Intensifying language and language choice in advertising: consumers’ response in the Netherlands and Romania.

Abstract

So far, there has been no research comparing a Western European country with an Eastern European country with regard to the language choice and intensifiers in advertising. Therefore, the effect of the use of intensifiers in a product advertisement in the native language versus in English on the consumers’ response of Dutch and Romanian consumers was researched. A mixed design experiment was used to measure the Dutch and Romanian consumers’ evaluations of advertisements. No significant differences between the nationalities, language intensity and language of the advertisement were found with regard to the attitude towards the advertisement and the purchase intention. However, the results suggested that the advertisements without intensifiers resulted in a better attitude towards the product. The Dutch participants also had a more positive attitude towards the product than the Romanian participants did. Furthermore, the Romanian participants had a more positive attitude towards the product when the advertisement was in English.