Degree of Translanguaging as an Index for Online Consumer Segmentation in Emerging Markets

The John Gokongwei School of Management invites you to a Brown Bag Session on "Degree of Translanguaging as an Index for Online Consumer Segmentation in Emerging Markets". Our presenters are Dr Roberto Martin N Galang, Camilla Johnine Cosme, and Dr Wilkinson Daniel Wong Gonzales.

This will be held on Wednesday, 19 March 2025 from 12:00 - 1:30PM at the Cabochan Room, SOM 307 and online via Zoom.

Please register here: https://bit.ly/jgsombrownbag19mar2025

Brief Description of the Topic:

Utilizing multilingual resources to generate insights on individual buyers for consumer segmentation remains understudied in the field of marketing, more so for firms in emerging markets. Opting for parsimony, this paper proposes leveraging a simple form of linguistic fingerprinting – degree of multilingualism, specifically, translanguaging – as a way to estimate the purchasing power of online consumers especially for under-resourced firms that have limited access data and technical expertise.  Using a dataset of online reviews from two electronic platforms from the Philippines, we find that the increased use of English resources in the languaging practices of consumers is associated with higher purchasing power, whereas the increased usage of Tagalog resources appears to index limited purchasing power.  Furthermore, we find that degree of translanguaging can be used to cluster between two types of consumer segments within a service category.  The paper ends with insights for the greater application of linguistic analyses on consumer segmentation for emerging markets.

About the Speakers:

Dr. Roberto Martin N. Galang is the Dean of the John Gokongwei School of Management in Ateneo de Manila University. He was formerly a Senior Private Sector Specialist for the World Bank. At the World Bank, his responsibilities revolved around projects to foster competition, enhance productivity, improve business regulations, facilitate trade and promote innovation in support of private sector development in countries like the Philippines, Timor Leste, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Prior to joining the World Bank Group, Robby has had more than a decade of international experience in the analysis of strategic and regulatory issues for private corporations. He was an assistant professor of business strategy at Ateneo de Manila University and the Asian Institute of Management where he conducted research on the impact of government institutional inefficiencies on firm performance. He completed his PhD in Management from the IESE Business School, his MSc in Development Economics from Oxford University and his AB in Communications from Ateneo de Manila University.

Camilla Johnine Cosme is a Senior Data Analyst specializing in the application of advanced analytics to business strategy. Her research interests center on the intersection of natural language processing and machine learning, with a particular focus on time-series forecasting and the development of early warning signals for predictive analytics. She holds a Master of Science in Data Science from the Ateneo de Manila University.

Wilkinson Daniel Wong Gonzales is an Assistant Professor of Applied English Linguistics at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. In the summer of 2023, he was Visiting Professor at the University of Regensburg in Germany. He first pursued a Bachelor's degree in Secondary Education with a focus on English at De La Salle University in the Philippines, and later completed a Master's degree in English Language and Linguistics at the National University of Singapore.  He also received his Ph.D. and Master's in Linguistics and post-graduate certificates in Cognitive Science and Data Science at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (USA).