson, 2001). It was defined by Grosjean (1982: 145) as“the alternate use of two or more languages in the sameutterance or conversation.” Simply speaking, when bilingualscommunicate with others, they may choose to switch betweentheir first language and second language to express differentideas. A similar process applies to advertisers seeking tocommunicate with bilingual consumers. Advertisers maychoose to use a mixture of languages in their commercialmessages (Luna et al., 2005). Manipulation of the language inwhich the ad is written is an important part of advertisers’ effortsto appeal to bilingual consumers (Luna and Peracchio, 2005b).

How bilinguals process information in their first andsecond language is crucial to the persuasion effects ofmessages in mixed languages. For example, Koslow et al.(1994) employed a sociolinguistic perspective to explorethe impact of language on persuasion for US Hispanics.Their study results suggest that advertisers should usesome mixture of Spanish and English. The positive effectof signaling an advertiser’s respect for and awareness of theHispanic community is present at the lowest level of Spanishusage (e.g., an English-dominant bilingual ad), but it doesnot significantly increase when Spanish-dominant bilingualor exclusively Spanish ads are used. Moreover, there is apotential loss from using only-Spanish ads because theimportant secondary effect of language-related inferioritycomplexes also operates.

Markedness modelWhy do bilinguals code switch in their communication withothers, and how do they react to this practice? Grosjean(1982) argued that code switching was generally sociallymotivated and rarely a sign of lack of fluency in a language.As Hofstede (2001: 21) suggested, “language is the mostclearly recognizable part of culture. . .,” languages containsocial meanings. Based on a sociolinguistic model, themarkedness model (Myers-Scotton, 1991, 1993, 2000),languages are associated with certain meanings or languageschemas. A language schema refers to the sets of features orassociations linked to a particular language, includingindividuals’ perceptions about the kind of people who speak

the language, the situations and occasions when the languagecan be chosen, the topics for which the language is bettersuited, beliefs of how the language may be perceived byothers, and the meanings that may be communicated bychoosing that language (Luna and Peracchio, 2005b). Forexample, Hindi and English were perceived to be associatedwith different meanings by people living in India (Krishnaand Ahluwalia, 2008).

According to the markedness model (Myers-Scotton,1991, 1993, 2000), an individual chooses a certain languagein his or her speech by matching it to the salient features of aparticular event or environment. Regarding code switching,bilinguals switch languages in their speech when they wantto communicate certain meanings or group memberships.The inserted language element becomes marked because ofits contrast with the message recipient’s expectations. Thelinguistic term markedness is analogous to perceptualsalience (Luna and Peracchio, 2005b). As many cognitivepsychology experiments have illustrated, people’s attentiontends to be captured by unexpected stimuli, which is termedthe novel popout effect. Novel popout appears to be a robustand replicable phenomenon of non-directed attention(Johnston et al., 1990).

How unexpected stimuli affect viewers’ attention, memory,attitude, and behavior has been widely examined withinadvertising contexts. According to Heckler and Childers(1992), expectancy, the degree to which an item or piece ofinformation falls into some predetermined pattern or structureevoked by the theme, is a crucial dimension to conceptualizeinformation incongruency. For example, when an ad shows afamous rap singer suddenly sounds like a lounge singer whenthe wrong brand of cola is given to him, such unexpectedinformation creates incongruency. In their experiments,Heckler and Childers (1992) showed that unexpected informa-tion elicited elaborative processing and led to superior recalland recognition of the picture component of the ads. Lee andMason (1999) later extended the findings of Heckler andChilders (1992) and suggested that creating incongruencythrough unexpectedness could be effective not only onenhancing memory but also on forming a more favorableattitude toward the ad and the brand. In a similar vein, Aldenet al. (2000) defined incongruity in the context of advertisingas the extent to which ad content differed from generallyexpected beliefs, attitudes, or behavior. Furthermore, Lee(2000) showed that unexpected information in an ad createda higher ad message involvement than did expected informa-tion. Also, attitude evaluations for ads with unexpected infor-mation were found to be significantly more favorable thanwere those with expected information in both immediate anddelayed response conditions.

In addition, scholars have also tested novel popout effectsof advertising from some other perspectives. For example,Ang et al. (2007) considered novelty to be an importantcomponent of advertising creativity. Compared with non-novel ads, novel ads were found to generate higher ad recallsand more favorable ad attitudes. Dahl et al. (2003) showed intheir studies that producing surprises in ads was a good tacticto attract viewers’ attention, increase memory, and positivelyinfluence message-relevant behavior. Moreover, advertising

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Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. (2012)

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language was illustrated to be able to produce novel popouteffect, too. Ahn and La Ferle (2008) argued that a wordpresented in a foreign language (Roman alphabet) might bemore distinctive and gain more attention over a word writtenin the local language (Hangul) for people living in Korea. Intheir experiment, they manipulated the language of brandname and advertising copy and examined viewers’ admemory. It was found that the novel and distinctive natureof the Roman alphabet in a Korean advertising contextenhanced brand name recognition and recall by elicitingmore attention during information processing.

Applying the earlier mentioned theoretical arguments andempirical evidence to code switching, an unexpectedinsertion of another language element will stand out fromits immediate context. That is, when an individual is proces-sing information in one language and the message suddenlyswitches a word or phrase to a different language, thatother-language word or phrase will become salient or marked(Luna and Peracchio, 2005b). As a consequence, thelanguage schema of that marked language will be activated,and the message processor will become aware of the socialmeanings carried by that language. He or she will thenelaborate on those meanings, which subsequently influenceshis or her evaluations of the code-switched message (Lunaand Peracchio, 2005a).

Revised hierarchical modelAccording to the markedness model (Myers-Scotton, 1991,1993, 2000), we shall observe a markedness effect ifcommercial messages and editorial content on a Web siteare written in two different languages, but no such an effectif they are in the same language. However, prior researchhas suggested that an ad presented in target consumers’ firstlanguage and second language can generate differentadvertising effects (Koslow et al., 1994). According toMacInnis and Jaworski (1989: 7), an important moderator ofinformation processing is processing ability, which wasdefined as “skill or proficiency in interpreting brand informa-tion in an ad.” Regarding bilingual individuals’ informationprocessing, a key indicator of their ability to processinformation is the language in which the message is written(Luna et al., 2003). For example, aWeb site written in viewers’second language may present an additional processing load bycreating a mismatch between the cognitive resources requiredto process the Web site and viewers’ available resources todo so (Luna et al., 2002).

A psycholinguistic model, the revised hierarchical model(Dufour and Kroll, 1995; Kroll and de Groot, 1997), explainshow bilinguals process information in their first language andsecond language differently. The model suggests that thereexist two levels of representation in bilinguals’ minds: thelexical (word) level and the conceptual (meaning) level. Atthe lexical level, each language is stored separately. However,at the conceptual level, there is a unitary system where wordsin each language share a common meaning. According toDufour and Kroll (1995: 166), bilinguals possess a “hierarchi-cal arrangement of words and concepts, with a separation at thelexical level but with connections to a semantic system that isshared across languages.” Because people learn words in their

second language by relating them to words in their firstlanguage, the revised hierarchical model suggests that thereare stronger lexical links and conceptual links fromindividuals’ first language to their second language. Such anasymmetry still exists even after bilinguals have become fluentin both languages. The model also specifies that the second-language lexical store is smaller than the first-language one.Overall, conceptual or semantic processing is less likely tooccur when a message is presented in bilinguals’ secondlanguage than in their first language.

HypothesesBased on the review of theoretical frameworks and priorempirical findings, several hypotheses are generated accord-ingly. First, the current study intends to test code-switchingeffects of advertising with Chinese and English. The studyparticipants are bilingual consumers who speak both Chinese(as their first language) and English (as their secondLanguage). According to the revised hierarchical model(Dufour and Kroll, 1995; Kroll and de Groot, 1997), it isexpected that they will find the Chinese Web sites in theexperiment (regardless of the commercial messages on theWeb sites) more readable than the English Web sites becausethe Chinese Web sites are primarily presented in theirfirst language.

H1: Participants who speak Chinese as their first languageand English as their second language will perceive theChinese Web sites to be more readable than the EnglishWeb sites.

According to the markedness model (Myers-Scotton,1991, 1993, 2000), it can be predicted that when commercialmessages and editorial content on a Web site are written intwo different languages, commercial messages will becomesalient, thus attracting more attention and generating strongermemory (memory is measured by ad recall in the currentstudy). However, there will be no such markedness effectwhen commercial messages and editorial content are writtenin the same language. The following interaction effect is thenhypothesized:

H2: There will be an interaction effect between editorialcontent language and ad language on participants’ ad recall.For the Chinese Web sites, the English ads will generatehigher ad recalls than will the Chinese ads. On the contrary,for the English Web sites, Chinese ads will generate higherad recalls than will the English ads.

Finally, three more hypotheses are generated regardingparticipants’ attitudes toward the ads, attitudes toward thebrands, and purchase intentions for the advertised products.As discussed earlier, when a certain language is marked, thelanguage schema associated with it will be activated. Messagerecipients will then become aware of the social meaningscarried by that language (Luna and Peracchio, 2005a). In thecontext of this study, brand information in the ads is presentedin either Chinese or English. When participants are exposed tothe ads, certain meanings carried by the Chinese brands or theEnglish brands will be activated (although the brandsthemselves are the same). According to Leclerc et al. (1994),

A code-switching effect test on the Internet

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. (2012)

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how brand names are presented in different languages willaffect how consumers perceive and evaluate the products. Inthis study, a brand presented in English may be associated withthe concept of “made abroad” and generate a stronger qualityimage. In contrast, the same brand name presented in Chinesemay lead to a “made in China” impression, which is generallyassociated with a cheaper price and a relatively inferior quality.Thus, participants are expected to generate more favorableattitudes toward the English ads and the English brand namesthan the Chinese ones. They are also expected to have strongerdesires to buy the advertised products featured in the Englishads than those in the Chinese ads.

H3: Participants who speak Chinese as their first languageand English as their second language will generate morefavorable attitudes toward the English ads than towardthe Chinese ads, regardless of the editorial language onthe Web site.

H4: Participants who speak Chinese as their first languageand English as their second language will generate morefavorable attitudes toward the English brand names thantoward the Chinese brand names, regardless of theeditorial language of the Web site.

H5: Participants who speak Chinese as their first languageand English as their second language will have higherpurchase intentions for the products featured in theEnglish ads than for those featured in the Chinese ads,regardless of the editorial language of the Web site.

METHOD

Experimental designThis study implemented a 2 � 2 full factorial experimentaldesign. The two manipulated factors were Web site editorialcontent language (Chinese vs. English) and Web ad language(Chinese vs. English).

Stimulus materialsFour mock news story Web sites were created for the studywith identical layout and message. They only differed inWeb site editorial content language or Web ad language.Each Web site contained two pages, each carrying a newsstory and a rectangular banner ad. The two news stories,selected from English Yahoo! News, were entitled “Blindpilot flies halfway round world” and “Musicians unlockmystery melody in Scottish chapel”, respectively. Theoriginal stories were written in English. They were translatedinto Chinese by the researchers. To ensure equivalency of thetwo language versions of the stories, the Chinese versionwas back translated into English by a Chinese graduatestudent studying at an American institution who was fluentin both Chinese and English. The banner ads were alsocreated by the researchers. To make the study results moregeneralizable, two different product types (automobile andinstant coffee) were used in the ads. Because the brand namesin this study needed to be presented in both English andChinese, it would be wise not to use the brands that were

USA based or China based. Due to this reason, two “neutral”brands were selected: Toyota (a Japanese brand) and Nescafe(a Swiss brand). Therefore, one banner ad was created forToyota, and the other was created for Nescafe. Similar to thetranslation procedure applied to the news stories, the advertis-ing copies for the two banner ads were first created in Englishand then translated into Chinese. The same Chinese graduatestudent double checked the accuracy of the translation. Theorder of presenting these two ads in the experiment wascounterbalanced.

ParticipantsThe participants in the experiment were recruited from a localChinese community of a southern university in the USA. Therecruiting e-mail was sent to the listserv of the community. Atotal of 60 local Chinese employees and Chinese graduatestudents at the university (70% were men) participated in theexperiment. On average, their age was 30.2 years old, and theyhad spent 4.7 years in the USA. Their average Internetusage per day was 4.3 hours. When all experiment sessionswere over, the participants were thanked for their time.Ten randomly selected participants received 10 US dollarsas compensation.

Experiment procedure and measurementsThe experiment was conducted in a computer laboratory withhigh-speed Internet connections. The participants wererandomly assigned to each of the four experimentalconditions. Upon arrival at the laboratory, they first signedthe consent form. Then, they were asked to fill out a pre-experiment questionnaire, which measured their languageproficiency and demographic information.

Participants’ language proficiency of Chinese or Englishwas measured on a 1- to 7-point scale (1 meant stronglydisagree, and 7 meant strongly agree) with four statements,including “My reading comprehension of Chinese (English)is very good,” “I do not have any difficulty reading Chinese(English) articles,” “Reading a story in Chinese (English) iseasy for me,” and “I feel comfortable reading things writtenin Chinese (English).” The measure was found to be unidimen-sional and reliable (Chinese, a =0.86; English, a =0.88).

After finishing the pre-experiment questionnaire, partici-pants were instructed to browse a designated Web site(depending on their experimental conditions, the news storieswere in either Chinese or English, and the banner ads were ineither Chinese or English). The cover story for the experimentwas that the researchers were interested in examining howpeople processed online information written in differentlanguages. Participant’s browsing speed was self-determined.After viewing the Web site, they were asked to recall anyinformation that they remembered about the two banner ads(e.g., product type, brand name, color, and advertising copy).The number of correct pieces of information participantsrecalled were later accumulated as their ad recall scores (e.g.,one participant recalled two pieces of information about theads correctly, and his recall score was 2). The coding ofparticipants’ ad recall was completed by two Chinese graduatestudents who did not participate in the experiment. The

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Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. (2012)

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intercoder reliability was 0.93. Disagreement was solved by adiscussion between the coders and the researchers.

After the unaided recall task, the participants were thenasked to fill out a postexperiment questionnaire, whichincluded measures of Web site readability, attitude towardthe ad, attitude toward the brand, and purchase intentionfor the advertised product. All the measures were made ona 1- to 7-point scale, where 1 meant strongly disagree and7 meant strongly agree. Web site readability was measuredwith two statements, including “The Web site was easy tounderstand” and “The Web site was simple” (Pearson’sr=0.63, p< 0.01). Attitude toward the ad was measured with14 adjectives, such as appealing and informative (adapted fromHolbrook and Batra, 1987). The measure was unidimensionaland reliable (Toyota, a=0.92; Nescafe, a= 0.95). Attitudetoward the brand was measured with 7 adjectives, such as goodand favorable (adapted fromHolbrook and Batra, 1987). It wasunidimensional, and the reliability was also good (Toyota,a= 0.95; Nescafe, a =0.96). Finally, purchase intention forthe advertised product was measured with two statements,including “I am likely to try the product featured in the ad”and “I am likely to buy the product featured in the ad” (Toyota,Pearson’s r=0.86, p< 0.01; Nescafe, Pearson’s r=0.83,p< 0.01). Participants’ attitudes toward the two ads, two brandnames, and purchase intentions for the two products were lateraveraged for hypotheses testing.

RESULTS

Language proficiencyAccording to the pre-experiment questionnaire responses, allparticipants spoke Chinese as their first language and Englishas their second language. As expected, their self-evaluationsof language proficiency showed that they were more fluent inChinese (M = 6.79, SD = 0.49) than in English (M= 5.14,SD= 1.00), t(59) = 13.71, p< 0.01 (two-tailed).

Perceived Web site readabilityH1 predicted that participants would perceive the ChineseWeb sites to be more readable than the English Web sites. Totest this hypothesis, an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) testwas performed, with Web site readability being the dependentvariable, Web site editorial content language and ad languagebeing the two fixed factors, and participants’ proficiency withtheir second language (English) being the covariate. TheANCOVA result supported H1, F(1,55) = 11.42, p< 0.01,suggesting that participants considered the Chinese Web sites(M=6.32, SD=0.68) to be more readable than the EnglishWeb sites (M=5.45, SD=1.32).

Ad recallAccording to H2, participants who were exposed to the EnglishWeb sites would generate higher recalls for the Chinese ads, andparticipants who were exposed to the Chinese Web sites wouldgenerate higher recalls for the English ads. To test thishypothesis, another ANCOVA test was performed, with adrecall being the dependent variable. No significant interactioneffect was detected, F(1,55) = 0.04, p=0.85. However, there

was a significant main effect of editorial Content language thatparticipants recalled more ad information on the English Websites (M=2.70, SD=2.67) than on the Chinese Web sites(M=1.53, SD=1.94), F(1,55) = 3.85, p< 0.05.

Attitude toward the adH3 predicted that participants would generate more favorableattitudes toward the English ads than toward the Chineseads. It was not supported according to the ANCOVA testresult, F(1,55) = 1.80, p = 0.19. Participants’ attitudes towardthe English ads (M = 3.14, SD = 0.90) did not significantlydiffer from their attitudes toward the Chinese ads (M = 2.79,SD = 1.06).

Attitude toward the brandBased on H4, participants would generate more favorableattitudes toward the English brand names than toward theChinese brand names. The ANCOVA result supported thishypothesis. A significant main effect of ad language wasdetected, F(1,55) = 4.30, p< 0.05, which revealed that partici-pants had more favorable attitudes toward the brand nameswhen they were written in English (M = 4.48, SD= 1.14) thanwhen they were written in Chinese (M = 3.66, SD= 1.71).

Purchase intention for the advertised productFinally, H5 predicted that participants would have higherpurchase intentions for the products featured in the Englishads than those in the Chinese ads. The ANCOVA test resultshowed no significant main effect of ad language. However,a significant main effect of editorial content language wasdiscovered, F(1,55) = 3.85, p< 0.05, suggesting that partici-pants wanted to purchase the products more when theads were presented on the English Web sites (M = 3.27,SD = 1.61) than on the Chinese sites (M = 2.50, SD = 1.42; asummary of ANCOVA test results is presented in Table 1,and a summary of hypotheses testing is presented inTable 2).

DISCUSSION

Interpretations of the findingsThis study examined code-switching effects of advertisingon the Internet at a macro level. Several findings werediscovered, suggesting both academic interest and industrialimplications. First, it was found that participants in theexperiment considered the Chinese Web sites to be more read-able than the English Web sites. Such a finding should not besurprising, given that they were significantly more fluent in theirfirst language (Chinese) than in their second language (English)based on the pre-experiment self-evaluations.

The second finding of the study was related to the firstone. Because the Web sites written in their second languagewere less readable, it was found that participants paid moreattention to those Web sites (regardless of ad language). Thiscognitive intensity resulted in higher ad recalls and purchaseintentions. It is important to note that all participants in theexperiment received the same instruction for Web site surfingand that their browsing behavior was self-paced. Based on

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Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. (2012)

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the revised hierarchical model (Dufour and Kroll, 1995;Kroll and de Groot, 1997), to reach the same comprehensionlevel, individuals need more time and more mental resourcesfor messages written in their second language than in theirfirst language. Therefore, under a moderate informationprocessing condition such as the experimental setting in thecurrent study, participants inevitably paid closer attention tothe Web sites written in their second language, which ledto the second finding.

It seems that this finding has counterintuitive implications.In general, communication effects are believed to be strongerwhen a message is delivered in target audiences’ first language.However, this study illustrated that sending a message in targetaudiences’ second language could be a good option undercertain circumstances (e.g., when bilingual consumers wereinvolved in a moderate information processing task). Forexample, regarding an online shopping Web site where targetconsumers are highly focused on a shopping task, if the edito-rial content of the Web site is written in target consumers’second language, commercial messages on the Web site maybenefit and counterintuitively attract more attention andproduce stronger brand memory.

However, this finding deserves further discussion before wejump into any conclusion. An unanswered question by thecurrent study is as follows: What if participants’ viewing wasnot instructed? In other words, how would bilingualconsumers react to information presented in their firstlanguage and second language in a more realistic setting where

they surf the Internet freely (e.g., at home)? In fact, thisquestion can be broken into two parts. First, in reality, howlikely would bilingual consumers pick information presentedin their second language to process if it is not forced? Wesuspect that in most cases bilinguals would select informationin their first language to process for convenience reasons.However, there are certainly instances where they may preferinformation in their second language. For example, a Chinesestudent who plans to study at an American university maywant to check out the English Web site of the US embassy inBeijing for visa application details instead of the ChineseWeb site so as to avoid any potential translation confusion.Second, how would bilinguals respond to informationpresented in their first language and second language if theirviewing behavior is entirely free and without any guidance?According to Janiszewski (2008), perception is goal directed,and this process is usually subconscious. Even in a free-viewing session, people may still have some implicit goals inmind (e.g., to relax or to have fun). They only perceive eventsthat are directly related to their goals and often fail to perceivethose that are currently irrelevant. If the goal changes,perception is expected to change, too. For example, Pietersand Wedel (2007) argued that advertising informativenesswas goal contingent. Specifically, they stated that attention toad objects was highest for learning goals, intermediate forevaluating goals, and lowest for free-viewing goals. It wasfound in their experiment that by giving participants differentinstructions (goals), the same ads generated different patterns

Table 2. Summary of hypotheses testing

Hypotheses Predictions Results

H1 Participants will perceive the Chinese Web sites to be morereadable than the English Web sites.

Supported

H2 There will be an interaction effect on ad recall. For the ChineseWeb sites, the English ads will generate higher ad recalls thanwill the Chinese ads. On the contrary, for the English Websites, Chinese ads will generate higher ad recalls than will theEnglish ads.

Partially supported (participants recalled more of the ads onthe English Web sites than those on the Chinese Web sites)

H3 Participants will generate more favorable attitudes toward theEnglish ads than toward the Chinese ads.

Not supported

H4 Participants will generate more favorable attitudes toward theEnglish brand names than toward the Chinese brand names.

Supported

H5 Participants will have higher purchase intentions for theproducts featured in the English ads than for those featured inthe Chinese ads.

Partially supported (participants wanted to purchase theproducts more when the ads were presented on the EnglishWeb sites than on the Chinese Web sites)

Table 1. Summary of ANCOVA test results

Web site readability Ad recall Attitude toward the ad Attitude toward the brand Purchase intention

Chinese Web site 6.32** 1.53* 2.84 3.99 2.50*English Web site 5.45** 2.70* 3.08 4.15 3.27*Chinese ad 5.81 1.87 2.79 3.66* 2.95English ad 5.95 2.37 3.14 4.48* 2.82Chinese Web site � Chinese ad 6.37 1.20 2.61 3.46 2.30Chinese Web site � English ad 6.27 1.87 3.07 4.52 2.70English Web site � Chinese ad 5.27 2.53 2.96 3.87 3.60English Web site � English ad 5.63 2.87 3.20 4.44 2.93

*p< 0.05.**p< 0.01.

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of visual attention. An ad-memorization goal (“Try tomemorize the advertisements. Try to remember each advertise-ment as well as possible.”) enhanced participants’ attention tothe advertising body text, pictorial, and brand design. Abrand-learning goal (“Use the advertisements to collectinformation about the brand products. Try to learn somethingnew about each branded product.”), on the other hand,enhanced attention to the body text but inhibited attention tothe pictorial design.

In the current study, the experimental instruction for theparticipants was to view a news story Web site. The existenceof two banner ads on the Web site was not mentioned in theinstruction. Therefore, it was possible that some participantsconsidered the banners ads to be irrelevant to the goal andsubconsciously ignored them. This reasoning may explainwhy we did not discover the proposed interaction effectbetween Web site editorial content language and ad languageon ad recall (H2). We believe that if we mentioned the ads inthe experimental instruction and explicitly asked theparticipants to view (or evaluate, or memorize) both the newsstories and the ads, the study results would be different. H2would likely be supported if the experimental instructionwas changed in this way. However, we did find a significantmain effect of editorial content language on ad recall in thestudy. As discussed earlier, such an effect is based on theassumption that bilinguals need more mental resources toprocess information in their second language than in theirfirst language. Because the participants who were exposedto the EnglishWeb sites needed to spend more mental resourcescomprehending the news stories, it was possible that they hadless mental resources to figure out whether the banner ads wererelevant or irrelevant to their goals. As a result, they might haveprocessed both, which generated higher ad recalls.

The third finding of this study was that participants showedmore favorable attitudes toward the brand names written inEnglish compared with the ones written in Chinese. Thisfinding was consistent with the study results of Leclerc et al.(1994), which suggested that foreign-sounding brand namescarried associations that affected how consumers perceivedand evaluated the products. Leclerc et al. (1994), discoveredthat product perceptions and evaluations changed as a functionof whether the brand name was pronounced in French orEnglish. Their experiment results showed that French namesproduced a more hedonic perception for the products thandid the English names. Applying a similar rationale to thefinding of the current study, information of the same brandwritten in two different languages (English vs. Chinese) maygive audiences different impressions. As reflected in the studyresults, the English brand names might have activated theconcept of “made abroad” (which brought to mind associationsrelated to a higher quality), and the Chinese brand names mighthave activated the concept of “made in China” (which broughtto mind an impression of a relatively inferior quality).

It should be noted that the current study was conducted inan environment where English was the dominant language inthe society (English was the official language in the USA). Ifthe study were run in a context where Chinese dominated,would the results be altered? For example, what wouldbilinguals who speak Chinese as their first language and

English as their second language in Hong Kong react to thestimuli in the current experiment? We suspect that the studyresults would remain similar.

There are a couple of reasons to draw this conclusion. First,according to the revised hierarchical model (Dufour and Kroll,1995; Kroll and de Groot, 1997), bilinguals in general needmore time and more mental resources comprehendinginformation presented in their second language, regardless ifthat particular language is dominant in the society or not. Thatis, as long as the experimental instruction stays the same, thecognitive results (e.g., ads on the second language Web sitesgenerated higher recalls) are likely to be similar regardless ofwhere the experiment is conducted. Second, regarding theaffective measures, participants in the current study were foundto have more favorable attitudes toward the brand namespresented in English than in Chinese. This finding would alsobe likely to hold true if the experiment were conducted inChina, Taiwan, or Singapore where English did not dominate.As argued by Krishna and Ahluwalia (2008), it may be toosimplistic to define a language schema purely based on thefavorability dimension. Besides perceiving a certain languageto be favorable or unfavorable, bilinguals also have otherlanguage-specific perceptions (e.g., global, sophisticated,friendly, and sense of belonging). In other words, people donot necessarily perceive the majority language in a society asfavorable and the minority language as unfavorable. It ispossible that people hold favorable attitudes for both, but theyare often associated with different meanings. For example,Krishna and Ahluwalia (2008) found that Hindi was associatedwith belongingness (close, personal, friendly, and family) andEnglish was associated with sophistication (global, cosmopol-itan, urban, and upper class) for people living in India.Similarly, Noriega and Blair (2008) argued that informationpresented in a person’s native language was more likely toevoke associations with family, friends, home, or homeland.As a consequence, consumers may have certain expectationsof language use in ads for foreign companies and localcompanies. For example, use of English in ads may suggest asymbol of modernity, progress, sophistication, and acosmopolitan identity. For a foreign company in India, Englishmay be the expected language because it is the defaultlanguage of communication between Indians and foreigners(Krishna and Ahluwalia, 2008). For another example, basedon an analysis of 125 print ads produced in Hong Kong withmixed languages, Leung (2010) argued that Hong Kongadvertisers inserted Japanese Kanji in their ads featuringJapanese food or cosmetics to achieve positive country-of-origin effect, although Japanese was not the majority languagein Hong Kong. Based on these rationales, we expect thatbilingual consumers who speak both Chinese and English willhold more favorable attitudes toward brand names in Englishthan in Chinese as long as the perceptual differences between“made abroad” and “made in China” exist, regardless of wherethe experiment is conducted.

Future research directionsThere are some limitations of the current study and futureresearch directions that need to be addressed. First, due tothe difficulty of recruiting appropriate nonstudent bilingual

A code-switching effect test on the Internet

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. (2012)

DOI: 10.1002/cb

consumers for the experiment, the sample size of the currentstudy was somewhat limited. However, we believe that thecurrent study has shed some new light on code-switchingeffects, particularly at a macro level. As argued by Grosjean(1982), code switching can involve a word, a phrase, asentence, or even several sentences. Extending the test ofcode-switching effects within advertising contexts from amicro level (a different-language word insertion into an adslogan) to a macro level (a different-language ad insertioninto a Web page) will certainly advance the theoreticalunderstanding of this ubiquitous phenomenon. We hopemore studies will be conducted in this direction with similardesigns but enlarged sample sizes.

Second, this study revealed that participants had morefavorable attitudes toward the English brand names than theChinese ones. An alternate explanation would be thatparticipants regarded it more natural and acceptable forforeign brands (Toyota and Nescafe were likely to beconsidered as foreign by consumers who were originallyfrom China) to carry foreign names (e.g., written in English).The current dataset has no power to rule out this possibility.Moreover, the two brands, Toyota and Nescafe, wereselected as two “neutral” brands for this study because theywere neither USA based nor China based. However, takingthe history of World War II between Japan and China intoconsideration, Toyota may not be perceived as “neutral” bysome Chinese consumers. The current study adopted aposttest only design and thus is unable to detect any potentialprejudgments carried by the study participants. Futureresearch is needed to solve these confounding issues viatwo means: (i) to use some fictitious brands instead of realones as the study stimuli and (ii) to implement a pretest-and-posttest design instead of a posttest-only design.

Finally, it was illustrated in this study that marketingmessages written in Web users’ second language couldcounterintuitively produce stronger communication effectsin certain contexts. However, a crucial implicit assumptionwas that people were willing and able to process themessages written in either their first language or secondlanguage. It should be noted that the participants in thecurrent study had stayed in the USA for an average of4.7 years, and they were fairly fluent in their second language(English). Viewing some information in English seemed tobe a reasonably manageable task, although it might besomewhat more demanding than viewing messages in theirfirst language (Chinese). What would happen if participants’motivation or ability of information processing werejeopardized? For example, if participants’ Web site surfingwas given a strict time limit (instead of being self-paced),or if they were required to carry on a secondary task suchas memorizing an eight-digit number while browsing theWeb site, would what was found in the current study stillhold true? For another example, what if participants onlyhad limited skills with their second language? We believethat our attempt in the current study is only exploratory innature but opens the gate to a new research area. We see aneed for more empirical evidence to be accumulated toanswer all the mentioned research questions and push theresearch on code-switching effects to the next level.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Cong Li, PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is assis-tant professor at the University of Miami’s School of Communica-tion. He is interested in applying theoretical perspectives fromonline communication and cultural psychology to the study ofadvertising and marketing messages. He has published in journalssuch as the Journal of Consumer Behaviour, CyberPsychology &Behavior, Journal of Relationship Marketing, among others.

Sriram “Sri” Kalyanaraman, PhD, Penn State University, is associ-ate professor and director of the Media Effects Laboratory at theUniversity of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and MassCommunication. His primary research interests pertain to examin-ing the psychosocial aspects of new media and communication tech-nologies. His research has been published in journals such as theJournal of Communication, Communication Research, MediaPsychology, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Jour-nal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Journal of Advertising,among others.

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