Over the last 50+ years, there has been a huge rise in interest in consumer language research. This article spotlights the emergence and evolution of this area, identifying key themes and trends and highlighting topics for future research. Work has evolved from exploration of broad language concepts (e.g., rhetorics) to specific linguistic features (e.g., phonemes) and from monologues (e.g., advertiser to consumer) to two-way dialogues (e.g., consumer to service representative and back). We discuss future opportunities that arise from past trends and suggest two important shifts that prompt questions for future research: the new shift toward using voice (vs. hands) when interacting with objects and the ongoing shift toward using hands (vs. voices) to communicate with people. By synthesizing the past, and delineating a research agenda for the future, we hope to encourage more researchers to begin to explore this burgeoning area.

Consumers are often frustrated by customer service. But could a simple shift in language help improve customer satisfaction? We suggest that linguistic concreteness—the tangibility, specificity, or imaginability of words employees use when speaking to customers—can shape consumer attitudes and behaviors. Five studies, including text analysis of over 1,000 real consumer–employee interactions in two different field contexts, demonstrate that customers are more satisfied, willing to purchase, and purchase more when employees speak to them concretely. This occurs because customers infer that employees who use more concrete language are listening (i.e., attending to and understanding their needs). These findings deepen understanding of how language shapes consumer behavior, reveal a psychological mechanism by which concreteness impacts person perception, and provide a straightforward way that managers could help enhance customer satisfaction.

When sharing information and opinions about products, services, and experiences, communicators often use either past or present tense (e.g., “That restaurant was great” or “That restaurant is great”). Might such differences in verb tense shape communication’s impact, and if so, how? A multimethod investigation, including eight studies conducted in the field and lab, demonstrates that using present (vs. past) tense can increase persuasion. Natural language processing of over 500,000 online reviews in multiple product and service domains, for example, illustrates that reviews that use more present tense are seen as more helpful and useful. Follow-up experiments demonstrate that shifting from past to present tense increases persuasion and illustrate the underlying process through both mediation and moderation. When communicators use present (rather than past) tense to express their opinions and experiences, it suggests that they are more certain about what they are saying, which increases persuasion. These findings shed light on how language impacts consumer behavior, highlight how a subtle, yet central linguistic feature shapes communication, and have clear implications for persuasion across a range of situations.

Text analysis is increasingly used for consumer and marketing insight. But while work has shed light on what firms should say to customers, when to say those things (e.g., within an advertisement or sales interaction) is less clear. Service employees, for example, could adopt a certain speaking style at a conversation's start, end, or throughout. When might specific language features be beneficial? This article introduces a novel approach to address this question. To demonstrate its potential, we apply it to warm and competent language. Prior research suggests that an affective (i.e., warm) speaking approach leads customers to think employees are less competent, so a cognitive (competent) style should be prioritized. In contrast, our theorizing, analysis of hundreds of real service conversations from two firms across thousands of conversational moments (N = 23,958), and four experiments (total N = 1,589) offer a more nuanced perspective. Customers are more satisfied when employees use both cognitive and affective language but at separate, specific times. Ancillary analyses show how this method can be applied to other language features. Taken together, this work offers a method to explore when language matters, sheds new light on the warmth/competence trade-off, and highlights ways to improve the customer experience.

Consumers often communicate their attitudes and opinions with others, and such word of mouth has an important impact on what others think, buy, and do. But might the way consumers communicate their attitudes (i.e., through speaking or writing) shape the attitudes they express? And, as a result, the impact of what they share? While a great deal of research has begun to examine drivers of word of mouth, there has been less attention to how communication modality might shape sharing. Six studies, conducted in the laboratory and field, demonstrate that compared to speaking, writing leads consumers to express less emotional attitudes. The effect is driven by deliberation. Writing offers more time to deliberate about what to say, which reduces emotionality. The studies also demonstrate a downstream consequence of this effect: by shaping the attitudes expressed, the modality consumers communicate through can influence the impact of their communication. This work sheds light on word of mouth, effects of communication modality, and the role of language in communication.

Although self-enhancement has recently been established as a central motive for sharing word-of-mouth information, little is known about the impact of self-enhancing assertions (e.g., boasting) on persuasion. We theorize, and demonstrate in three studies, that although boasting is perceived negatively, such immodest self-presentations can either impede or enhance social perceptions and persuasion. The valence of the persuasion outcome depends heavily on trust cues that change the meaning of boasting to the word-of-mouth recipient. Boasting in the presence of low trust cues activates heightened vigilance (e.g., valenced thoughts) about the source’s motives, leading to decreased persuasion. However, when given reason to trust the source specifically or people generally, boasting is readily accepted as a signal of source expertise, leading to increased persuasion. Implications for consumer decision making and firms seeking to manage consumer social influence are discussed.