Biased Evaluation of Products Caused by Targeting Effect of Multilingual Product Packaging

This study investigates the influence of bilingual product packaging descriptions on product evaluation. In an experimental study, the evaluation of a product with an English-only package is compared to the evaluation of the same product in English-Spanish and English-Spanish-French packaging. Study 1 compared product evaluations of the same product in English-only (English), English-Spanish (bilingual), and English-Spanish-French (trilingual) packaging. The bilingual product received the lowest evaluation. Adding French mitigated this effect as did attributing a relatively high price (versus a low price) to the product. Study 2 compared Country of Origin effect to Culture of Targeting and found that the effect of Culture of Targeting is bigger.