Structured Abstract: Y Usted? The Effects of Social Influence on Consumers’ Service Language Preference

Abstract

Growth among multilingual consumers in the United States requires service marketers to consider service language use. While the limited research to date asserts that multilingual consumers prefer service in their native language, these studies do not consider contextual factors, including social influence. The current research investigates the moderating role of the presence of a friend whose native language differs from the language of the focal consumer on the relationships between service language and service satisfaction. In contrast to prior research, we find that minority language (i.e., Spanish) speakers prefer service in the majority language (i.e., English) when their friend’s native language is different from their own.