Search results

High-stakes decision-makers, including human resource (HR) professionals, often exhibit accent biases against second language speakers in professional evaluations. We extend this work by investigating how HR students evaluate simulated job interview performances in English by first and second language speakers of English.

Eighty HR students from Calgary and Montreal evaluated the employability of first language (L1) Arabic, English, and Tagalog candidates applying for two positions (nurse, teacher) at four points in the interview (after reading the applicant’s resume, hearing their self-introduction, and listening to each of two responses to interview questions). Candidates’ responses additionally varied in the extent to which they meaningfully answered the interview questions.

Students from both cities provided similar evaluations, employability ratings were similar for both advertised positions, and high-quality responses elicited consistently high ratings while evaluations for low-quality responses declined over time. All speakers were evaluated similarly based on their resumes and self-introductions, regardless of their language background. However, evaluations diverged for interview responses, where L1 Arabic and Tagalog speakers were considered more employable than L1 English speakers. Importantly, students’ preference for L1 Arabic and Tagalog candidates over L1 English candidates was magnified when those candidates provided low-quality interview responses.

Results suggest that even in the absence of dedicated equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) training focusing on language and accent bias, HR students may be aware of second language speakers’ potential disadvantages in the workplace, rewarding them in the current evaluations. Findings also highlight the potential influence of contextual factors on HR students’ decision-making.

This paper analyses whether the humanisation of smart home speakers can improve users' attitudes towards covert information collection. Additionally, it examines the direct and indirect impact of trust, social presence and user's perceived surveillance on attitude towards covert information collection.

A total of 679 American users of smart home speakers are surveyed, and their responses are analysed using structural equation modelling. Mediating effects are also examined.

Humanisation increases social presence, improves users' attitude towards covert information collection and has a U-shaped effect on trust. A negative effect of humanisation on perceived surveillance is demonstrated. Social presence reduces perceived surveillance levels and improves users' attitude towards covert information collection.

We examine attitude towards covert information collection as a new outcome variable. This study contributes to the growing body of research on humanisation by providing new evidence of how humanisation helps improve users' attitude towards covert information collection and generates trust in the service provider. This research indicates the important role of social presence.

In this chapter, we seek to bring greater attention to language-based stigma at work and how it affects employees speaking English as their second language. We integrate research findings across multiple disciplines, including management, psychology, linguistics, education, and business ethics, identifying three major themes and knowledge gaps in this research domain. Based on the multidisciplinary knowledge integration, we suggest six promising future directions for organizational and business ethics scholars to pursue. We call for more empirical research focusing on how language-based stigma may harm nonnative English speakers (NNESs) with and without actual mistreatment or discrimination at work and how organizations may intervene to support NNESs. We hope our chapter will spark conducive conversations about mitigating language-based stigma in the workplace.

Linguists classify the world’s languages into two types: futured and futureless. Futured languages (e.g. French) require speakers to grammatically mark future events, a construction that is optional in futureless languages such as German. This treatise examines whether the grammatical structure of the predominant language in a given country explains firms’ propensity to engage in controversial marketing and environmental management practices. This is expected to happen because a speaker’s future time perspective and temporal discounting vary depending on the type of language used.

The sample period for this research was from 2001 to 2020. The sample of the study consists of 5,275 firms representing 47 countries. The sample is comprised of firms from 29 countries where the predominant language is a strong future time reference (FTR) language and 18 countries with a weak-FTR language. The maximum number of firm-country-year observations of the study was 39,956. This study employed multi-level mixed effects modelling as well as other relevant estimation techniques such as random effect panel regression, ordinary least square regression and two-stage least square regression.

This research empirically demonstrates that firms based in countries where the predominant language requires speakers to grammatically differentiate between the present and the future – known as strong-FTR or futured languages – engage more often in controversial marketing- and environment-related practices than those located in countries where the predominant language does not necessarily require grammatical differentiation between the present and the future (known as weak-FTR or futureless languages).

The findings are important for managers of firms with foreign subsidiary operations: top management teams of such firms need to be aware that their foreign subsidiaries’ propensity to engage in controversial marketing and environmental management practices varies depending on the predominant language those subsidiaries use. Also, firms located in countries with weak-FTR languages need to be more rigorous in their selection process when considering forming a joint venture or acquiring a firm in countries with strong-FTR languages.

The current research enriches the burgeoning body of literature on the effect of language on corporate decision-making. It extends the body of knowledge on the impact of language structure on firms’ inclination to engage in controversial marketing and environmental management practices.

The impact of various factors on how TV sports audiences perceive sport event sponsors’ billboards around sports facilities has been the subject of extensive research. Despite numerous factors that impact the effectiveness of sponsor signage at sporting events, there has been a lack of research regarding the language used for such signage around sports facilities’ billboards. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effects of billboard advertisement language on TV sports audiences’ recognition, recall and search intention to sponsor signage.

This study employed an online experimental design. Participants (n = 925) were recruited from two linguistically different regions: Chinese and English. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: watching tennis video matches with billboard advertisements presented in either the Roman alphabet exclusively or in a combination of the Roman alphabet and Chinese characters.

This study revealed that although language cannot significantly impact audiences’ unaided recall of a brand, it does have a discernible effect on brand recognition and search intention among audiences. Additionally, people are more likely to search for brands in their native language. Participants from various regions tend to have different recognition rates and search intentions for sport sponsors.

This is the first manuscript examining the use of different languages in relation to audiences’ recognition and recall of sports sponsorship. It provides empirical evidence of the importance of carefully considering the language used in sponsor signage around stadium billboards to optimize the efficacy of sponsorships at sports events.

Drawing on the personalization–privacy paradox and guided by means–end analysis, this study explores how consumers balance their concerns for privacy and the benefits of smart home device personalization and the role that trust plays in the process. More specifically, this study aims to investigate how perceptions of smart device personalization and privacy concerns are shaped by consumers’ experiences and the role of trust in the deliberation process.

In-depth interviews were conducted across diverse demographic groups of smart device users to shed light on the balancing act between personalization and privacy.

The study found that product experience, ownership type, perceived value of convenience and control and quality of life via “smart things” are key motivators for product usage. The benefits of tailored recommendations and high relevance are balanced against the risks of echo chamber effects and loss of control. The results also show the role of active involvement in the privacy calculus and trust level. The study points to the significance of an ecosystem-based service/business model in gaining consumer confidence when they balance between personalization and privacy.

Although many studies have explored trust, privacy concerns and personalization in an artificial intelligence (AI)-related context, few have addressed trust in the context of both smart devices and the personalization–privacy paradox. As such, this study adds to the existing literature by incorporating the concept of trust and addressing both privacy concerns and personalization in the AI context.

The growing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) assistants and voice assistants provides a platform for AI to enter consumers’ everyday lives. As these voice assistants become ubiquitous, their widespread adoption underscores the need to understand how to create voice assistants that can naturally interact with and support users. Grounded in the stereotype content model from social psychology, this study aims to investigate the influence of perceived humanness and personality on building trust and continuous usage intentions in voice assistants. Specifically, a fresh perspective examining the determining factors that shape personality trait perceptions of competence and warmth in voice assistants is proposed.

An online survey of 457 participants and structural equation modeling is conducted to validate the research model.

Anthropomorphism, social presence and interactivity drive perceived warmth, whereas performance and effort expectations drive perceived competence. Perceived competence and perceived warmth together positively affect users’ trust in voice assistants, leading to a higher likelihood of continuous usage intentions.

This research provides profound theoretical contributions to the emerging field of human-AI interaction and offer practical implications for marketers aiming to leverage voice assistant personalities to build trusted and long-lasting interactions.

The widespread application of smart technologies in services not only brings efficiency and convenience to consumers but also inevitably comes with negative effects. Therefore, this article aims to illustrate the impact of privacy invasion on consumers' intention to use smart services. Using distrust as a mediating variable, compare two different modes of interaction between voice and text, and study the positive impact of privacy commitment. This study aims to provide recommendations for smart service providers to make the consumer experience better.

This paper adopts an experimental approach, with data collection and hypothesis analysis by designing four different experiments.

The results show that the negative impact of privacy invasion on consumers' intention to use smart services is moderated by privacy commitments and interaction modes. This article verifies the mediating effect of distrust on consumers' intention to use when privacy invasion occurs and verifies the moderating effect of the interaction modes by comparing voice interaction with text interaction and demonstrates that text interaction mode will attenuate the mediating role of distrust in the path in privacy invasion. Besides, it also indicates that privacy commitments can moderate the relationship between privacy invasion’s effect on distrust and intention to use.

Focusing on privacy invasion, this study explores consumers' intention to use smart services, compares the two interaction modes of voice and text to explore their moderating effects, deeply explores consumer psychology and studies the mediating role of distrust and the moderating role of privacy commitment.

The current study analyzes product review videos of influencers to determine why they are popular among customers. The study on electrical and electronic appliances covered by YouTubers is an entirely new field of research. Knowing why customers watch their product review videos before purchasing would be interesting.

We analyzed 172 product review videos from influencers on YouTube. Subsequently, the study employed negative binomial regression (NB2) to predict the explanatory power of the independent variables over the dependent variables.

This paper recommends two different models for viewer engagement in online review videos. One can be used for high and the other for low viewer engagement. Comparatively, viewers put more effort into commenting on a video than liking it. Yet both have their importance as per the requirement.

We only focused on video content in English and Hindi. The study data considered review videos from various electrical and electronic appliances. Future researchers may replicate this study on different product categories.

This study makes a remarkable contribution to how firms and their managers can optimize video content when designing marketing strategies, particularly for retailers and e-tailers.

The current paper takes the lead in contributing to the existing literature on marketing in two ways. First, focusing on product review videos from influencers and second, employing a video analysis approach. Furthermore, this study recommends two different viewer engagement models for marketing practices when employing quantitative and qualitative video content.

The Islamic world spans many different languages with different language structures. This paper aims to explore one way in which language structure affects consumer response to the marketing of cobrands.

Two between subject experiments were conducted using samples of participants from Saudi Arabia and the USA. The first manipulated partner brand category similarity and brand name order, along with the structure of the language used to communicate with the market. The data for this study includes Arabic speakers in Saudi Arabia as well as English speakers in the USA. The second study explores how targeting a population fluent in multiple languages of varied structure nullifies the findings from the first study and uses Latino participants in the USA.

This study finds that when brands come from similar product categories, name order did not affect cobrand evaluations, but it did when the brands come from dissimilar product categories. Here, evaluations of the cobrand are enhanced when the invited brand is in the position that adjectives occupy in the participant’s language. The authors also find that being proficient in two languages, each with a different default order for adjectives and nouns, quashes the effect of name order otherwise seen when brands from dissimilar product categories engage in cobranding.

By examining the impact of language structure on the effects of cobrand evaluation and conducting studies among participants with differing dominant languages, this research can rule out simple primacy or recency effects.