The Impact of Formal and Informal Pronouns of Address on Product Price Estimation

Abstract

Previous literature has examined the effect of using a formal or informal second-person pronoun on consumers’ appreciation of an advertisement and the advertised product and their purchase intention. This is the first study that additionally examines the effect of the use of either pronoun on product price estimation. In a between-subjects web experiment, Dutch participants evaluated product ads in which either an informal or formal pronoun of address was used, or no pronoun of address at all (the control condition). Dependent variables were attitude towards the ad and the product, purchase intention, and price estimation. The results show that the use of the formal pronoun leads to a higher estimate of the price of the advertised product, while a higher price estimate may increase the purchase intention.

1. Introduction

All languages of the world distinguish between first, second, and third person, basically referring to the speaker, the addressee, and another person (Siewierska 2004). Ads use these three persons in specific ways, according to Cook (2001, p. 157), who gives the following characterization: “‘We’ is the manufacturer; ‘I’ is often the adviser (…) leading to purchase of the product; ‘he/she’ is very often the person who did not use the product, distanced by this pronoun (…); but most striking and most frequent, even in narrative, (…) is the ubiquitous use of ‘you’.” Differences in pronoun choice in advertisements have been shown to influence consumer perception. In particular, the use of a second-person pronoun (you) in an ad is considered part of a “high-involvement strategy which attempts to win us over by very direct address; they step uninvited into our world, expressing interest in our most intimate concerns” (Cook 2001, p. 161). Escalas (2007) found that the use of second person in a print ad for a fictitious brand of running shoe (Imagine yourself running through this park … with Westerly running shoes on your feet) led to a positive evaluation of the advertised product in comparison to an ad without a second person (Introducing Westerly running shoes …). Cruz et al. (2017) also found participants’ attitudes towards brands to be more positive, and their involvement to be higher, after reading Facebook brand posts in which second-person pronouns were present (versus absent). This effect was robust and independent of the positive or negative framing of the brand message.

However, as Cruz et al. (2017, p. 114) point out themselves “[a] limitation of [their] study is that it focused solely on the English language in assessing the effects of using second-person pronouns in brand messaging”. Unlike many other European languages, English does not distinguish between formal and informal pronouns of address. This raises the question whether the positive effect of using a second-person pronoun in ads is retained in a language which has two types of second-person pronouns, an informal and a formal pronoun, and whether there are any differences between the two. Cruz et al. (2017, p. 114) suggested that “[f]uture research could explore the possible implications of using second-person pronouns in brand messaging in other languages, such as those with formal and informal versions”. That is exactly the challenge we have taken on with our research, the results of which we will report here.

While many, especially European, languages distinguish between an informal and formal pronoun of address (Brown and Gilman 1960; Helmbrecht 2013), little research has been conducted to date on the effects of using either of these pronouns in product advertisements. Note that the English second-person pronoun you is not perceived as informal or formal, but rather can be understood as a neutral intermediate (Cook 2014). Terms like “polite”, “intimate”, “familiar”, etc., do not do justice to the complexity of the relationship between politeness and forms of address (Vismans 2023). Perceptions of politeness depend on variables such as relative age and perceived commonalities (e.g., Lappalainen and Saviniemi 2024), but sociolinguistic approaches have revealed that “address forms can be put to use in order to create rather than merely reflect commonalities and solidarities” (Moyna et al. 2019, p. 4), which is an important premise in the context of advertising. The choice between formal and informal pronouns in ads is not an easy choice, as the informal pronoun indicates intimacy, equality, but also superiority and subordination, while the formal pronoun indicates not only service and respect, but also distance (Cook 2001). Cook (2001, p. 183) describes the problem advertisers face as follows: “The voice of an ad must simultaneously be one of friendship, authority and respect. Ads in languages with a T/V [informal/formal] distinction must make a choice, or seek to avoid the second person altogether.” He assumes that the choice advertisers make is influenced by factors such as the nature of the product and the age of the targeted addressees.

Companies often have a policy regarding whether they address consumers with a formal or informal pronoun, since the “endorsement of a particular linguistic behaviour is also a means of promoting a corporate identity and ideology” (Norrby and Hajek 2011, p. 242). Norrby and Hajek (2011) investigated the effects of the language policy of two originally Swedish companies, IKEA and H&M, that are widely known for addressing customers with informal pronouns of address instead of formal ones. Such a language policy may lead to negative reactions and resistance when imposed on countries where formal pronouns used to be the norm in communication with customers, such as Germany or France. This was also found in a study of translations of IKEA catalogues, for which House and Kádár (2020) interviewed a selection of expert speakers from different countries. For example, many German and Hungarian speakers considered the use of the informal pronoun in the catalogues inappropriate, i.e., not in accordance with the marketing conventions of their countries. This is also in line with some of the findings of Truan (2022), who noticed that for certain German customers, the use of an informal pronoun is perceived as contradictory to what is expected from a company, even in online communication.

With a small corpus study of 71 Dutch advertisements, Vismans (2013) showed that ads for services brands use more formal second-person pronouns than other ads, which he ascribed to both the relative age and maturity of the targeted addressees (following Clyne et al. 2009). In 46% of the ads, there was no second-person pronoun present at all, and this was especially the case for ads for products (such as cars or cosmetics). The reason could be that advertisers hesitated between using the formal or the informal variant. The use of an informal pronoun may appear friendly, but it may also make the consumer feel that they are not being taken seriously. The use of a formal pronoun may cause the product to be perceived as more luxurious and expensive, but if so, does that make the product and advertisement more or less appealing?

It could well be that the use of a formal pronoun is in fact more suitable for marketing more luxurious or expensive products, despite the popularity of the informal pronoun in Dutch product advertisements (Leung et al. 2023; Schoenmakers et al. 2024). The reason why this might be the case is because the formal pronoun is still associated with higher social status in Dutch (Levshina 2017), which goes hand in hand with more power and more wealth. Furthermore, luxury brands are perceived as competent (cf. Septianto et al. 2022).

In an experimental study, den Hartog et al. (2024) found an interaction between pronoun of address and company competence level. Dutch speakers estimated that they would receive a higher salary when companies that were perceived as highly competent used the informal pronoun of address. By contrast, when company competence was rated low, participants expected to receive a higher salary when the formal pronoun was used compared to the informal pronoun.

In one of their experiments carried out at a Dutch university (N = 293, mean age 20), Leung et al. (2023) examined the effect of using either the formal or informal pronoun of address on participants’ preference for one of two restaurants, where one was described as competent and the other as warm. Participants first read information about both restaurants, including some reviews from critics. The two descriptions were mostly identical but varied in the use of words such as “warm”, “friendly”, and “attentive” for the warm restaurant, and “excellent”, “capable”, and “professional” for the competent restaurant. The following extract illustrates the difference between the two descriptions, with the adjectives for the warm/competent restaurant in bold: “David/Jesse Keuken offers a warm and comfortable/an excellent and superb dining experience. Our dishes are prepared in the sincerest manner by our most caring chefs/highest quality by our most skillful chefs” (Leung et al. 2023, p. 552). After reading the descriptions of the two restaurants, participants were told that the two restaurants, called David Kitchen and Jesse Kitchen, came up with one and the same slogan. The slogan they read was either David/Jesse Keuken, jouw Keuze (‘David/Jesse Kitchen, your [informal] Choice’) or David/Jesse Keuken, uw Keuze (‘David/Jesse Kitchen, your [formal] Choice’). Participants were then asked which restaurant they preferred. The majority of participants (77%) preferred the warm restaurant, but participants were almost twice as likely to choose the competent restaurant when they read the slogan with the formal possessive pronoun than when they read the informal version. One limitation of Leung et al.’s experiments, however, is that the subjects were on average about 20 years old, as they were undergraduate students at a Dutch university.

We suggest that the preference of the majority of participants for the warm restaurant in Leung et al. (2023), as described above, could be due to the price ratio between the two restaurants. Obviously, a restaurant described as excellent will generally be more expensive than one described as friendly. The participants in Leung et al.’s (2023) study were all undergraduate students, who usually do not have a lot of money to spend. If they had been asked in which restaurant they would prefer to eat for free, perhaps they would have chosen the competent restaurant. Thus, competence might go hand in hand with price, in which case the use of a formal pronoun would be associated with the more expensive restaurant and an informal pronoun with the less expensive one. We hypothesize that the use of either a formal or informal pronoun of address in a slogan can be associated with a higher or lower estimation of the price of the product. Because the subjects in Leung et al.’s (2023) experiments were on average about 20 years old, we cannot verify whether their results were moderated by the age of the respondents, but it is possible that the effect also depends on the age of the participants (cf. van Zalk and Jansen 2004).

Yu et al. (2017) found that a personalized ad with a second-person pronoun can be an effective marketing strategy for a fictitious luxury watch brand in the Netherlands. In their study, they described the watch as having superior quality, an extraordinary design, and they mentioned its high price of 8000 euros. The assumption was that premium quality and expensiveness go hand in hand. Thus, a high price may lead to a higher appreciation of the ad and the product as well as a higher purchase intention among consumers. Yu et al. found that the personalized ad indeed led to a higher purchase intention than the non-personalized ad. The authors did not provide information on whether they used the formal or informal second-person pronoun in the personalized ad. They only presented the English versions of the ad, but not the translations into Dutch. However, inquiries with the first author revealed that the Dutch ad in Yu et al. (2017) used the informal pronoun (Shubin Yu, p.c.). The Dutch slogan they used in the personalized ad was Elegantie speciaal ontwikkeld voor JOU ‘Elegance especially designed for YOU’ with the informal pronoun jou ‘you’. The formal pronoun u ‘you’ would have given the slogan Elegantie speciaal ontwikkeld voor U. The author revealed that they did not really think about the choice between the formal and informal pronoun when designing the experiment, but that they wanted to keep the form of address consistent in English, Dutch, and Chinese. However, the use of the informal pronoun of address in Dutch is not the same as the use of the neutral pronoun you in English (cf. Cook 2014). The higher purchase intention after reading the ad in which an informal pronoun was used compared to the non-personalized ad with the slogan Dit is elegantie ‘This is elegance’ could therefore be due not only to the degree of personalization of the ad, but also to the use of the informal second-person pronoun. The question is whether the formal pronoun would have led to the same or to a higher or lower purchase intention.

In one of Leung et al.’s (2023) other experiments, also carried out at a Dutch university, the participants (N = 106, mean age 21) were presented with 20 existing brands and had to choose between a slogan with either an informal or a formal pronoun of address for this brand. The results showed that participants had a greater preference for informal pronouns for brands with a high warmth rating and for formal ones for brands perceived as highly competent. The brands were selected on the basis of warmth and competence ratings obtained from a previous experiment. Again, it is possible that competence ratings correlated with price estimates, because it seems that high competence ratings were more often assigned to the brands selling more expensive products, such as computers, cars, furniture, and airline tickets sold by Microsoft, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, IKEA, and KLM, and low ratings more often to brands selling less expensive products, such as household goods, second-hand stuff, and food items sold by Action, Marktplaats, HAK, Senseo, Cup-a-Soup, Knorr, and Pickwick.

The purpose of the current study is to investigate whether the use of a formal pronoun in Netherlandic Dutch leads to a higher price estimate than the use of an informal pronoun. Yu et al. (2017) found that a personalized ad that addressed customers with a second-person pronoun led to a higher purchase intention than a non-personalized ad without a pronoun of address. However, they did not compare two versions of the slogan, one with the informal and one with the formal pronoun of address. Leung et al. (2023) found differences in preferences for slogans featuring an informal or formal pronoun, dependent on the competence and warmth of brands. We assume there may be a correlation between competence and a higher price, and between warmth and a lower price. In general, the use of a second-person pronoun is seen as a way to connect with consumers and make them feel more important and unique. But the connection between brand and consumer may be different for an expensive and an inexpensive product. In Dutch, the formal pronoun might be more closely associated with luxurious or expensive products and may therefore lead to a higher price estimate of the product.

Whether a higher price estimate would be associated with a higher or lower purchase intention remains to be seen. On the one hand, a product can be more attractive if it is more expensive, because a high price is assumed to reflect high quality. On the other hand, a lower price for a product that is still of good quality can be very attractive as well. Völckner (2008) calls this dilemma the dual role of price, where price consciousness and budget constraints have a negative effect on the purchase intention of one type of consumer, while price–quality beliefs and the prestige value of more expensive products have a positive effect on the purchase intention of another type of consumer. Whether or not a higher price estimate will result in a higher purchase intention is an open question, for which, to the best of our knowledge, previous research has found no evidence yet.

Based on the discussion above, we present four hypotheses. First, the presence of a second-person pronoun, formal or informal, will lead to a higher appreciation of the ad and the product, and thus a higher purchase intention (H1) (cf. Yu et al. 2017). Second, in line with Leung et al. (2023) and Schoenmakers et al. (2024), we expect that using an informal pronoun of address in a product ad will lead to a higher appreciation of the ad and the product than a formal pronoun, and thus to a higher purchase intention (H2).

Third, this is the first study to examine the effect of using a formal or informal second-person pronoun in product ads on product price estimation. We hypothesize that the use of the formal pronoun will lead to a more luxurious, expensive image of the product and thus to a higher estimation of the product price than the use of the informal pronoun (H3). Also, if a higher price is associated with a higher quality of the product, we expect that it will lead to higher purchase intention (H3). Note that this part of H3 is then in conflict with the higher purchase intention we hypothesized in H2 based on the use of an informal pronoun in a product ad. Since H2 and H3 are partially contradictory, this could mean that we will not find any difference in purchase intention based on an ad with either a formal or informal pronoun.

Fourth, age may play a part (cf. van Zalk and Jansen 2004). Especially for price estimation, but also for the other factors such as purchase intention, age may serve as a moderator (H4), since younger people generally have less money to spend than older people. This hypothesis is rather exploratory in nature, because it is difficult to say how the age of participants is exactly expected to influence the results.

H1. 

After reading a product ad in which a pronoun of address is present (versus absent), Dutch consumers will have a higher appreciation of the advertisement and product, and they will express a higher purchase intention.

H2. 

After reading a product ad in which an informal pronoun is present (versus a formal pronoun), Dutch consumers will have a higher appreciation of the advertisement and product, and they will express a higher purchase intention.

H3. 

After reading a product advertisement containing a formal pronoun, Dutch consumers will estimate the price of the advertised product to be higher than when they read a product advertisement containing an informal pronoun, which will lead to a higher purchase intention.

H4. 

The effects above are moderated by age.

2. The Current Study

The aim of the present study is to investigate the impact of the use of formal and informal second-person pronouns in Dutch product ads on customers towards the advertisement, the product, purchase intention, and product price estimation.

Although quality and expensiveness are commonly considered important features of a luxury brand, a luxury product is also seen as something that is extraordinary and not necessary (Yu and Hudders 2022), and this may negatively affect customers’ appreciation and purchase intention. Therefore, we designed advertisements for relatively expensive products that are still utilitarian, in the sense of functional. We tested ads for three different products in a web experiment, namely a laptop, a coffee machine, and an exercise bike. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in a Radboud data repository at https://doi.org/10.34973/8qbv-n532 (to be made available after publication). Although three experiments testing the hypotheses were conducted in the context of a master’s program Communication and Information Studies at Radboud University, we only report the results of one experiment that tested three different types of products and yielded significant results. The other two experiments tested only one product each (i.e., an electric toothbrush in one experiment and a robotic lawn mower in the other) and yielded no significant results. Although we do not report the results of the other two experiments in this article, the data and analyses of these experiments are available in the repository as well. The study was approved by the Ethics Assessment Committee Humanities of Radboud University Nijmegen (ETC-GW number 2021-9598).

To test the four hypotheses, Dutch participants rated three product ads for attitudes towards the ad, attitudes towards the product, purchase intention, and price estimation. The experiment had a between-subjects design with second-person pronouns as the between-subjects factor with three levels. Each participant saw three ads in only one condition, the informal condition with the informal pronoun of address, the formal condition with the formal pronoun of address, or the control condition without a pronoun of address. Respondents were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions by Qualtrics.

2.1. Material

Three sets of fictitious advertisements for three different products were created, namely a laptop, a coffee machine, and an exercise bike. A pre-test was conducted to select three gender neutral products (cf. Redl et al. 2021). A total of 37 subjects (18 female, 18 male, 1 gender unknown) participated in the pre-test. They were shown pictures of eight products, namely a laptop, an office chair, a coffee maker, a printer, a bookcase, an exercise bike, a beard trimmer, and mascara. They were asked to indicate for each product: “If ten people bought this product, how many of those ten people would be men?” Of the eight products, the exercise bike (M = 5.05, SD = 1.43), the coffee machine (M = 5.14, SD = 1.40), and the laptop (M = 4.59, SD = 0.83) were seen as the most gender-neutral, since their scores were closest to 5. These three products were therefore selected to be used in the main experiment.

Three sets of ads presented a picture of each advertised product and a slogan about the product. The same fictitious English brand name, Electronic innovations, was used in all ads. The ads came in three versions, an informal version, a formal version, and a version without a pronoun. The respondents were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. The product ads were shown in a random order to each respondent. The different slogans are presented in

Table 1. Slogans used in the experiment (informal and formal pronouns in boldface).

Product	Informal and Formal Pronoun	No Pronoun of Address
Laptop	Heb jij/Heeft u ook een nieuwe laptop nodig? ‘Do you also need a new laptop?’	Ook een nieuwe laptop nodig? ‘Also need a new laptop?’
Coffee machine	Wil jij/Wilt u ook een nieuwe koffiemachine kopen? ‘Do you also want to buy a new coffee machine?’	Ook een nieuwe koffiemachine kopen? ‘Want to buy a new coffee machine?’
Exercise bike	Deze hometrainer kun jij/kunt u kopen! ‘You can buy this exercise bike!’	Deze hometrainer is te koop! ‘This exercise bike is for sale!’

.

2.2. Participants

Participants were recruited via the researchers’ social media networks using the snowball method. Although this method comes with its limitations with respect to representativity, we tried to take this into account by including age in the statistical analysis and exploring the influence of two additional factors, gender and educational level. Participants received a link to the online questionnaire in Qualtrics. We aimed at recruiting participants of different ages. The final analysis included 189 participants (114 females, 75 males) whose first language was Dutch and whose ages ranged from 19 to 79 years old (M = 40.61, SD = 17.43).

2.3. Dependent Variables

Attitude towards the advertisement was measured by means of a first-person statement, “I find this advertisement …”, followed by five 7-point semantic differentials (Hornikx and Hof 2008; Hendriks et al. 2017), namely not nice—nice; boring—engaging; not original—original; not attractive—attractive; not interesting—interesting (α = 0.93).

Attitude towards the product was measured using the statement “I find this product …”, followed by three 7-point semantic differential scales: not nice—nice; not attractive—attractive; of poor quality—of good quality (α = 0.81) (Hornikx and Hof 2008)1.

Purchase intention was measured for each product ad with the statement “This product (…)”, followed by three 7-point scales, namely (1) “I never want to buy—I certainly want to buy”, (2) “I do not recommend to my friends—I recommend to my friends”, and (3) “is really something for me—is really nothing for me” (α = 0.83) (Hornikx and Hof 2008; Hendriks et al. 2017). Following Hornikx and Hof (2008), attitudes towards the ads and attitudes towards the products were reversed in order to avoid habituation and nonchalance in answering the questions among the participants. Attitude towards the advertisement and Attitude towards the product were calculated by averaging across the five and three statements, respectively. Purchase intention was calculated by averaging across the three statements.

Price estimation was measured with a 7-point Likert scale ranging from cheap to expensive (Gerritsen et al. 2010).

2.4. Procedure

Before taking part in the experiment, participants first read an information and consent form, and agreed to the terms and conditions of participation. They were informed that their participation was voluntary and anonymous, and that they could stop at any point during the task. They were informed that they would be asked to evaluate three different product ads using 7-point rating scales. They were asked to answer as honestly as possible, and they were informed that there were no wrong answers. At the end of the questionnaire, participants provided data about their age, gender, and level of education.

2.5. Data Analysis

We processed and analyzed the data using R, version 4.1.3 (R Core Team 2022). In order to test our hypotheses, we performed four linear mixed-effects regression analyses using the package lme4 (Bates et al. 2015), as the same participants rated more than one advertisement for each of the four dependent variables, i.e., Attitude towards the product, Attitude towards the advertisement, Purchase intention, and Price estimation. We started off with a base model including the fixed effects required to test our hypotheses: Condition (No pronoun, Informal, and Formal), Age, and the interactions between Condition and Age. In addition, we included Participant as a random effect (intercept only) in our base model. Helmert coding was used for the categorical predictor Condition (No pronoun vs. Informal and Formal pronoun; Informal vs. Formal pronoun), and the continuous predictor Age was mean-centered. After having established the base model, we added other potentially relevant predictors (covariates) to the model one by one. If the model fit improved (as assessed based on likelihood ratio tests), the predictor was included in the model. For an overview of the covariates that we used in this procedure, see the data analysis script in our data repository. We used likelihood ratio tests to determine p values for main and interaction effects using afex (Singmann et al. 2022). To control for the inflation of family-wise error rates in case of multiple comparisons, p values were adjusted based on the Bonferroni correction using the package emmeans (Lenth 2022) and were incorporated in the regression tables. As a measure of the model fit for these mixed models, we calculated the (pseudo) R² using MuMIn (Barton 2022). The data analysis script is available in the data repository.

2.6. Results

An overview of the descriptive statistics for the four scales is illustrated in Figure 1. Mean scores per condition are very similar for Attitude towards the product and Purchase intention, while differences between conditions are present for Attitude towards the advertisement and Price estimation. More specifically, advertisements with informal pronouns seem to lead to a more positive attitude towards the ad than advertisements without pronouns. In addition, participants seem to estimate products in advertisements with formal pronouns as more expensive than products in advertisements with informal pronouns and no pronouns.

Table 2. The two regression analyses with Attitude towards the advertisement (left) and Attitude towards the product (right) as dependent variables.

		Attitude Towards the Ad				Attitude Towards the Product
Fixed Effects		Beta	SE	t	p	Beta	SE	t	p
Intercept		3.010	0.13	22.458	<0.001	4.143	0.25	16.910	<0.001
No pronoun vs. Pronoun		0.517	0.18	2.851	0.011	0.238	0.14	1.673	0.201
Informal vs. Formal		−0.366	0.21	−1.753	0.171	−0.036	0.16	−0.221	0.999
Age		0.017	0.01	3.395	0.001	0.009	0.01	2.426	0.016
No pronoun vs. Pronoun × Age		0.028	0.01	2.657	0.009	0.017	0.01	2.112	0.036
Informal vs. Formal × Age		−0.009	0.01	−0.737	0.462	0.006	0.01	0.607	0.545
Random effects		Variance		SD		Variance		SD
Participant	Intercept	1.178		1.085		0.546		0.739
Item	Intercept	0.032		0.179		0.167		0.408
Residual		0.574		0.757		0.891		0.944
		Note: R2marginal: 0.104; R2conditional: 0.712				Note: R2marginal: 0.037; R2conditional: 0.465

presents the outcome of the regression analyses for Attitude towards the advertisement and Attitude towards the product that tested our first, second and fourth hypothesis with respect to appreciation. The analysis with Attitude towards the ad as the dependent variable revealed a significant positive effect of Age (χ² (1) = 11.19, p = 0.001): irrespective of Condition, the older a participant, the more they appreciated the advertisement (β = 0.017). Moreover, we found a significant effect of Condition (χ² (2) = 10.79, p = 0.005): advertisements with pronouns led to a significantly more positive attitude towards the advertisement than advertisements without pronouns (p < 0.05) (H1), while advertisements with informal and formal pronouns did not significantly differ from each other (p = 0.171) (H2). This effect of Condition was modulated by Age (χ² (2) = 7.26, p = 0.027) (H4): the older the participants, the larger the difference between the no-pronoun condition on the one hand and the informal and formal conditions on the other (p < 0.01), while the difference between informal and formal pronouns did not significantly change as a function of Age (p = 0.462). This interaction effect is visualized in Figure 2.

The regression analysis with Attitude towards the product as the dependent variable also showed a significant positive effect of Age (χ² (1) = 5.80, p = 0.016): the older a participant, the more they appreciated the product, irrespective of Condition (β = 0.009). No significant difference was found between conditions (χ² (2) = 2.82, p = 0.244) (H1, H2). The interaction effect with Age also did not reach significance (χ² (2) = 4.93, p = 0.085) (H4).

Table 3. The two regression analyses with Purchase intention (left) and Price estimation (right) as dependent variables.

		Purchase Intention				Price Estimation
Fixed Effects		Beta	SE	t	p	Beta	SE	t	p
Intercept		3.822	0.228	16.778	<0.001	4.520	0.19	23.888	<0.001
No pronoun vs. Pronoun		0.163	0.147	1.110	0.268	0.353	0.17	2.120	0.076
Informal vs. Formal		−0.088	0.171	−0.519	0.604	0.653	0.19	3.402	0.002
Price estimation		0.235	0.038	6.113	<0.001	NA	NA	NA	NA
Age		0.008	0.004	2.009	0.045	0.003	0.01	0.577	0.565
No pronoun vs. Pronoun × Age		0.027	0.008	3.238	0.001	−0.002	0.01	−0.158	0.874
Informal vs. Formal × Age		−0.001	0.010	−0.041	0.967	0.026	0.01	2.300	0.023
Random effects		Variance		SD		Variance		SD
Participant	Intercept	0.586		0.765		0.803		0.896
Item	Intercept	0.141		0.376		0.089		0.298
Residual		0.921		0.960		1.058		1.029
		Note: R2marginal: 0.106; R2conditional: 0.500				Note: R2marginal: 0.063; R2conditional: 0.491

shows the regression analyses for Purchase intention (testing H1, H2 and H4 with respect to purchase intention) and Price estimation (testing H3 and H4). The analysis of Purchase intention showed a significant positive effect of Age (χ² (1) = 3.99, p = 0.046): the older a participant, the higher their purchase intention of the advertised product (β = 0.008). Again, no significant difference was found when comparing the conditions (χ² (2) = 1.50, p = 0.472) (H1, H2). We did find a significant interaction between Age and Condition (χ² (2) = 10.23, p = 0.006) (H4): the older the participants, the larger the difference between the no-pronoun condition on the one hand and the informal and formal conditions on the other (p = 0.002), while the difference between the informal and formal pronouns did not significantly change as a function of Age (p = 0.583). See Figure 3.

For Price estimation, the pattern of results was slightly different. Here we did find a significant effect of Condition (χ² (2) = 15.56, p < 0.001). More specifically, the informal and formal pronouns did significantly differ from each other (p = 0.002) (H3), while the no-pronoun condition did not significantly differ from the informal and formal conditions combined (p = 0.076). In line with Figure 1 above, products were considered more expensive if the advertisement contained a formal pronoun than if it contained an informal pronoun. A similar difference was found when comparing the use of no pronoun to the formal pronoun only (releveled version of the model, p = 0.002). We did not find a significant effect of Age (χ² (1) = 0.33, p = 0.564), and the interaction effect between Condition and Age was also not significant here (χ² (2) = 5.22, p = 0.074) (H4). We also tested whether a difference in price estimation was related to a difference in purchase intention (following our third hypothesis) and indeed found a significant positive effect of rice estimation on Purchase intention (χ² (1) = 36.12, p < 0.001): the higher the estimated price of the advertised product, the higher the purchase intention (β = 0.235) (H3).

3. Discussion

The experiment examined the effects of the use of a formal or informal pronoun, or no pronoun of address at all, in product ads on consumers’ ratings of the ads and the advertised products, their purchase intention, and their price estimation. Participants in the experiment evaluated ads for a laptop, an exercise bike, and a coffee machine, which came out of a pre-test as gender neutral.

The results of the experiment support our first hypothesis, in that ads with second-person pronouns lead to significantly higher appreciation than ads without a pronoun of address. For older participants, this difference between the presence and absence of a second-person pronoun was greater than for younger ones, which is in line with our fourth hypothesis (age as a moderator). The second hypothesis was not supported, since we found no difference in attitudes between formal and informal pronouns with respect to appreciation (attitude towards the ad and product) and purchase intention.

By far the most interesting result we found, in support of our third hypothesis, was that participants estimated the price of a product to be higher after reading a slogan in which they were addressed with a formal instead of an informal pronoun or no pronoun. Here we did not find evidence of a moderating effect of age on price estimation (our fourth hypothesis). To our knowledge, this is the first study ever that found that the use of a formal pronoun of address in a product advertisement may lead to a higher estimate of the price of the advertised product. Moreover, we found an effect of price estimation on purchase intention: the higher the estimated price, the higher the purchase intention.

The results do support the third hypothesis in that a formal pronoun in a slogan leads to a higher price estimate of the advertised product than a slogan with an informal pronoun or no pronoun.

While Leung et al. (2023) showed that a formal pronoun is associated with a brand’s higher competence, we hypothesized that this may also relate to the higher price of the products they sell, as an indication of high quality (Septianto et al. 2022). The use of a formal pronoun may also be associated with more expensive purchases because the formal pronoun is generally used for older addressees (Levshina 2017), who are usually in a better financial position (Vismans 2013). The results of our study show that product price estimation increases when a formal pronoun of address is used in an ad.

We did not find the use of a formal pronoun to lead to a higher or lower purchase intention directly. As pointed out in Section 1, this could be the result of two conflicting factors. On the one hand, the use of an informal pronoun of address might lead to a higher appreciation of the ad and product, in accordance with Leung et al. (2023), Schoenmakers et al. (2024), and Sadowski et al. (2024). The higher appreciation caused by the informal pronoun could lead to a higher purchase intention. On the other hand, a higher estimate of the product price due to the use of a formal pronoun could lead to a higher purchase intention because of the association between a higher price and the high quality of the product (Völckner 2008). However, we found no evidence of a positive effect of the use of either an informal or formal pronoun on purchase intention, at least not directly.

Although we found no direct evidence of an effect of second-person pronouns on purchase intention, we did find an effect of formal versus informal pronouns on price estimation and, moreover, we also found an effect of price estimation on purchase intention. Price estimation went up when a formal pronoun was used, and when the estimated product price was higher, purchase intention also increased. Thus, participants who estimated the price of a product to be higher were also more likely to buy that product.

As discussed in Section 2, no significant results were found in two slightly different, related experiments, but the data from those experiments are also included in the data repository. Clearly, the effects of second-person pronouns are to be found only under very specific circumstances, which is an important limitation of our study. Since more predictors in our regression models explained only a relatively small proportion of the variance in the data, other factors may be at play here. Therefore, more research is needed on the effect of using informal or formal pronouns in advertisements, also in other languages that have such a distinction.

Whether or not it is advisable for advertisers to use the informal rather than the formal pronoun in product advertisements in Dutch is not yet certain. Much will depend on the brand’s target audience, including the age, social class, and wealth of the consumers (cf. Völckner 2008). What is certain is that a product may appear more expensive and therefore perhaps more attractive (because of higher quality) when using the formal pronoun. Our study has shown that a higher price estimate may result in a higher purchase intention. At the same time, if the use of an informal pronoun can cause a product to be perceived as less expensive, this may also make the product more attractive, which could increase the persuasiveness and effectiveness of the advertisement. Future research will have to reveal whether there is an unambiguous relationship between the relative estimated price of a product and customers’ purchase intentions, either directly or indirectly via type of pronoun.

4. Conclusions

This study has shown for the first time that addressing Dutch consumers with a formal second-person pronoun in an advertisement leads to a higher estimation of the price of the advertised product.

Our study of product ads for a laptop, a coffee machine, and an exercise bike found evidence that a slogan with the formal pronoun led to a higher price estimate of the advertised product than the informal or no pronoun. If customers are addressed with a formal pronoun in a product ad, they will estimate the price of the product to be higher than if they are addressed with an informal pronoun or no pronoun. While this could potentially affect their purchase intention as well, we found no direct evidence of an effect of form of address on purchase intention in the current study. However, a higher estimate of the product price was found to increase purchase intention. Future research could reveal whether and how the relative price estimate resulting from a formal or informal address term affects purchase intention, and whether this further depends on factors such as the type of product and the characteristics of the consumer.