Marketing research and the regional languages problem

Abstract

Marketing research studies in India, particularly those based on consumer surveys, which extend data collection beyond a particular linguistic region, confront a serious problem of language comparability in the questionnaires if they are meant for administration to populations using different languages. The questionnaires are often developed in the English language and then are translated into appropriate language versions. All the data is put together without recognizing the extent of measurement differences arising out of "language effect". The present paper provides an empirical test of this hypothesis.