The Effectiveness and Perceived Emotionality of Meat Reduction Advertising Appeals in Bilinguals.

Abstract

With the growing number of bilingual speakers and the widespread use of English in education and the media, marketers have a choice of utilising either English or the native language of a country in their advertising appeals. However, little is known about the effects of English and Dutch NGO social advertising appeals. Therefore, this study investigates the perceived emotionality and the effectiveness of social advertising appeals by utilising meat reduction appeals to observe the participants' perceived emotions, attitude towards meat reduction and the intention to reduce meat consumption. The study involved 153 native Dutch-English bilingual students who consumed meat on average three times a week. In a between-subject design, the participants viewed either an emotional (negative/positive) or an informational appeal. Subsequently, they rated the perceived emotionality of the advertising appeal, their attitude towards meat reduction and their intention to reduce their meat intake on a questionnaire. Although previous research found that the use of native language in advertising is more emotional than the second language use, the findings of this study showed that English appeals were perceived to be more emotional than Dutch appeals. In contrast, none of the advertising appeals were significantly different from each other in their effects on attitude and behavioural intention. Also, negative appeals were perceived as more emotional than informative and positive appeals. This study's finding suggests that negative emotional appeals yield a higher emotional resonance. Regarding the perceived emotionality in English appeals, this study’s finding suggests that NGOs' use of English in their advertising appeals among Dutch students may be advantageous in evoking higher emotions. However, the higher emotions may not result in higher effectiveness of NGO meat reduction advertising appeals.