How worldwide is marketing communication on the World Wide Web?

This study investigates the impact of different language interfaces on web-based product searches by Chinese consumers in Taiwan and how language familiarity impacts attitudes about the products found. Findings show that understanding the web-page interface language improves product evaluation when the product has high differentiation in the marketplace and is related to decreased evaluations when the level of differentiation is low. English, rather than an international language, is found to be nearly indistinguishable from a totally unknown language for both high- and low-differentiated products.