SUNY Poly Associate Professor of Marketing Dr. Marie-Odile Richard and peers won the “Best Marketing Paper Award” at the 2024 Conference of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada (ASAC), for their research titled, “Bilingual Involvement with Informative and Emotional Advertisements: A Comparative Study on English and French-Canadian Bilinguals.” 

Their research investigates how English-Canadian and French-Canadian bilinguals in Quebec respond to emotional and informative advertisements in their first and second languages. It focuses on the influence of ethnicity and language, finding that French-Canadians generally show higher involvement with ads, especially in their first language, while English-Canadians engage more with informative ads in their second language. Both groups show lower involvement with emotional ads in their second language.

The study's significance lies in its findings on bilingualism and acculturation in advertising. It shows that bilinguals may adapt culturally when responding in their second language, but their overall involvement often decreases due to the cognitive demands of processing ads in a non-native language. This has important implications for advertisers targeting bilingual audiences.