Ad copy language impacts perception

18:00 17th December 2008

Digital marketing that uses the target audience's native tongue is likely to have a more successful response, new research has shown.

According to a study by researchers at Erasmus University, messages and slogans written in the native language of the intended recipient are better received.

The researchers studied the responses of bilingual and trilingual European populations and found that native language words and messages invoked a more positive emotional response.

However, the research, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, found little evidence that difficulty understanding the digital marketing copy was behind the trend.

The researchers wrote: "Our findings show that, in general, messages expressed in consumers' native languages tend to be perceived as more emotional than messages expressed in their second language."

They also suggested that "because consumers usually have more personal memories with words in their native language…[these] marketing messages… tend to be perceived as more emotional".