PhD Defence: Anne-Sophie Irène Lenoir
In her dissertation ‘Are You Talking to Me? Addressing Consumers in a Globalised World’, ERIM’s Anne-Sophie Irène Lenoir aims to further our understanding of how to address consumers in a globalised world. The first part of the dissertation focusses on the impact of formal and informal address on consumer response. In Chapter 2, we show that brand personality affects consumers' preferences for and responses to forms of address. Across linguistic contexts and marketing situations, informal address elicits more positive responses when associated with warmer brands, whereas formal address elicits more positive responses when used by more competent brands. The second part of the work deals with minority targeting strategies. In today's multicultural societies, members of ethnic minorities represent a growing percentage of both customers and service providers. There are two main approaches to targeting ethnic minorities: messaging consumers when their ethnic identity is most salient, and doing so with spokespeople with the same heritage as the targeted minority. In Chapter 3, we identify generational status as an important boundary condition for these strategies. In Chapter 4, we investigate the impact of heritage congruence between customers and salespersons. We show that a same-heritage minority service provider leads to more positive attitudes towards the recommended product, but more among first- than among second-generation minority consumers. We highlight the implications of our findings for choosing effective ethnic targeting strategies in the advertising, retailing, and personal selling contexts.
Anne-Sophie Irène Lenoir defended her dissertation in the Senate Hall at Erasmus University Rotterdam on Friday, 4 December 2015 at 11:30. Her supervisors were Prof.dr. S. Puntoni and Prof.dr. S.M.J. van Osselaer. Other members of the Doctoral Committee were Dr. Steven Sweldens (RSM), Prof.dr. Benedict Dellaert (ESE), and Prof.dr. T.M. Lowrey (HEC Paris).
About Anne-Sophie Irène Lenoir
Anne-Sophie Lenoir was born in Liège, Belgium on 12th April 1987. She received her Bachelor’s (2008, cum laude) and Master’s degree (2010, magna cum laude) in Business Engineering from the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium). After completing an internship in market research at Nielsen, she joined the Erasmus Research Institute of Management in 2011 to start her PhD research in Marketing. In 2014, she spent a semester as a visiting scholar in the marketing department at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University.
Sophie's main research interests concern the impact of language, bilingualism, and biculturalism on consumer behaviour in a globalised context. Her research has been published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing as well as in professional publications. She has presented her work and chaired sessions at multiple conferences, including the Association for Consumer Research (ACR) North American Conference, the European Marketing Academy (EMAC) Annual Conference, the Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) International Conference, and the ESOMAR Congress. In 2013, she was named Young Researcher of the Year by ESOMAR, the global organisation for market research. Sophie joined ZS Associates in September 2015 and looks forward to a career in marketing consulting.
Thesis Abstract
The first part of the dissertation focusses on the impact of formal and informal address on consumer response. In Chapter 2, we show that brand personality affects consumers' preferences for and responses to forms of address. Across linguistic contexts and marketing situations, informal address elicits more positive responses when associated with warmer brands, whereas formal address elicits more positive responses when used by more competent brands. The second part of the work deals with minority targeting strategies. In today's multicultural societies, members of ethnic minorities represent a growing percentage of both customers and service providers. There are two main approaches to targeting ethnic minorities: messaging consumers when their ethnic identity is most salient, and doing so with spokespeople with the same heritage as the targeted minority. In Chapter 3, we identify generational status as an important boundary condition for these strategies. In Chapter 4, we investigate the impact of heritage congruence between customers and salespersons. We show that a same-heritage minority service provider leads to more positive attitudes towards the recommended product, but more among first- than among second-generation minority consumers. We highlight the implications of our findings for choosing effective ethnic targeting strategies in the advertising, retailing, and personal selling contexts.
· View and download Anne-Sophie's dissertation
Photos: Chris Gorzeman / Capital Images
