Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Date of Graduation
12-19-2020
Publish
yes
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
Department
School of Communication Studies
Advisor(s)
Yeonsoo Kim
Chang Wan Woo
Traci A. Zimmerman
Abstract
This study examines the importance of perceived cultural sensitivity on consumer attitudes and intent to support. Participants were randomly assigned to campaign messaging with a perceived high level of cultural sensitivity or a perceived low level of cultural sensitivity. Findings reveal that higher perceived levels of culturally sensitive messages generate more positive attitudes and increase the willingness of consumers to demonstrate supportive communication and intent to purchase. Other hypotheses comparing the response between two groups—self-identifying Hispanic and non-Hispanic respondents— aimed to distinguish the role origin plays in determining how important cultural sensitivity is to the perception of the organization. These hypotheses were unsupported indicating there were no significant interaction effects between origin and cultural sensitivity. Overall, when an organization utilizes more culturally sensitive campaign messaging, consumers will respond more positively and be more willing to support in the future. Limitations and suggestions for future research is included to further understand the role ethnicity and origin play in determining this importance.
Recommended Citation
Christian, Amanda N., "Exploring the effect of cultural sensitivity in public relations campaigns" (2020). Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current. 115.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/honors202029/115
