Based on surveys and research conducted by Don DePalma and Common Sense Advisory

Don DePalma is the founder and chief research officer of the research and consulting firm Common Sense Advisory.

"Common Sense Advisory in 2006 to ask over 2,400 consumers in eight non-Anglophone countries about their buying experiences at English-language websites. We weren't surprised to find that they preferred interacting in their language, even for those respondents who spoke some English. For more expensive purchases and things that were critical to their life style – financial services like banking and insurance, for example – content in their own language was critical.”

“The lesson we took from that study was that if you're marketing to consumers, you have to make sure they can understand your value proposition.” DePalma concluded.

DePalma’s team also polled 351 businesspeople in eight non-Anglophone countries about the software they buy for their firms. These countries include France, Germany, Japan, and Spain, where companies frequently localise their products; China and Russia, which are attractive developing markets; and Sweden, for which “English is often thought to be sufficient for most offerings”.

The survey results were not surprising.

“We asked our survey respondent to agree or disagree with the statement, ‘Having printed marketing and other collateral material in my language makes my organization more likely to purchase a software product.’ Across our entire sample, more than 80% told us they agree with that statement. As we expected, the outlier here was Sweden, with just 60% of respondents preferring marketing materials in their own language. If marketers accept the conventional wisdom that English is enough for Sweden, they still leave three out of five buyers on the outside looking in. That's not good for long-term sales. The other seven countries all came in at 80% or higher”, stated DePalma.

What does this tell us?

DePalma pointed out: “Most business buyers will not give full consideration to a product unless it sports localized marketing materials that they can read and understand to the fullest. In stark terms, it means that products without translated materials stand just a one-in-five chance of making it to the short list”.

Read the original article “Translate Marketing Materials: People Don't Buy What They Can't Understand”.