A popular practice among many marketers today is to feature actors with accents, particularly British accent, in commercials. In addition, with the advent of customer service call centers being outsourced to other countries, particularly to India where the Indo-British accent is prevalent, American consumers are interacting with accented persons more than ever before. To date, however, there has not been a comprehensive investigation into the underlying mechanisms that occur upon hearing an accent and how this impacts consumers' evaluations of the advertised brand.

This dissertation aims to address this gap and addresses this question in two contexts: a traditional advertising context (e.g., commercials) and an interpersonal context (e.g., call center experiences). To examine these effects in an advertising context, I draw on the stereotyping literature and the source effects literature to investigate whether certain stereotypes become more salient upon hearing certain accents (e.g., British versus American), whether this impacts product perceptions. To examine these effects in an interpersonal context, I draw on both stereotyping and social comparison theories to investigate whether individuals engage in social comparisons between the self and accent-activated stereotypes which are attributed to the speaker and the effect this process has on the self, perceptions of the call center representative, and evaluations of the firm.

The results of the first four experiments suggest that, in an advertising context, the stereotypes associated with an accented speaker are transferred to the advertised brand, particularly when little brand attribute information is presented. In addition, the impact of these stereotypes tends to be observed when consumers have low (versus high) capacity to process the advertisement. The results of the final study suggest that, in an interpersonal context, an accent can activate social comparison processes. As a result, consumers' self-confidence ratings are initially impacted which, in turn, initially impacts their evaluations of the call center representative and the firm.