Psycholinguistic Phenomena in Marketing Communications

Tina M. Lowrey

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000149487
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

The field of psycholinguistics and the application of psycholinguistic theory to advertising and marketing communication has become a topic of great prominence in the field of consumer behavior. Psycholinguistic Phenomena in Marketing Communications is the first book to address the growing research in this area. This timely volume combines research conducted by current scholars as it demonstrates diversity of the field in terms of relevant topics and methodological approaches. It examines brand names and their semantic and sound-based impact; sentence structure and research in marketing communication; advertising narratives evoking emotional responses; the effects of empathy response on advertising; and the role of language and images in creation of advertising.The book includes authors from a variety of fields, including mass communication, marketing, social psychology, linguistics, and neuropsychology. A range of perspectives is discussed, from qualitative text analysis to controlled psychological experimentation. Psycholinguistic Phenomena in Marketing Communications is intended for students and scholars in numerous disciplines, such as advertising, marketing, social psychology, sociology, and linguistics. It is also suitable for graduate courses in these disciplines.

PART I

The Impact of Mere Words—Their Meanings and Sounds

CHAPTER 1

Linguistic Framing of Sensory Experience: There Is Some Accounting for Taste

JoAndrea Hoegg

University of British Columbia

Joseph W. Alba

University of Florida

An enduring question in psychology and anthropology concerns whether or not language influences perception and thought (Whorf, 1956). The question is important to consumer researchers because brand and attribute identifiers are ubiquitous, laden with meaning, and frequently used by consumers to identify and evaluate products. This chapter reviews prior research and reports original data that speak to the potential influence of brand, category, and attribute labels on sensory perception.

A focus on experiential consumer behavior addresses activities that are common within the universe of consumption but rarely investigated from a cognitive or linguistic perspective. In the consumption of products such as music, wines, or perfumes, purely perceptual information may be ambiguous, discrimination may be difficult, and verbal identifiers may therefore loom large. It is relatively uncontro-versial to argue that decision making can be driven by verbal cues in such situations. The more vexing issue historically has been whether or not these labels actually alter the perceptual experience.

The Whorfian Perspective

Whorf proposed that thought was largely dependent on language, arguing specifically that the grammatical background of people’s native tongue influences the way they “... dissect nature and break up the flux of experience into objects and entities to construct propositions about” (p. 239). That is, humans do not perceive the world identically, but rather view a world that has been organized by the linguistic system they use.

Interpretation of Whorf’s controversial hypothesis has not been monolithic. The strongest version argues that linguistic coding of objects is necessary in all mental operations; in essence, language determines thought. The weaker form is relativis-tic and suggests that language does not alter perception or thought, but rather makes certain objects easier to code, thereby shaping what people contemplate and remember (Bruner, 1983; Hunt & Agnoli, 1991). Some believe that neither view may be totally accurate because both assume a dichotomy between language and thought, which Whorf may not have intended (Cameron, 1999; Lee, 1996).

Conclusive evidence has proved elusive (Hunt & Agnoli, 1991). Early tests of the hypothesis appeared supportive, but by the 1970’s the notion had fallen out of favor (Berlin & Kay, 1969; Clark & Clark, 1977; Heider & Oliver, 1972), replaced by a belief in linguistic universals. More recently, the Whorfian hypothesis has witnessed a resurgence, and reports of support, at least for its weaker form, have become more common (e.g., Hunt & Agnoli, 1991; Roberson, Davidoff, & Shapiro, 2002; Roberson, Davies, & Davidoff, 2000; Schmitt & Zhang, 1998).

Most latter-day tests of Whorf’s views have focused on differences in color or shape perception across cultures (e.g., Davies, Sowden, Jerrett, Jerrett, & Corbett, 1998; Kay & Kempton, 1984; Roberson et al., 2000; Roberson, Davidoff, Davies, & Shapiro, 2005; Rosch, 1973). For example, Kay and Kempton (1984) examined perception of the colors green and blue among speakers of English and speakers of Taruhumara, a Uto-Aztecan language that has only one term for both hues. Participants were shown triads of colors from a blue-green continuum and were asked to identify which of the three differed most from the other two. As predicted by the Whorfian hypothesis, English speakers perceived colors falling at the green-blue boundary to be more distinct than did Taruhumara speakers. This effect appeared to result from an unconscious naming strategy in which participants surreptitiously named the colors and then judged the different “named” chip as most different. When the use of such a strategy was made impossible in a second study, the cross-boundary exaggeration disappeared. In contrast, a more recent study comparing speakers of two languages with different numbers of basic color terms (English’s 11 vs. Setswana’s 5) found that judged similarity of colors was uninfluenced by the degree of linguistic detail (Davies et al., 1998).

The few studies conducted within the consumer context have a similar cross-cultural flavor but a substantive focus outside of color perception. For example, Graham (1981) investigated the perception of time across cultures, distinguishing between linear time, circular time, and procedural time. Linear time is characterized as discrete and possessive of a forward-looking orientation. Accordingly, time is referenced in a manner similar to money; that is, it possesses measurable value that can be “spent” and “wasted.” In contrast, these notions are illogical within the circular and procedural perspectives, which lack a future-based orientation. An activity simply takes as long as it takes, and there is little sense of hastening or deadlines. These differences in worldview are accompanied by differences in the language used to describe time, which in turn have interesting implications for marketers. Slogans such as “How much is your time worth?” have little resonance in cultures with either of these time perspectives. Language used to describe entire product categories, such as fast food, would be anomalous. Even the decision-making process, typically investigated within consumer research from a linear perspective, might vary across cultures possessing different time perspectives. Graham argues that these differences in time perspectives are reflected in language differences. However, it would be a dangerous leap to conclude that different cultures perceive the passage of time uniquely. Indeed, Graham notes that people are capable of multiple perspectives, which allows them to interact and conduct business with people from cultures with other time perspectives. This line of reasoning suggests at least a degree of universality in time perception and leaves the Whorfian question of whether language does actually influence perception largely unresolved.

More recently, Schmitt and Zhang (1998; also see Zhang & Schmitt, chap. 4 in this volume) examined the question of whether language influences categorical perception. A series of experiments compared similarity judgments made by native speakers of English, Chinese, and Japanese. The Chinese and Japanese languages have “classifier” words that help to categorize objects. For example, “ba” in Chinese indicates that the object is one that can be grasped with the hand. The word accompanies nouns such as “umbrella” as a category classifier. Schmitt and Zhang found that the presence of such classifiers influences perceptions of similarity. For speakers of Chinese vis-à-vis speakers of English, objects that share a classifier are perceived as more similar than objects that do not share a classifier. The existence of classifiers in the language also influences recall of objects, such that speakers of languages with classifiers appear to possess “classifier-related schematic clusters]” that guide expectations regarding attributes and influence choice. Thus, in contrast to the notion of linguistic universals, it appears that the mere presence of a classifier in a language can alter similarity and quality judgments.

Based solely on this limited evidence, it may be argued that linguistic labels assigned to stimuli may influence perceptual response, but the effect occurs primarily at the category boundaries rather than across the continuum. However, even if the phenomenon is limited in this manner, it remains important in the marketing realm, inasmuch as a great deal of the action occurs at the boundaries. A firm may spend substantial sums of money developing its brand image—often using language in its many forms (e.g., brand name, slogan, ad copy)—to maximize the perceived difference between its brand and those of its competitors. It is therefore unfortunate that little consumer research has considered the role of language in sensory discrimination.

Labels and Evaluation: More Than A Matter of Taste

The work of Schmitt and Zhang demonstrates how linguistic differences can influence product perceptions and choice, consistent with the Whorfian perspective. Although centered on cross-cultural effects, it is also consistent with a larger body of within-culture consumer research that has examined the way in which category or brand labels can influence categorization and evaluation. In particular, consumer research has investigated the effects of brand equity on perception, the role of a category label in categorization and choice, and the influence of attribute vocabulary on product evaluation. Although not designed specifically to test the Whorfian hypothesis, it nonetheless examines the effects of verbal identifiers on preference and, in doing so, offers an indirect test.

Brand Equity

Research has provided robust evidence that well-known brand names can influence and even overwhelm taste perception in preference tasks. For example, Allison and Uhl (1964) demonstrated how people’s preferences for beer differed dramatically depending on the presence or absence of a brand label. More recently, Hoyer and Brown (1990) found that participants rated peanut butter attributed to a nationally recognized brand as higher in quality than generically labeled peanut butter, even when the product and label were mismatched. Although it is clear that brand equity has a powerful effect on preference, the causal mechanism has not been firmly established. In the present context, the question concerns whether taste perceptions are truly altered as a function of the label. We attempt to shed light on this question in research reported here.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• About the Contributors
• Part I: The Impact of Mere Words—Their Meanings and Sounds
• Part II: Stringing Words Together—The Importance of Sentences
• Part III: Stringing Sentences Together—Text and Narrative Analyses
• Part IV: Afterword
• Author Index
• Subject Index