A shopper should be pleased with you taking the trouble to accommodate their language and ethnicity, considering it a sign of respect for the shopper’s culture. Yet studies of a nationwide sample of U.S. Hispanics which were conducted by researchers working at American University, Old Dominion University, and University of Prince Edward Island indicate the answer is more complex. The shopper’s degree of involvement in the transaction matters.
The situation explored by the researchers was retail banking services offered to Hispanic consumers where the Spanish language and Hispanic culture are in the minority. Involvement in the transaction referred to the extent to which the consumer was expected to participate in the service encounter because of the relevance of the choices to the consumer’s values. We might expect cultural accommodation to make more of a difference with high involvement transactions because there’s deeper interaction between the marketer and the shopper.
The researchers predicted the opposite, and then verified that hypothesis. The high involvement transaction used in the studies was arranging for a mortgage loan. The low involvement transaction was depositing a check.
Study results indicated that use of Spanish by a frontline employee who looked Hispanic produced better consumer service ratings and future purchase intentions overall compared to when these accommodations were absent. And among the study participants given the scenario indicating the presence of the accommodations, the effect was stronger for the low-involvement than for the high-involvement transaction.
The researchers’ explanation is that such accommodations make a difference, but are less important than considerations such as the terms of a mortgage loan. With the high involvement decision, the accommodations had only peripheral impact. With a routine transaction like depositing a check, the accommodations gained relative notice.
Hiring FLEs based solely on matches with shopper ethnicities jeopardizes organizational success if the FLEs lack requisite competencies. Still, having across your FLEs the range of consumer ethnicities and language preferences represented in your shoppers is good business. The evidence is this is particularly true for low-involvement transactions—the type which might easily be the type where a new prospect tries out your organization.
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Speak to Shoppers’ Language Stereotypes
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