There has been an increasing trend of using code-switching to enhance ad persuasion among local and global brands. Ads that include two or more languages are referred to as code-switched ads (Luna and Peracchio 2005a; 2005b). It is noted that previous studies investigating code-switched ad effectiveness have focused on bilinguals, not monolinguals. Due to the emerging use of code-switching in ads in monolingual markets, more research efforts are required to understand its effectiveness and boundaries among the monolinguals. The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating role of consumer local-global identity in the effectiveness of code-switched ads among monolinguals. Two experiments were conducted and the results confirmed our hypothesis that consumer local-global identity moderates the effect of code-switched ads. The results indicated that congruence between consumer local-global identity and code-switching enhanced persuasiveness. In addition, the mediating effect of ad involvement was identified. These findings provide managerial implications for marketers.

This article aims to explore the interactive roles of types of primed identity (local versus global identity) and types of ad framing on brand evaluations. The authors designed 2 experiments in which each experiment followed a 2×2 between-subject design. The empirical results showed that a gain-framed ad induced more positive emotional responses than a loss-framed ad, and the positive affective responses lead to more favorable brand evaluation. Furthermore, the results showed that there were interactive effects of primed identity and types of advertisement frame on brand evaluation. In the additional analysis, the results showed that when people with local identity were exposed to the gain-framed ad, they would engage in a higher level of integration processing than those in the control group, which in turn induced more favorable evaluation to the local brand. That is, the integration processing mode played a mediating role between the interaction (local id priming × ad frame) and the local brand evaluation. However, in the case of global brand evaluation, the integration processing mode did not play such a mediating role.