EXPRESS: Death or Muerte? Effects of Sales Language Use on the Consumption of Death-Related Products and Services
研究发现，用消费者的第二语言（如对英语母语者用西班牙语“muerte”）推销死亡相关产品，能通过增加心理距离降低死亡恐惧，从而促进购买，但效果受消费者对死亡的控制感和产品超越性特征影响。
Consumers often resist marketing information about death-related products and services (DRPS), let alone purchase them. Yet, there is a massive market and universal necessity for DRPS offerings like life insurance and funeral services. Proactively considering DRPS in advance allows consumers to better prepare for death and its aftermath. The current research builds on terror management theory and the literature on language use and psychological distance to propose a language-based sales communication strategy for DRPS. The findings from eight studies, including two field experiments and an eye-tracking study, indicate that DRPS sales messages appear in consumers’ second (vs. native) language (e.g., using muerte , Spanish for death, when talking to a native English speaker whose second language is Spanish) decreases consumers’ fear of death by creating greater psychological distance to death, which in turn induces more consumption (e.g., actual purchases). However, this effect becomes attenuated when consumers perceive high control over death or when the DRPS feature transcendence after death. In contrast, the effect is amplified for DRPS that require an intermediate level of customer participation. These findings offer novel insights into how marketers and policymakers can motivate consumers to consider DRPS earlier and engage in more proactive decision-making.