Ever since two Swedish chains of shops (first IKEA, then H&M) introduced the Swedish T pronominal address for customers in Germany, address in service encounters has been discussed lively in the media, particularly in online fora.

Given this public interest in the matter as well as the rich linguistic research literature on address and related phenomena such as greetings in service encounters for languages from Spanish to Finnish, it is astonishing that German address in service encounters has to our knowledge only found peripheral interest, being studied as one part of multi-language studies (such as Norrby & Hajek 2011) or more or less exclusively with the help of focus groups (cf. Clyne et al. 2009). As far as economics is concerned, address in service encounters generally only appears to be a research topic in very specific contexts (cf. Seiter et al. 2016) or as one factor among many (cf. Brosig-Koch & Heinrich 2018).

Our interdisciplinary study interprets data from a survey done by the Hamburg School of Business Administration and based on videos showing sales encounters in three different settings (a car dealership, a bank and a store for sport footwear) with two address situations (the salesperson addressing the customer with the T pronoun du or the V pronoun Sie respectively) each. The survey respondents were asked for their impression of the respective sales person and sales encounter and to indicate the likelihood of a sale to the customer in the respective video or to themselves in a comparable situation.

Apart from the three different industries and the perceived appropriateness or inappropriateness of either of the address pronouns for them, among further factors for the positive or negative evaluation of one of the address forms were age group, gender and education level of the respondents.

References

• Brosig-Koch, Jeannette / Heinrich, Timo. 2018. The role of communication content and reputation in the choice of transaction partners: a study based on field and laboratory data. Games and Economic Behavior 112, 49-66.
• Clyne, Michael et al. 2009. Language and human relations. Styles of address in contemporary language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Norrby, Catrin / Hajek, John. 2011. Language policy in practice: what happens when Swedish IKEA and H&M take “you” on? In: Norrby, Catrin / Hajek, John (eds.): Uniformity and Diversity in Language Policy: Global Perspectives. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 242-257.
• Seiter, John S. et al. 2016. The effect of mutual introductions and addressing customers by name on tipping behavior in restaurants. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management 25.5, 640-651.