Cross cultural consumer behavior: the use of local language for market segmentation. A study in the region Friuli Venetia Giulia (Italy)

Cross cultural consumer behavior is a growing market interest: the globalization of marketplaces, migration, multicultural market places, emerging proudness for ethnic identity after a period of cultural homologation suggest to consider these consumers’ changes for marketing strategies. As well the EU encourages all citizens to be multilingual by learning at least two languages in addition to their mother tongue, to maintain alive their cultural backgrounds and preserve their ethnic identity rooted into cultural historic and religious values. The objective of this study is to verify whether the local language used in a marketing communication strategy could significantly affect the consumers’ preferences for food products. The theoretical foundation is the consumer motivational approach that encompasses the traditional consumer theory, going deeper into motivations interfering with the consumers’ preference order. The empirical analysis is performed with a multivariate conjoint analysis, to evaluate the preferences for attributes described in different language. A number of students from the University of Udin (located in North-East part of Italy) have been submitted to interviews to examine their preferences for a simulated sandwich package distributed by vendor machine reporting information in different languages. The evidences are that the consumer’s reaction to different languages depends on socio-demographic profile, cultural background, language knowledge and family education; these results suggest that the local language can be effective in market segmentation for specific group of consumers. These results are of interest for many EU countries where the presence of bilingual communities suggest that the marketing communication in local language could affect the consumer decisions of those categories of food whose attributes encounter the preferences of these bilingual consumers