The importance of language familiarity in global business e-negotiation

This study explores the influence of language familiarity on online persuasion behavior based on subjective measurements and objective actual negotiation behavior. It was designed to test whether negotiating in a non-native language decreases the negotiation self-efficacy, given that the increasing use of global e-marketplaces and popularity of international business trades make negotiation in a non-native language inevitable. An online experiment was conducted using a text-based asynchronous e-negotiation system, with two groups of subjects negotiating in native and non-native languages separately in purchasing negotiations. The analysis results show that language familiarity plays a critical role in inducing persuasion behavior in e-negotiations, with a higher language familiarity leading to higher language self-efficacy and negotiation self-efficacy. However, only negotiation self-efficacy affects e-negotiation communication efficiency and effectiveness, both of which increase online persuasion behavior. Based on actual negotiation behavior, the results show that non-native language negotiators are less active than native language negotiators in negotiations. However, the negotiation outcome did not differ significantly between the two groups, suggesting that the final outcome is also influenced by other factors. The results also showed that language familiarity has a greater effect on the buyer than on the seller.