Consumer behavior leads to flows of circular migration that affect the spatial changes of divided towns in various dimensions. One of them is the town’s bilingual information system (in the native language and, more importantly, in the language of the neighbor), which facilitates contacts and strengthens ties between the different communities living so close to each other. The bilingual nature of the information system in divided towns ensures greater effectiveness of information delivery, thus promoting and facilitating the achievement of desired goals (Matykowski et al. 2017)._x000D_
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The paper aims to briefly characterize the forms of presentation as well as the distribution and intensity of foreign language information in divided towns in the Polish-German and Polish-Czech border areas (Słubice – Frankfurt an der Oder, Gubin – Guben, Zgorzelec – Goerlitz, and Cieszyn – Český Těšín), with a particular focus on commercial and service content as well as their evaluation by the towns’ users. The authors assumed that the foreign language information environment influences the behavior of cross-border consumers in that they choose those stores whose signs or advertisements are equipped with information in their native language. Moreover, it was found that the greatest intensity of this information coverage is related to the area of consumer penetration, i.e. the places best equipped with commercial stores – usually the town center or main streets near the border. The authors would also like to draw attention to the issue of protecting the townscape from being polluted by an excessive number of advertisements.

Katarzyna Kulczyńska, Emilia Bogacka
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

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ID Abstract: 946