Retention of televised advertising in L2: An experiment with Chinese–English bilinguals

Abstract

Aim: This paper examines bilinguals’ retention of a television (TV) advertisement in their second language (L2) to test whether L2 competence, liking for the advertisement, and involvement with the advertised product cause a change in L2 retention. Methodology: An experiment exposed 304 Chinese–English bilinguals to audio-visual advertisements that were technically (e.g. similar executions) and linguistically alike (e.g. discourse with similar ratios of ‘content words-to-grammatical lexicon’) in their native language (L1; control) and L2 (treatment). Data and analysis: Content analysis of four unstructured items operationalised L2 advertisment memory by ranking retention scores from 0 to 4. We performed t-tests (with Cohen’s d) and F-tests to compare retention across the levels of independent variables. Findings: L2 proficiency did not facilitate meaning-deduction from within context, but the length of bilinguals’ residence did, indicating that subjects linguistically adapt to their L2 environment in time. Content features (e.g. message clarity) increased liking for the L2 advertisment while execution (e.g. music) increased L2 advertisement memory. Involvement with the advertised product did not affect L2 retention. Originality: Print stimuli use has limited the utility of earlier findings from research on advertising to bilinguals for exercising one language skill (i.e. L2 reading). The use of audio-visual stimuli to exercise concurrently L2 listening and reading skills have been rare despite the increased consumption of TV advertisements through online video-sharing platforms. Implications: When designing audio-visual inputs for bilinguals, ‘what’ (i.e. content) hardly matters in relative to ‘how’ (i.e. execution) unless bilinguals orient themselves to the natural contexts of their L2 settings. Firms in bilingual markets can optimise their communicative (e.g. belief reinforcement or creating awareness) and behavioural objectives (e.g. sales) by provoking the peripheral processing of their straightforward messages using appeals (e.g. music, emotional, and animated visuals) for longer retention among their non-native-speaker targets.