Accommodation Theory

THEORECTICAL FRAMEWORKS

Accommodation Theory

Howard Giles (1973) and his colleagues formed the accommodation theory in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Although the accommodation theory is considered a sociolinguistic theory by origin, researchers mentioned that this has been employed in variety of settings “including speech, writing, songs, radio broadcasting, courtroom proceedings, and human-computer interaction” (see Giles, Coupland, and Coupland 1991 for a review and synthesis of the literature).

In its most basic form, accommodation recognizes communicators’ efforts to make themselves more similar to the target to improve communication (Holland and Gentry, 1999). Essentially, as A become more like B, the probability that B will like A more increases (Koslow, Shamdasani, and Touchstone, 1994). When applied to consumer research, accommodation theory provides useful insights on how consumers perceive and respond to targeted messages in marketing communications. Considering, one could ascertain “the greater the accommodation by the advertiser the more favorable the evaluation of ads among the target audience.” Examples of marketing accommodation can be the use of “ethnic salespeople, language, music, art, national flags or cultural symbols” (Holland and Gentry, 1999). However, The main issue of accommodation, however, relies on the recognition and response to the accommodation (Holland and Gentry, 1999).

Gren (1999) completed a study on black female adults and found that those who were less acculturated responded more positively to ads with blacks in them than did those with high levels of acculturation. Additionally, blacks with “weak ethnic identities favored white models and general-audience media over black models and black-oriented media.” In the linear model, a consumer that has a stronger ethnic identification is more likely to emotionally respond to an accommodating marketing attempt (Holland and Gentry, 1999). Furthermore, those who do not have a strong ethnic identification or have high levels of acculturation may not be recognize the accommodation (Holland and Gentry, 1999).