How Hispanic bilinguals' cultural stereotypes shape advertising persuasiveness Cecilia M.O. Alvarez a, ⁎, Paul W. Miniard b , James Jaccard c a Department of Business Administration, ITAM, Río Hondo 1, Ciudad de México 01080, Mexico b College of Business, Florida International University, 11200 S.W. 8th Street, Miami, FL 33199, United States c Silver School of Social Work, New York University, 15 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, United States abstract article info Article history: Received 12 August 2016 Received in revised form 1 February 2017 Accepted 2 February 2017 Available online xxxx Given the size of the Hispanic bilingual market in the United States, it is important to understand the relative effectiveness of using English versus Spanish when advertising to these consumers. This research proposes that Hispanic bilinguals' cultural stereotypes about the users of Spanish living in America are a potent determinant of which language is most effective in advertising. Depending on the favorableness of these cultural stereotypes, our results show that Spanish may be persuasively superior, inferior, or functionally equivalent to English in creating favorable attitudes toward the advertised product. The uniqueness of cultural stereotypes about Spanish users in shaping the influence of an ad's language is underscored by our findings that cultural stereotypes about English users do not exert similar effects in determining the relative persuasiveness of advertising in English or Spanish. The paper offers suggestions for advertising practice and future research. © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Advertising Cultural stereotypes Hispanic bilinguals Language 1. Introduction America is in the midst of a cultural and ethnic transformation. Certainly one of the strongest driving forces behind this transformation has been the influx of individuals born outside of the U.S., many of whom speak a language other than English. Of particular interest to this investigation are the millions of Hispanic bilingual consumers that communicate in both their language of origin and the dominant language of the country in which they currently reside. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2015), 55 million Americans are of Hispanic or Latino origin and more than 38 million of them use Spanish when at home. An important consideration for companies targeting Hispanic bilinguals, then, is whether advertising effectiveness might depend on the language used when making contact with these consumers. So what does existing research say to those that advertise to Hispanic bilinguals about the persuasive implications of using Spanish versus English ad language? It depends on who is doing the talking. Some say English is more effective (Koslow, Shamdasani, & Touchstone, 1994), others maintain just the opposite (Roslow & Nicholls, 1996), and some report ad language is inconsequential to the attitudes created about the advertised product (Noriega & Blair, 2008). Then there are those who articulate a contingency view in which either language may be most persuasive depending on certain ad features (Carroll & Luna, 2011) or individual differences such as a person's level of acculturation (Ueltschy & Krampf, 1997) or generational status (Chapa & Becerra, 2014). This investigation echoes each of these voices in that the use of Spanish ad language may enhance persuasion, reduce it, or have no effect relative to the same ad in English. It does so by advancing a contingency perspective emphasizing the moderating role played by an individual difference previously unconsidered in the literature on advertising to bilingual Hispanics, cultural stereotypes. Cultural stereotypes represent a person's perception of societal opinions about a particular social group (Devine, 1989). Of particular interest here is the favorability of Hispanic bilinguals' cultural stereotypes about how Americans generally view users of the Spanish language and how these stereotypes shape the persuasive impact of Spanish versus English ad language. The perspective proposed by this research prescribes how and when these cultural stereotypes will influence whether Spanish ad language is persuasively inferior, superior, or equivalent to its English counterpart. The findings of three studies document these predictable changes in the relative effectiveness of an ad's language on Hispanic bilinguals' attitudes toward the advertised product. As such, they offer guidance to advertisers in tailoring the language used in their messages targeting the Hispanic bilingual market. Journal of Business Research 75 (2017) 29–36 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: cecilia.ortiz@itam.mx (C.M.O. Alvarez), miniardp@fiu.edu (P.W. Miniard), jjaccard@nyu.edu (J. Jaccard). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.02.003 0148-2963/© 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Business Research