Can You Make a Difference? The Use of (In)Formal Address Pronouns in Advertisement Slogans

Abstract

Directly addressing the consumer in advertisements has a positive impact on their perception of the product. Dutch, however, makes a distinction between a formal and an informal second person pronoun. If and how this distinction impacts consumers’ appreciation in and beyond advertising has not received much attention. Quantifying consumers’ appreciation in terms of the attitude toward the advertisement and toward the product, purchase intention, and price estimation, we show experimentally that customers’ attitude toward the advertisement receives higher scores when the informal pronoun is used than when its formal counterpart is.