• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.61-81
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• 2007

Recently, use of foreign models and foreign language in advertising is a general trend in Korea even though the effect has not been well-known..Most of the previous research shows rather an opposite effect claiming marketing communication is more effective when higher congruity between marketing communication and consumer's cultural values are achieved. However, the introduction of global culture due to the expansion of new media such as Internet or cable television makes the congruity not the best choice of marketing strategy. In addition, use of highly attractive models in advertising to increase the effect of advertising is general. However, recent studies show that targeted women audience tend to compare themselves to the highly attractive models and do experience negative sentiment. Bower (2001) proved the difference between 'comparer' and 'noncomparer' when women face highly attractive models. The results show that a comparer who has an intention to compare highly attractive model (HAM) with herself has a significantly negative effect on model expertise, product argument, product evaluation and buying intention. Therefore, HAM is not always a good choice and model attractiveness plays a role in the processing other cues or changing the advertising effect from result of processing other cues. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the use of foreign language on the advertising response of the audience with regard of the model attractiveness. For the empirical study, the virtual advertising using foreign models (HAM, NAM), brand names and slogans(Korean, English) were used as stimuli. The respondents of each stimulus were 75('HAM-Korean'), 75('NAM-Korean'), 66('HAM-English') and 66 ('NAM-English') respectively. To establish the effect of marketing communication, the attitude for media(AM), the attitude for product(AP), targetedness(TD), overall quality(OQ), and purchase intention(PI) with 7 point likert scale were measured. The manipulation was verified to check the difference between HAM attractiveness assessment (m=3.27) and NAM attractiveness assessment (m=5.12). The mean difference was statiscally significant (p<.05). As a result, all consequences were significantly changed with model attractiveness, and overall quality evaluation(OQ) were significantly changed with language. The interaction effect from model attractiveness and language was significant on attitude toward the product(AP) and purchase intention(PI). To analyze the difference, the mean values and standard deviation of consequences were compared. The result was more positive when model attractiveness was high for all consequences. For language effect, the assessment was more positive when English was used for OQ. Considering model attractiveness and language simultaneously, HAM-Korean was more positive for AP and PI, and NAM-English was more positive for AP and PI. In other words, the interaction effect was confirmed by model attractiveness and language. As mentioned above, use of foreign models and foreign language in advertising was explained by cultural match up hypothesis (Leclerc et al. 1994) which claimed that culture of origin effect. In other words, in advertising, use of same cultural language with the foreign model could make positive assessment for OQ. But this effect was moderated by model attractiveness. When the model attractiveness was low, the use of English makes PI high because of the effect of foreign language which supported the cultural match up hypothesis. When the model attractiveness was low, the use of Korean made AP and PI high because the effect of foreign language was diluted. It was a general notion that the visual cues got processed before (Holbrook and Moore, 1981; Sholl et al, 1995) compared to linguistic cues. Therefore, when consumers were faced HAM, so much perception was already consumed at processing visual cues making their native language of Korean to strongly and positively connected with the advertising concept. On the contrary, when consumers were faced with NAM, less perception was consumed compared to HAM, making English to accompany cultural halo effect which affected more positively. Therefore, when foreign models were employed in advertising, the language must be carefully selected according to the level of model attractiveness.