Effects of language choice in corporate narratives.
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2018-06-08
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en
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Abstract
As international marketing research has frequently studied the use of English in
advertisements, the concept of corporate narratives as a mean to influence readers’ perceptive of a company or product is still relatively under-researched. This study examined two groups of participants on the basis of corporate narratives in an experimental setting. Subjects either received a narrative in their first language or in the non-native English and were asked to evaluate the variables emotionality, transportation, identification, comprehensibility, attitude towards the language and organisation, and purchase intention. In addition, the respondents’ language proficiency was measured with the LexTALE test. By means of two-way analyses of variance, it was found that narratives in English were perceived as less comprehensible than in participants’ native language. Dutch respondents perceived the English language as more positive than Dutch. Dutch participants also indicated a higher purchase intention when the product in the narrative was described in their first language. Regarding nationality effects, the Dutch had a more positive attitude towards the organization, and found the narrative more comprehensible than the Germans. The findings imply that language choice and nationality affect narrative persuasion. Marketers need to take target audiences’ preferences and skills into consideration when choosing between local marketing strategies and standardized campaigns, which are often in the non
native English. It is recommended that corporate narratives should be written in the target audience’s first language as it seems to lead to a higher level of narrative persuasion.
Keywords: corporate narratives, narrative persuasion, language proficiency
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