Languages and Sales

Recently I read that 55% of consumers prefer to make their purchases in their native language. This point drew my attention so I decided to read a little bit about those numbers.

What I found, is that a report published in CSA from 2014 and an article in Harvard Business Review (HBR) from 2012 revealed different studies but similar conclusions. Language can be a relevant factor when making decisions regarding purchases and business.

It is assumed that English is the language of international trade and that all international agreements are signed in English. But the answer might be quite different. It is true that English is the language number one in business, but is not the only language in use, and very often in international trading is not the most relevant language in terms of decision making.

When businessmen travel to meet their client, English might be the language they use to communicate with the airline of choice, the staff of the hotel they are staying in, and for international forums and networking. But when conducting direct sales, the unwritten rules might be the ones stated by former German Chancellor Willy Brandt: “If I’m selling to you, I speak your language. If I’m buying, dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen!” 

In other words, the final buyer might be who decides in which language we are going to communicate.  Today, with the exponential growth of online shopping, this point has more relevance.

The article I read from HBR, reveals that in a survey, web consumers from 8 countries were asked about their online habits. 72.1% said that they spent most or all of their time online surfing websites in their own mother tongue, and 72.4% of consumers said that they are more likely to buy from a site that offers services in their mother tongue.  

Regarding the numbers I used to start this article (55% of consumers…), they belong to another study where they surveyed people from 10 countries where English is not the first language, including France, Germany, and Russia, where most of the participants (approx 70%) can speak English very well.

But more significant results may come from a study ordered by the European Commission in 2011 about the Internet habit of EU citizens, surveying people from all state members (At that time, Croatia was not yet an EU member). In a multilingual European Union, this study revealed that almost 9 out of 10 Internet users said that if they are given a choice, they will always visit a website in their own mother tongue. Interestingly, 53% of the people surveyed said that they will use English if the website they want to visit is not available in their own language.  

In 2015, Pharmaceutical Industry news, a European website for news and analysis affecting the pharmaceutical business, published a report stating that almost 1 in 4 UK companies and 1 in 6 US business have lost business opportunities abroad due to lack of foreign language skills.

Today, we can see that most of international companies and organizations offer services in different languages, and their websites offer different language options. Google itself not only offers different options per countries, but they know that when users search for information, it is likely that they will ask in their own language. And they are ready to offer answers in the same language too!

Use of different languages can open the doors to a successful business. Customers mostly prefer to make purchase decisions in their own language. But the use of English when starting a new idea is not a bad idea. Still English is the predominant language of the Internet and the international trade, and as per 2017, according to the Internet World statistics, 25.4% of the Internet users are English speakers and their countries have a very high penetration of Internet. 

Still little bit more than a half of the Internet content is in English, and there is still an important segment of the population that although they are not native English speakers, they have no problem at all using English for research or business purposes, and they do not mind to use English to close a deal.

I will explain this last point according to my own point of view. English is not my mother tongue. But if I would have to answer to those questions I would say that I still would prefer to use websites in English. The reasons to explain my point, I learnt how to use Internet based on English instructions and the first sites I visited were all in English. When I started to browse sites in Spanish, my mother tongue, I was not 100% comfortable using sites designed in remote countries like Spain or Argentina, where they use expressions that are not common in my native country, Venezuela.

Today, Internet users face less and less those problems of terminology as Internet education is starting in schools using local tools and many International organizations are now using a new tool to accommodate a language so locals can fully understand and use it, and this is Language Localization. This is the reason why many sites have distinctions on whether we are going to use it from the point of view of a country or another, even in the same language.  

   

Indeed, language skills can be not only relevant for a business, but they can be themselves an opportunity for more Business.