Does Language Matter When Advertising to Africa’s Multilingual Audience? An ELM Study of Audience Language Preference and Responses

Abena A. Yeboah-Banin

Journal of African Business, 2023, vol. 24, issue 4, 632-648

Abstract: Choosing the most effective language is critical when advertising to multilingual audiences as the success of any advertising campaign depends on whether the audience “gets” the message. This paper argues that in Africa, “getting the message” is partly dependent on language given that indigenous languages, colonial legacy languages and blends between them compete for audience attention. Using Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) arguments, the study examines this possibility among a 1000 multilingual audience members in five cosmopolitan cities in Ghana. Findings show that advertisements are not consumed in a language vacuum and that language blends are the most appealing to the multilingual audience. The study also finds that attention to, and belief in advertisements are partly shaped by language preference. Besides these empirical contributions, the study positions the ELM as a viable theoretical lens for analyzing the implications of advertising language. Its use of an African sample to test the ELM’s assumptions also introduces novel evidence to the theory’s body of scholarship. Recommendations are made on how advertising practitioners and brand communicators may take advantage of language as an important segmentation criterion in advertising strategy.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/15228916.2022.2164413 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:wjabxx:v:24:y:2023:i:4:p:632-648

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/wjab20

DOI: 10.1080/15228916.2022.2164413

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of African Business is currently edited by Samuel Bonsu

More articles in Journal of African Business from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().