When appearance and language disagrees: Effects of culturally incongruent cues in advertising.

摘要

The growing multicultural population in the United States has resulted in more and more individuals negotiating multiple ethnic identities in their daily lives. Despite the increasingly multicultural nature of the U.S. populations, academia and industry are still lagging in both research and advertising that fully reflects the multicultural nature of the American consumer. In this study, the author investigates the effects of cultural incongruence on advertising. Specifically, using accommodation theory as a framework, the study explores how incongruence between source appearance and language affects viewers' perceptions of the source's credibility, attractiveness as well as overall attitudes toward the commercial, the brand and intent to purchase.;The results of this study found that incongruence between source appearance and language results in lower ethnic identification with the ad for Non-Hispanic Whites, when compared to participants from other ethnic groups but no significant differences for Hispanics. It was found that incongruence between source appearance and language does not produce significantly different perceptions of source trustworthiness, similarity, or significantly different ad message involvement, attitude towards the brand or ad for any ethnic group.;Finally, while incongruence between source appearance and language results in significantly higher liking for the model and significantly stronger purchase intentions among Non-Hispanic Whites exposed to an African American model, there were no significant differences for other models, or for Hispanics exposed to ads that contained incongruence between source appearance and language.