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Comparing Chinese and American attitudes towards complaining
Abstract
Purpose – The current research aims to explore the possible effects of attitude towards complaining (ATC) on intention to remain loyal to hotels and to compare Chinese and American ATC in this perspective. Design/methodology/approach – The sample of the study consisted of Chinese and American graduate students, who were selected through the non-probability convenience sampling technique. A total of 1,822 questionnaires were found to be useful and data from these questionnaires were tested through SPSS and LISREL statistical software. Findings – Findings indicate that culture clearly affects ATC and general intention to stay loyal which suggests that practitioners should consider the cultural background of their customers while designing and implementing their service recovery systems. Results show that Chinese respondents tend to forgive and forget failures, whereas Americans seek a remedy from third parties. Research limitations/implications – Only relationships between ATC and loyalty were investigated in this research; thus inclusion of other dimensions would provide further insights. Although the use of student sample and scenario is well-justified and a common practice, future studies may consider collecting data from actual tourists. Data analyzed in this research were cross-sectional and collected using convenience sampling; future studies may use random sampling and consider conducting longitudinal research. Originality/value – There is a paucity of cross-cultural research investigating ATC. China and America's current and potential significance in global tourism is undeniable. Moreover, they are ideal examples of their respective culture clusters; thus studying Chinese and American ATC provides significant insights for both industry practitioners and academics.
... This as a result, will create an unnecessary impact towards the operators. Erdogan andNorman (2011), andSingh (1988) noted that attitudes towards complaining are characterised as the overall effect of "goodness" or "badness" of complaining to sellers. ...
... This as a result, will create an unnecessary impact towards the operators. Erdogan andNorman (2011), andSingh (1988) noted that attitudes towards complaining are characterised as the overall effect of "goodness" or "badness" of complaining to sellers. ...
... Both genders claimed that they would write a letter to the press (M = 3.02 for males and M = 3.04 for females) and would decide not to use the product or service again if the service given by the staff of the restaurant was disappointing (M = 3.41 for males and M = 3.37 for females). Obviously, this result strengthens and supports Erdogan and Norman (2011) indication that customers who are not satisfied with a service or product would more likely voice out their complaint and give negative word-of-mouth to their friends and relatives. ...
Complaint behaviour in restaurant service industry is remarkably known. This study empirically investigates the attitudes, causes to complaints in restaurants and most importantly the customer complaints behaviour in restaurant services. Personally administered questionnaire was used and through a series of analyses from frequencies, descriptive to inferential statistics, some useful insights or predictors on the issues of interest were obtained. The findings indicate that majority of the restaurant customers are clearly concerned about the services that they have experienced in restaurant thus disappointed services will usually turn out to be complaints.
... Extant literature suggests that Eastern and Western consumers differ in the way they process the external information and stimuli due to fundamentally distinct cultural values (Kastanakis & Voyer, 2014). The greater these discrepancies, the more caution should be paid in understanding them (Ekiz & Au, 2011). In this sense, Chinese and American consumers are ideal examples for these significant differences, in terms of the six dimensions of culture (i.e., power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity, long-term orientation, and indulgence; Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005). ...
... China is one of the world's oldest countries with a culture steeped in tradition and history. On the other hand, America is a multiracial country with a relatively short history; Americans are less engulfed in traditions (Ekiz & Au, 2011). Government, religion, education, and other major cultural factors may cause Chinese and American individuals to consume and perceive products, services, and advertising information differently (Laroche, Nepomuceno, & Richard, 2014;Zhang, Laroche, & Richard, 2017). ...
... Furthermore, high power distance and low uncertainty avoidance also make Chinese consumers less likely to spread WOM and switch providers. China has a high power distance score, which indicates a high tolerance of inequality in the distribution of power and wealth within society (Ekiz & Au, 2011); thus, China's high power distance creates consumers' higher tolerance for service failure. In addition, Chinese consumers in low uncertainty avoidance culture do not feel particularly uncomfortable in indecisive/uncertain situations, such as service failures; this uncertainty avoidance culture increases Chinese consumers' tendency to accept service failure, instead of switch providers (Ekiz & Au, 2011). ...
... Given this fact, it is no surprise that a dedicated stream of research on the service industry has flourished over the past few decades. For generations, service failure has been a critical issue for both managers and researchers (see Ekiz & Au, 2011;Gr egoire, Ghadami, Laporte, S en ecal, & Larocque, 2018;McCollough, Berry, & Yadav, 2000). Service businesses provide intangible offerings that are complex, variable, and inseparable from service providers (Rasoulian, Gr egoire, Legoux, & S en ecal, 2017). ...
... The attributional process, its subsequent emotions, and the resultant behavioral responses to service failures might differ across countries with various levels of economic conditions and cultural orientations (Hui et al., 2011). In Confucian cultures, the concepts of social harmony, conflict avoidance, and the salience of "face" concerns are crucial in social interactions and business exchanges (Ekiz & Au, 2011;Manrai, Manrai, Lascu, & Friedeborn, 2019;Wei, 2014). These characteristics suggest that consumers may feel negative towards complaining and try to avoid direct confrontation with the service provider (Hui et al., 2011;Ekiz & Au, 2011). ...
... In Confucian cultures, the concepts of social harmony, conflict avoidance, and the salience of "face" concerns are crucial in social interactions and business exchanges (Ekiz & Au, 2011;Manrai, Manrai, Lascu, & Friedeborn, 2019;Wei, 2014). These characteristics suggest that consumers may feel negative towards complaining and try to avoid direct confrontation with the service provider (Hui et al., 2011;Ekiz & Au, 2011). Indeed, in comparison with consumers from Western cultures, consumers in Confucian societies are found to be less likely to complain and more likely to engage in switching behavior (Liu & McClure, 2001;Suh et al., 2013). ...
Following a service failure, three discrete negative emotions—regret, anger, and frustration—are triggered through the attribution of blame to the three different sources of self, service provider, and situation, respectively. This study aims at investigating the set of behavioral consequences deployed by customers to mitigate each of those negative emotions within the context of Vietnam—a Confucian culture. The data was collected from 404 Vietnamese consumers. The findings reveal that regret and frustration are more likely to arise. Moreover, feelings of regret and anger trigger similar behavioral responses; customers choose neither to complain directly to the service provider nor to simply ignore the failed incident. Instead, they vent their feelings through nWOM with the intention of switching to another provider. In contrast, frustrated customers might either be passive in such a situation or complain directly. They do not engage in nWOM, but do intend to switch to alternatives.
... Two items, namely "average" and "attention," belong to the (distinction) di-mension, representing the propensity to expect treatment that is regarded as special in the eyes of those consumers who desire it (Butori, 2010). These consumers reflect the salience of public self-image or "face" concerns in the context of social interactions in Confucian cultures (Ekiz & Au, 2011;Le & Ho, 2020). However, the importance of personal values tends to vary according to culture (Ladhari et al., 2011). ...
... CE is an antecedent to emotional outbursts or extreme complaining behaviors (Boyd & Helms, 2005). In Confucian cultures, consumers may try to avoid direct confrontation with retailers (Ekiz & Au, 2011). Utilizing an avoidance approach (Carver & Connor Smith, 2010) or "exit" strategies (Hirschman, 1970), customers may boycott after experiencing a negative emotion; this is done to seek psychological balance and return to a normal state (Le & Ho, 2020) by venting their displeasure with the retailer (Brennan & Lomasky, 1997). ...
The consumer entitlement (CE) construct is a key variable in the exchange process in retail environments. The original Consumer Entitlement Inventory (CEI) was developed and applied within Western cultural boundaries. The main contribution of this study is the extension of the original CEI to better fit the Vietnamese context and to demonstrate its applicability in the context of an emerging economy with a Confucian culture. The study also contributes to expanding the range of identified boycott motives in the literature and clarifying their mechanism via social exchange theory. The extended CEI scale was tested using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, using a sample of 603 respondents. Qualitative and quantitative research results show that the extended CEI has two dimensions, namely intransigence, and demand and distinction, with adequate content, reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. This study also aimed to apply the extended CEI to an exploration of the relationship between CE and willingness to boycott. Research results from another independent study with 450 respondents using a structural equation model confirmed the positive relationship between CE and willingness to boycott. In addition, theoretical implications are discussed.
... They also found that customers with higher education tend to avoid complaint behavior. There are many factors that increase the tendency to making a complain include (Kim et al., 2010: Erdogan andNorman, 2011): -Obtaining satisfactory results after complaining. ...
... Also, they agreed that complaining is beneficial to society and prevents other guests to fall in the same problem (mean = 3.45, CV = 30.37). Erdogan and Norman (2011) set some of factors that increase the tendency to complain and record that complaining is beneficial to society. However, the respondents in doubt that complaining helps guests to get their rights back (Mean = 3.22, CV = 45.49). ...
... It is important for managers to understand the cultural characteristics of societies and use this information to determine the correlation between a customer's behaviour, during purchasing and post-purchasing, and their given cultural characteristics. In the literature on this issue, it has been observed that generally the concept of nationality is highlighted in discussions about cultural differences (Kim and Lynn, 2007;Ekiz and Au, 2011;Hernandez et al., 1991;Kim and Lee, 2009;Voss et al., 2004). ...
... Chinese consumers tend to forgive and forget service failures, whereas Americans complain to third parties (Ekiz and Au, 2011). According to Kim and Lee (2009), American customers report their dissatisfaction to the company and take private action, Chinese customers take legal action and complain to third parties, Japanese customers complain to the company and tend to complain to third parties, as do South Koreans. ...
Purpose
The study was carried out to better understand the behaviour of tourists from different cultures and backgrounds, and to provide strategic solutions for tourism managers. The main aim of this study was to determine the relationships between the cultural dimensions of Hofstede and customer complaint behaviours.
Design/methodology/approach
Exploratory factor analyses were carried out separately for national culture and complaint behaviour scales and the factor structuring was then tested using a confirmatory factor analysis. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to test theoretical correlations and a conceptual model was created to put forward the correlations between national cultural dimensions and complaint behaviours, as well as to examine the impact of variation in one dimension on the other.
Findings
Significant correlations were observed between power distance and both public action and no action behaviours, uncertainty avoidance and public action and private action, as well as individualism/collectivism and public action.
Research limitations/implications
The sample population of the study included foreign tourists visiting Manavgat district in 2015. Manavgat as a destination is preferred by foreign tourists, rather than domestic tourists. In addition, many accommodations in the region only host guests from particular nationalities. For this reason, domestic tourists were not included in the survey. A limitation of the research is the fact that it focused only on hotel management. Extending the scope of the study in future research—the study could be carried out for a wider area and include other sectors—would increase the effectiveness of the study.
Practical implications
The results shed light on the fact that customers perform different complaint behaviours depending on variation in national cultural dimensions. In this context, the findings contribute to the hotel management literature and to the development of management strategies such as staff training, effective complaint solution methods, increasing customer complaints, using indirect resources effectively, and decreasing the cost of solutions. The research also aims to create awareness in hotel managers by highlighting the importance of this issue.
Originality/value
In many of the studies where customer complaint behaviour and culture are analysed together, culture is regarded primarily as a geographical region, or as ethnical origin. Using Hofstede’s national cultural dimension scale, and taking into consideration all the national cultural dimensions, adds originality to this research. This study is one of the first to explore the impact of cultural dimensions on customer complaint behaviours in Turkey. This is also one of the first studies on complaint behaviour in the hotel industry.
... Customer complaint is defined as the reaction of customers due to their dissatisfaction (Ekiz et al., 2011), or their expression due to unexpected situations during the purchase and consumption of the services or goods (Kilic & Ok, 2012). Chelmiski and Coulter (2011) defined customer dissatisfaction as the result of the difference between expected and actual performance. ...
... There are also dissatisfied customers who do nothing to vent out these negative feelings because the seller does not try to solve the problems experienced by the customers (Jahandideh et al., 2014;Ro & Matilla, 2015). Customers can choose not to do anything because they don't know how to complain, they think that no one will listen to their complaints, they feel that their complaints will not produce favorable results, or the cost of complaining is too high that consumers choose not to do anything and forget about their unsatisfactory experiences (Ekiz & Au, 2011;Emir, 2011). ...
To conduct business in the global market in the era of digitalization, hotels need to pay more attention to the complaint behavior of guests with different cultures to adjust their methods of handling these complaints. The purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of Hofstede's five cultural dimensions on the complaint behavior of guests. This study also offers strategic solutions for hoteliers in facing various kinds of complaint behavior from guests with different cultures. This research was conducted on tourists who have stayed in five-star hotels in Badung Regency – Bali, with a total sample of 110 respondents. The data were col-lected through questionnaires. The data analysis was performed using the structural equation model (SEM) with the partial least square (PLS) approach. The results of this study indicate that the power distance cultural dimension has a significant influence on public action and private action. Uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, and long term versus short term orientation dimension have a significant influence on public action and private action. The culture of masculinity versus femininity has a significant influence on private action and no action.
... Hotels adopt multiple techniques to capture the level of satisfaction and behavioural intention of customers by placing a comment card inside the hotel room, employing a post-departure satisfaction survey and follow-up measures for service recovery which is not solved by any in house process (Berezina, et al., 2015). Ekiz and Au (2011) observed that many customers were reluctant to record their grievances and complaints to the service organisations directly. However, customers feel easier in sharing their experiences through social media, websites, blogs and other Internet-based platforms. ...
... The reviews posted on the internet is an excellent source of information that helps in the purchase-related decision of customers. Previous researchers (Ekiz & Au, 2011;Li, et al., 2013;Berezina, et al., 2015) claim that compared to customer surveys, structural equation modelling, factor analysis and case studies, online reviews were the accurate indicators that service providers can explore to understand customer satisfaction. Li et al. (2013) suggest that, it is essential that service providers have to investigate, identify and give more attention to online customer reviews, which are the better reflector of customer's feelings than numerical ratings. ...
Understanding customer feedback helps in strategic decision making of an organization which ultimately determines the success or failure of a business or a hotel. Online reviews are increasingly becoming popular among online users and service providers. The hotel industry in many countries extensively utilises the online reviews to evaluate customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The goal of the study was to identify various issues that prompted the customers to register a negative online rating/ feedback on various services offered by the budget segment hotels. The study was conducted for time span of three months in which the online negative reviews or complaints of budget hotels pertaining to various operational departments were examined using content analysis. The findings of the study will be a valuable input for budget hotels to focus on most specific complaints of their departments so that the customer experiences could be enhanced at the budget segment hotels in India.
... A satisfied customer will repeat purchases, whereas a dissatisfied customer will not only not repeat the purchases but may also spread negative promotions on the product or service. Hotel guests generally look at several factors to evaluate the quality of service they receive during their stay, and that customer satisfaction may be affected by both tangible and intangible aspects of service quality [13] [14]. The growth of the Internet has enabled a rapid expansion of referrals by loyal customers through eWOM. ...
... From the operator perspective, user generated content creates opportunities for hotels to gain a better understanding of their guests. There have been studies on online complaints and reviews on hotels, and several categories for improvement were identified, in particular the physical attributes of hotel rooms, and the quality of the ambience of the room and hotel services, such as whether the hotel staff are friendly or rude [18] [14][8]. ...
Online travel forums have become an extremely popular platform for sharing travel information, with a large number of reviews being posted daily. Travel websites such as TripAdvisor and Booking.com have turned into very important resources for hotel operators and travellers alike, for promoting hotel rooms, choosing hotels as well as for soliciting and sharing feedback. Criticisms, compliments, dis-sensions, etc., are now accessible anytime and anywhere on the web, and can be readily amassed, while opinion mining techniques have developed rapidly. Together they provide the opportunity and capability to analyse and deduce factors that influence travellers in their choice of hotels. In this paper, we apply opinion mining on data collected from Tripadvisor websites. In total, 11,130 reviews on 4 hotels within the four-star and five-star categories in Kuala Lumpur are crawled, collected, and mined to identify the top-k most predominant information based on the most frequent and most related terms used in describing each of the chosen hotels. The results of this study would allow travellers to see the opinions of other travellers on these hotels, and hotel operators would be able to receive feedback to improve their services and in turn promote their hotels. This study is also carried out in view of future improvements in the techniques used and the analysis performed.
... However, the busy environment in China conflicted with their original intention and resulted in complaint behaviour. Ekiz and Au (2011) suggests that practitioners should consider the cultural background of their customers while designing and implementing their service recovery systems. ...
... Various studies in the hospitality literature have identified where, when, why, what and how complaints occur (e.g. Aguilarrojas et al., 2015;Ekiz & Au, 2011;Kim & Chen, 2010;Lam & Tang, 2003;Yuksel, Kilinc, & Yuksel, 2006). This study contributes to the literature in three ways: (1) it examines eleven representative tourism destinations in China where few studies on visitors' complaints have previously been undertaken; (2) it portrays the relationship between China inbound tourists' experiences of dissatisfaction and demographic characteristics; and (3) it uses comprehensive methods to explore the contents and linguistic links of qualitative data. ...
This study aims to examine inbound tourists’ complaints when visiting China and how these complaints differ in terms of tourist demographics. Tourists’ spontaneous reviews on TripAdvisor were analysed through manual coding and online automated software. Seven categories of complaint attributes with seventy-eight specific items were identified. The results showed different relationships between tourists’ demographic characteristics (age, gender, origins and travel pattern) and complaint items. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed with regard to Chinese tourism management as well as future research.
... Hofstede's cultural dimensions are widely used to explain different phenomenon in a variety of hospitality and tourism research settings, including tourist motivation (You et al. 2001), travel decision making (Money and Crotts, 2003), evaluations of travel services (Crotts and Erdmann, 2000), guest-host interaction (Reisinger and Turner, 2002a, b), travel risk perceptions (Reisinger and Mavondo, 2006), hotel managers' strategy (Ayoun and Moreo, 2008), hotel management (Jogaratnam and Tse, 2006), managerial job satisfaction (Lam et al. 2001), employees' attitude in providing service (Tsang, 2011), employees' perception of organization trust (Chathoth et al., 2011), airline employees' service behavior (Kim and Lee, 2009), hospitality work and life balance (Hsieh and Lin, 2010), work value (White, 2006), employee empowerment (Fock et al. 2010), hotel employees' job outcome (Øgaard, 2006), and complaining (Ekiz and Au, 2011). However, there seems to be limited empirical research on communication practices among, and with, employees from diverse cultural backgrounds in hospitality companies. ...
Purpose
– The aim of this study is to explore effective communication strategies for Spanish‐speaking and Haitian‐Creole‐speaking employees in hotel companies.
Design/methodology/approach
– A case study approach was employed. Three employee, focus group interviews and semi‐structured interviews with 12 managers were conducted in a resort hotel in Orlando to elicit critical factors related to effective communication strategies with Spanish‐speaking and Haitian‐Creole‐speaking employees.
Findings
– It was found that the case study company mainly communicated with its employees through daily meetings, daily written information (e.g. hot sheets), wall postings, e‐mails, and periodic monthly/quarterly meetings. It was found that bilingual employees often worked as unpaid translators and assisted their colleagues. Spanish and Haitian‐Creole‐speaking employees felt that not being proficient in English hindered their promotion opportunities. Differences were observed among English, Spanish, and Haitian‐Creole‐speaking employees in terms of style of communication. Some native‐speaking employees seemed to refrain from communicating with non‐English‐speaking employees unless they communicated in English. Haitian‐Creole‐speaking employees spoke to other employees about only work‐related issues.
Originality/value
– This is one of the first studies looking into communication strategies and challenges for Spanish and Haitian‐Creole‐speaking employees in hotel companies.
... This technique is based on calculated personal judgments, and researchers utilize their own perceptions and knowledge to determine the sample size. Erdogan and Au (2011) used this sampling technique to select the sample size of tourists to identify their attitudes toward hotel service in Hong Kong. Within the sample design, purposive sampling technique was used to collect the primary data from the respondents. ...
Sustainable tourism uses the resources of an area and attempts to create a balance between potential and existing activities. Practical case studies of sustainable tourism are difficult to identify because of the involvement of interrelated variables and dimensions. The study measures the index of sustainability for ecotourism in Lake Kenyir from social, economic, and environmental dimensions. The study follows non-probability convenience sampling design with purposive sampling technique for the sample selection. The study uses 47 indicators under six relationship aspects, namely, resource on community, community on resource, resource on tourism, tourism on resource, tourism on community, and community on tourism to measure the ecotourism sustainability of the study site based on respondent perception. Based on the Barometer of Sustainability, the result demonstrates that Kenyir is classified as “potential sustainable” ecotourism destination. The study identifies four relationship aspects, namely, resource community, resource tourism, community tourism, and tourism community with potential sustainable level. The community and tourism resources have the poorest sustainability, and fall within the potentially unsustainable level. Result reveals the good interrelationship between tourism and community in the study site.
... A good deal of travelers' time is usually spent in hotels for sleeping, relaxing and/or doing business. Whereas complaining might seem one of the natural reactions when things go wrong, it is widely argued that only a small portion of the dissatisfied guests would complain to management (Goodman, 1999;Ekiz & Au, 2011). Researchers suggested that complaining can have psychological costs for complaining customers (Ekiz et al., 2012). ...
The main objective of this study is to identify the nature of e-complaints directed at luxury hotels in Jordan. For this purpose, a content analysis was conducted based on 424 negative reviews posted for these hotels on the User-Generated Content (UGC) travel website TripAdvisor. The study found that the most frequent e-complaints were about service quality, the efficiency of hotel facilities, and cleanliness and hygiene. The study showed that e-complaints were mostly posted by British, American and Emirati guests. The hotels’ responses to e-complaints were also examined. The findings suggested that less than one-half of the e-complaints (approximately 43 percent) received an online response from the hotel management and that more than one-half of these responses (56 percent) were posted within a week of the e-complaint’s posting date. Recommendations to effective e-complaint management in the hotel industry were given in light of the paper’s findings.
... Chinese tourism is normally associated with collectivism and group travel intention and behaviour, as argued by Meng (2010), is "not only influenced by the cultural background of individualism or collectivism, but also a function of several factors including social, political, and economic influences, as well as personal background." Furthermore, cultural background should also be kept in mind when South African service providers design and implement service recovery systems, in the event of something going wrong or if there should be any reason for complaint (Ekiz & Au, 2011). ...
Chinese consumers are different due to their cultural background and way of life and this necessitates a conversion of the business model and products offered by leisure and tourism service providers. Very little is known about tourism practices of resident Chinese in South Africa. Research was conducted among resident Chinese in Pretoria, South Africa, to better understand who these consumers are, what tourism-related activities they have undertaken/participated in/experienced, and lastly what they want to do/experience. New knowledge is beneficial to decision-makers, especially in the leisure and tourism industry, and this knowledge can be used to guide decision-making within a business context. The research instrument used was a structured self-administered questionnaire and 100 resident Chinese were invited to participate. The response rate was 97% and the data indicate that a large percentage of the participants are visa holders, mostly male, fairly young, and still single. Respondents indicated that the highest order of their ‘Have Done’ activities is sightseeing and they definitely ‘Want To’ visit national parks and coastal destinations. The emerging resident Chinese market in South Africa can be a worthwhile market to the leisure and tourism industry. However, this is conditional as service providers should be acquainted with this market. Unfortunately the emerging resident Chinese market in South Africa has up to date not been researched extensively and thus presents researchers with copious research opportunities if the difficulty of accessibility is surmounted.
... Even though hotels dedicate efforts to assess and recover (if necessary) customer satisfaction, the problem presents itself in guests' unwillingness to share their experiences and provide feedback to hotels. Previous research suggests that the majority of customers do not act on the dissatisfactory service that they receive and are reluctant to complain to the service provider (Ekiz & Au, 2011;Ekiz, Khoo-Lattimore, & Memarzadeh, 2012). Such reluctance to complain and provide feedback to hotels may take away an opportunity to perform service recovery and improve the service level in hotels. ...
This paper aims to examine the underpinnings of satisfied and unsatisfied hotel customers. A text mining approach was followed and online reviews by satisfied and dissatisfied customers were compared. Online reviews of 2510 hotel guests were collected from Tripadvisor for Sarasota, Florida, USA. The research findings revealed some common categories that are used in both positive and negative reviews, including place of business (e.g. hotel, restaurant and club), room, furnishing, members, and sports. Study results further indicate that satisfied customers who are willing to recommend a hotel where they stayed to others refer to intangible aspects of their hotel stay, such as staff members, more often than unsatisfied customers. On the other hand, dissatisfied customers mention more frequently the tangible aspects of the hotel stay, such as furnishing and finances. The study offers clear theoretical and managerial implications pertaining to understanding of satisfied and dissatisfied customers through the use of text mining and hotel ratings via review websites, social media, blogs and other online platforms.
... Consumers who were encouraged to complain reported greater increases in satisfaction and product evaluation compared to consumers who were not explicitly asked to complain. Erdogan and Norman (2011) noted that attitudes towards complaining are characterized by the overall effect of "goodness" or "badness" of complaining to the sellers. ...
Anecdotal evidence suggests that nearly two-thirds of service complaints in restaurants are time related or having waited too long for food to be served and time is in fact one of the major area concerns by restaurant customers. Many researchers noted too long waiting and service delay lead to the complaint and complaint behavior has also associated with customers’ socio-demographics. This study further compares the complaints behavior between customer genders and occupation using Gerai as a contextual study setting. Through customers’ self-reported experiences, the result revealed both males and females and regardless their occupation appears to be sensitive to service delays or too long waiting or intolerant to it. These findings have given significant implications for the current and potential Gerai operators in positioning themselves in the fast growing trend of food businesses.
... For example, Ngai, Heung, Wong, and Chan (2007) suggest that the fear of losing face leads Asians to complain less frequently than non-Asians. In addition, as a way to maintain harmony, Chinese customers have been found to utilize more non-confrontational approaches to complaining when faced with unsatisfactory service (Ekiz & Au, 2011;Mattila & Patterson, 2004). ...
This study investigates how service evaluations in a hotel hospitality context elicit customers’ affective states, which then contribute to their behavioral intentions. The results of a study with Chinese leisure hotel guests (n = 451) provide support for the proposed model. Specifically, perceived service fairness has a significant effect on perceived service quality and impacts behavioral intentions directly, but also indirectly through consumption emotions. Perceived service quality has a direct influence on word-of-mouth referral intentions, and indirectly impacts both repurchase intentions and referral intentions through positive emotion. Finally, findings indicate a repurchase intentions to referral intentions effect.
... never return), complaints and negative word-of-mouth. While the service failure literature covers diverse issues, such as consumer satisfaction (Sparks and Browning, 2010;Iglesias, 2009), complaint behaviours (Bodey and Grace, 2006;Ekiz and Au, 2011;Namkung et al., 2011) and service recoveries Matos et al., 2011;Kwon and Jang, 2012;, few studies have discussed the mechanism through which negative service experiences affect future behaviour. Therefore, this chapter aims to discuss the memorable nature of service failures that mediates consumer behaviour, with a focus on the working mechanisms of the human brain. ...
A service failure is any type of error, mistake, deficiency or problem occurring during the provision of a service. The consumption of tourism and hospitality services involves a high degree of uncertainty and risk (Namasivayam and Hinkin, 2003). The inherent variability in tourism and hospitality services is attributable primarily to two factors: the heavy reliance on human service providers and the near impossibility of quality inspections prior to consumption (Zeithaml et al., 1990; Chan et al., 2007). Service-quality problems or service failures in service businesses occur due to the following service-quality gaps (Parasuraman et al., 1991): • • The knowledge or perception gap: Difference between the customers' service expectations and service managers' perceptions of the customers' service expectations. • • The standards gap: Difference between service managers' perceptions of customer expectations and the service procedures, standards and specifications established. • • The delivery gap: Difference between service-quality specifications and the actual service delivered to the customers. • • The communications gap: Difference between what is communicated to the customer and the actual service delivered. Service-quality models such as SERVQUAL are widely used to identify and measure the probable causes of the above gaps (Parasuraman et al., 1991; Koc, 2006). The SERVQUAL model focuses on the service-quality elements of reliability, assurance, tan-gibles, empathy and responsiveness (Parasuraman et al., 1988). No matter how good service-quality systems are, it is believed that service failures are inevitable (Goodwin and Ross, 1992; Levesque and McDougall, 2000), but dissatisfied customers are not (Michel, 2001). This is mainly to do with the service characteristics of intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability. As service failures cause customer dissatisfaction, they threaten the survival and growth of service businesses (
... never return), complaints and negative word-of-mouth. While the service failure literature covers diverse issues, such as consumer satisfaction (Sparks and Browning, 2010;Iglesias, 2009), complaint behaviours (Bodey and Grace, 2006;Ekiz and Au, 2011;Namkung et al., 2011) and service recoveries Matos et al., 2011;Kwon and Jang, 2012;, few studies have discussed the mechanism through which negative service experiences affect future behaviour. Therefore, this chapter aims to discuss the memorable nature of service failures that mediates consumer behaviour, with a focus on the working mechanisms of the human brain. ...
... The theory of reasoned action (TRA) suggests that intentions are the direct outcome of attitude (and subjective norms), such that there are no intervening mechanisms between the attitude and the intention (Brady et al., 2005). However, despite the importance and the implications of this attitude-based framework for sales, most research has been focused on service industries such as the hotel industry (Ekiz & Au, 2011), technology (Venkatesh, Morris, & Ackerman, 2000), CRM technology (Avlonitis & Panagopoulos, 2005), psychology models specific to information technology usage (Taylor & Todd, 1995), and internet shopping (Connolly & Bannister, 2008), with less attention given to the framework in terms of cosmetic products. Given the fact that the new cosmetic products pipeline usually is in a "launch of the month" (Bartlett, 2004, p. 13), and that cosmetics consumers' attitudes and behaviors are believed to be in a constant state of flux (Kumar, 2005), it is surprising that none of the previous studies have focused on new cosmetic buying behavior. ...
This paper reports on the results of a cross-sectional study that focused on the impact of attitudes, subjective norms and consumer innovativeness on intention to purchase cosmetic products. Beginning with the Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980
; Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975
), several models have been proposed to conceptualize the complex behavioral and social process by which individuals adopt new products. We argue here that the inclusion of an important individual difference variable – consumer innovativeness in conjunction with attitude and perceptions of subjective norms – would help us further understand both how perceptions are formed and the subsequent role they play in purchase intentions regarding cosmetic products. Data were collected through a mall-intercept questionnaire conducted in different well-known shopping malls in Sweden. Analyses included tests of the significance impact of these variables on intention to purchase cosmetic products. The findings offer lessons for practitioners and more avenues of study for researchers. The paper advances the understanding of three key antecedents by investigating structural relationships among attitudes towards new cosmetic products, novelty-seeking tendencies, behaviors and attitudes of people with the intention to purchase skin care and make up products.
... Findings of this study should be considered in the light of the following limitations. First, although the use of student respondents in empirical research is common and a well-supported phenomenon (Nadiri et al., 2008;Ekiz & Au, 2011), future research should collect data from the actual airline passengers right before or after their flights. Doing so will increase the generalisability of the findings to a greater extent. ...
Significant changes are taking place in post-secondary tourism and hospitality
education in Australia. Along with an expansion of degree offerings by universities,
vocationally focused degrees are also emerging from Vocational Education and Training
(VET) organisations also registered as Higher Education Providers (HEP). Among the
many implications of this emergence is building research capacity in the HEPs. This
exploratory study reviews experiences in other countries to identify considerations for building
research capacity in the emergent VET environment in Australia where hospitality and
tourism degrees are offered. Using William Angliss Institute as a case study, these
considerations are drawn together to develop a model to drive the research capacity for VET
HEPs delivering tourism and hospitality degrees in Australia. Applications and implications
for the direction of research capacity development among other like institutions are discussed.
... Chinese consumers tend to forgive and forget service failures, whereas Americans seek a remedy from third parties (Ekiz & Au, 2011). Ngai et al. (2007) observe that Asian guests are less likely to lodge complaints to a hotel for fear of losing face and are less familiar with the channels for lodging a complaint. ...
There is no universal pattern of consumer complaint behavior as individual consumers from different cultures have diverse needs and expectations when they complain. This study combines the cultural dimensions of Hofstede (1980, 2001) and Schwartz (2006) to form a new theoretical model for examining cross-cultural consumer complaint behavior. The model is applied empirically in comparing the complaint behavior of consumers from two different Asian cultures (Arab and Chinese) in the context of the Iranian hospitality industry. The results address the implicit assumption contained in previous cross-cultural studies that Asian consumers are homogeneous in their behavior, revealing significant difference in Arab and Chinese consumer complaint behavior. The findings provide new insights into cross-cultural consumer complaint behavior. Managerial implications for the hospitality industry are offered.
... Wan (2011) for instance found cultural differences in the perception of embarrassment to significantly affect complaint likelihood where consumers from Eastern cultures are more likely to complain about a service failure the higher the related embarrassment, as opposed to Western consumers. Other studies suggest that in Western cultures more active and rapid complaint handling is expected (Lin, 2011) whereas Eastern culture on the other hand tend to forgive failures more readily (Ekiz and Au, 2011). 10 high public consciousness prefer less public complaint channels. ...
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a holistic framework of complaint communication management on the Internet. Specifically, a model for e-businesses strategy is put forward which integrates the communication perspective of online complainers, the company as re-spondents and observers who follow the complaint dialogue online. In acknowledgement of the active or passive influence of each communication participant on the exchange process, the particular characteristics of online complaint psychology, electronic communication channels and related management systems are reflected within a circular process model that highlights the need for e-managers to develop and implement strategic means to proactively control and respond to negative publicity on the Internet.
By distinctively focusing on studies from communication psychology, strategic management, e-marketing and Information technology that were conducted in an online environment, this chapter aims to address the lack of literary integration with regards to the unique managerial demands posed through online complaint communication paradigms
... Until the late 1990s, little research focused on assessing the influence of culture on customers' service experience evaluations (Mattila, 1999). Subsequently, various studies have examined the impact of culture on consumer perceptions/behaviors resulting from a SFR situation either with a focus on an Eastern culture (e.g., Hoare et al., 2011;Lee et al., 2013;Tsang and Qu, 2000) or a comparison between Eastern and Western cultures (e.g., Ekiz and Au, 2011;Swanson et al., 2014;Suh et al., 2013). However, these foci have resulted in current research generally ignoring potential variations in response to SFR approaches by customers who have spent their formative years in one culture but have lived for extended periods in another. ...
Purpose
This study aims to analyze the joint effects of where a service failure occurs and who witnesses it, with a specific focus on Chinese consumers who have varying levels of acculturation.
Design/methodology/approach
A 4 × 2 × 2 between-subject factorial design was used, where social presence and the location of the service failure were manipulated and acculturation was measured. Data were collected in Australia and China to contrast perceptions and behavioral responses of Chinese – Australians and Mainland Chinese by drawing on samples of 224 and 264 respondents, respectively.
Findings
Results showed significant differences in face, satisfaction and repeat purchase intention ratings following a service failure between Chinese – Australians and Mainland Chinese, as well as among Chinese – Australians with different acculturation strategies. Contrary to expectations, results established that where and with whom a service failure is experienced prominently affect consumer behavior regardless of the acculturation level.
Practical implications
An understanding of the effect of acculturation on a service failure situation is crucial for businesses to successfully compete in a continuously globalized world where migration produces multicultural societies and short-term travel tends to significantly change demands on service provision.
Originality/value
This research presents one of the first studies that go beyond the traditional East/West consumer distinction in studying service failure. This study analyzes the effect of acculturation by itself and together with other variables of interest.
... The second is related to the immense amount of information (video, picture, comment, and review) that exists on the Internet uploaded directly by consumers during and/or after their consumption experiences [1], specifically when dealing with tourism and hospitality services [2] [3] [4]. This information, typically referred to as User Generated Content (hereafter UGC), has introduced a new channel for consumers to easily voice experiences that can be both positive (compliment) or negative [2] [5] [6]. Nowadays, consumers are both consciously and unconsciously embedded in electronic behaviors such as erating and e-complaining [7] [8] through social networks (e.g. ...
... In other words, the adoption of M-payment will be shaped by the influences exerted on him or her by people he or she is in proximity with that he or she considers as important. In summary, the results demonstrate the long-term orientation culture of the Chinese community where they would fulfil social obligations just to be part of the community (Ekiz and Au, 2011). Collectively speaking, these findings confirmed the chain reaction of TPB, which is consistent with previous research across different contexts (French and Cooke, 2012, Hongwei and Liuning, 2011, Han et al., 2010 ...
With recent developments in communication technologies, mobile payment (M-payment) systems have gained popularity as a method to facilitate payment transactions. Despite that, the intention of adopting M-payment in the developing market as well as the implication of ethnicity in the context of developing countries remains largely unanswered. Following the theory of planned behaviour, this study examines the effects of attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control on intention towards the use of an M-payment system among Malays and Chinese in Malaysia. Beliefs are included as antecedent variables so as to enhance understanding of the subject matter. Data was collected from 311 respondents. The partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to assess the research model. The moderating effect of ethnicity was tested by using a multi-group approach (MGA) from two subsamples (i.e., Chinese and Malays). Results highlight the need to understand the determinants to users' intention towards M-payment systems in developing markets. It demonstrates the importance of knowing what is shared and what is not in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural countries like Malaysia. The results provide managerial implications into effective service operation and marketing of an M-payment system.
... Coerentemente con tali risultati, Huang et al. (1996) sostengono che i consumatori americani tendono a diffondere notizie e pareri negativi sui servizi in misura maggiore rispetto agli asiatici, giapponesi in particolare: in caso di insoddisfazione la probabilità che gli statunitensi pubblichino recensioni negative, si lamentino con il management alberghiero e avvertano, con il passaparola, famiglia e amici della loro insoddisfazione è decisamente elevata, mentre alta è la probabilità che i clienti giapponesi, in una stessa situazione, non intraprendano alcuna azione. Allo stesso modo, i consumatori cinesi tendono a perdonare e dimenticare i fallimenti del servizio, mentre gli americani cercano un rimedio da parte di terzi, soprattutto agenti di viaggio ed assicurazioni (Ekiz e Au, 2011). Lee e Sparks (2007) giungono a conclusioni simili sui consumatori cinesi, evidenziando come essi siano poco inclini a lamentarsi e tendano ad imputare eventuali errori nell'erogazione del servizio più al caso che alla cattiva gestione (Lee e Sparks, 2007). ...
Gli eventi costituiscono segmento importante sia del turismo business sia del turismo leisure e rappresentano una voce di entrata crescente per le imprese dell'Hospitality, con un contributo crescente del settore al prodotto interno lordo dei paesi a maggiore vocazione turistica. Gli eventi sono prodotti progettati ed organizzati per favorire l'interazione sociale tra gli individui diversi, provenienti, in misura crescente, da culture differenti. È un business nel quale in maniera diretta, e più evidente rispetto ad altri, la qualità dell'interazione personale e l'efficacia dei processi di comunicazione incidono sull'experience degli utenti e, conseguentemente, sulla profittabilità degli operatori coinvolti. La cultural competence, intesa come la capacità dei manager di usare in maniera efficace il sapere culturale, ossia come la capacità di riconoscere e acquisire e combinare nella maniera più profittevole possibile la cultural knowledge, è un elemento chiave per il successo delle relazioni internazionali (Calvelli, Cannavale, 2013) e diventa una fonte rilevante della competitivtà, e, quindi, della profittabilità delle imprese di un settore in cui l'interazione tra culture diverse e l'efficacia della comunicazione interculturale rappresentano elementi sostanziali del core business (Minnaert, 2007; Minneart et al., 2009).Nonostante la letteratura di marketing sia ricca di contributi che evidenziano l'impatto della cultura sulle decisioni di acquisto dei consumatori e sull'efficacia dei processi di comunicazione e promozione, meno esplorato è il ruolo della competenza culturale nell'event marketing e, soprattutto in Italia, ancora decisamente limitato è l'investimento delle imprese del settore nell'analisi culturale dei mercati target e nella formazione culturale dei dipendenti. Questo articola intende contribuire alla letteratura sul tema esplorando il ruolo che la competenza culturale può avere per il successo delle politiche di marketing degli eventi e per il successo degli stessi.
... Besides, diverse cultural background of tourists may have been translated into differences in ways of addressing their dissatisfactions and that potentially may have inhibited their complaining behaviours. Cultural difference in complaining behaviour between Western and Asian tourists has also been found to be significant in the literature (Ekiz & Au, 2011). Lastly, the insignificant relationship between complaining behaviour and tourist loyalty also did not receive support from the prior research such as Wang et al. (2009) and Lee et al. (2011). ...
This study examined two antecedents – perceived value and destination image, which affect international tourist satisfaction from visiting Malaysia, and two consequences of tourist satisfaction – tourist loyalty and complaining behaviour. Data were collected using a questionnaire survey from 317 departing international tourists at two international airports in Kuala Lumpur. Results indicated that perceived value and destination image related positively with tourist satisfaction which in turn, lead to tourist loyalty. However, tourist dissatisfaction did not lead to complaining behaviour, and complaining behaviour did not have any significant relationship with tourist loyalty. The study provided insights for tourism practitioners on the behaviours of international tourists for the purpose of promoting Malaysia as a tourism destination.
... Asian guests in hotels, for example, are not as familiar as non-Asians with complaint channels and are therefore less likely to complain on holidays (Ngai, Heung, Wong, & Chan, 2007). When compared with Americans, Asians are more forgiving of hotel service failures (Ekiz & Au, 2011) but expect a higher standard of service quality than their Western counterparts (Reisinger & Turner, 2002). Further, Reisinger and Turner (2002) found significant differences between Australian and Asians in the tourism industry. ...
The absence of children in tourism research has been identified by past scholars but the rising attention on Asians consumers in tourism has also implied that the voices of Chinese children need to be heard. This study triangulates 14 young Malaysian Chinese children’s drawings of their favorite family holidays with open-ended interview questions. The drawings were analyzed using the five thematic levels according to a model of analysis of children’s drawings. Findings revealed the collectivistic Confucian value of family and education during family vacations, but also highlight what Chinese children conceptualized as fun holiday activities. A number of suggestions are provided for future research and for tourism practitioners to provide memorable holiday experiences for their young travelers.
... Zhang et al., 2008). For example, in a study on attitude toward complaining (Ekiz & Au, 2011), Chinese respondents tended to forgive and forget service failures and remained loyal to businesses even after shortcomings in service, whereas Americans sought a remedy from third parties such as consumers agencies or local newspapers. ...
Theoretical basis
The case integrates frameworks on business models, the business model canvas (BMC) and Porter’s generic strategies in the context of the coffee industry in China. The case enables students to construct a Business Model Canvas for competing companies, analyze the canvas to deduce the generic strategy they are pursuing, and formulate recommendations based on this analysis.
Research methodology
The case is derived from secondary sources, including publicly available reports and information about Starbucks and Luckin.
Case overview/synopsis
This case looks at Starbucks in China as it faces a fierce Chinese competitor and evolving consumer behavior. Luckin, a Chinese coffee store company, had seen explosive growth since its inception in Beijing in 2017. By late 2019, its number of brick-and-mortar locations surpassed the number of Starbucks’ coffee stores in China, which had entered the Chinese market two decades earlier in 1999. Luckin’s focused on convenience through leveraging technology and reducing costs by limiting physical stores. Although Luckin’s fortunes turned in March of 2020, after an accounting scandal came to light, Luckin’s success suggests that consumers were attracted to its positioning as a “fast coffee pickup and delivery” provider. The case describes Starbucks’ strategy in China, which it sees as an important long-term growth market. It also describes the strategic activities of fast-growing, Chinese coffee company Luckin and discusses Chinese culture and consumer behavior.
Complexity academic level
The case is written for undergraduate students enrolled in a business strategy or corporate entrepreneurship course. Given that the case centers on China, it could also be used in international entrepreneurship/business courses.
... The researcher chose to use convenient sampling technique for distributing the questionnaires among respondents. The items comprised of tourists' complaint constraint upon their dissatisfying experiences, these items were adapted from Ekiz (2011). The items to measure overall visit satisfaction were adopted from Bhattacherjee (2001) andOliver (1997). ...
Providing good quality of service is most basic attribute of the service industry, including tourism. Complaints by tourists actually
provide opportunities for destination or business to recover from the service failures, and when the complaints are handled satisfactorily,
destination or business may win tourists back. Therefore, this study aims to explore how complaint constraints influence on t ourists' overall
satisfaction level. In order to achieve the objectives, this study used a quantitative approach using PLS-SEM. This study revealed that overall
tourists' satisfaction is influenced by limited time, unfamiliarity, limited communication, limited involvement, and positive holiday mood.
... To do so, this paper replicates Ekiz et al.'s (2012) methodology. It is argued in this study that the unique characteristics of tourism add more constraints to those already discussed within CCB literature, including the cost of complaining, the negative attitude towards complaining, the significance of problems, and the unwelcoming attitude of the company toward complaints (Ekiz & Au, 2011). ...
... The relationship between culture and disposition to complain still needs to be further studied (Ekiz and Au 2011). The complaint, described by Berlant (1988) as a paradigm of women's public discourse, is a unique example of an analysis of the cultural contexts of dissatisfaction communication. ...
Although complaining is well-recognized by psychologists and economists, its political potential is still far from obvious. Dissatisfaction with social services, non-democratic relationships between authorities and citizens, and the ignoring of significant social identities are communicated in everyday conversations. Even when complaining is perceived as ‘grumbling’, the informal nature of the communicated inconveniences may be more important than the formal participatory instruments through which collective claims are placed. Criticism and communication of grievances can lead to political activism only in particular circumstances. This article provides a conceptual frame of complaining enhancing into political claims. The proposed frame distinguishes between inactive complaining and complaining aimed at making a change, which may be reinforced or reduced. The essential role in this process of complaining is given to the objects of complaints/addresses, and agents such as media, politicians, institutions such as NGOs, social movements, whistleblowers, activists and leaders.
... In other words, the adoption of M-payment will be shaped by the influences exerted on him or her by people he or she is in proximity with that he or she considers as important. In summary, the results demonstrate the long-term orientation culture of the Chinese community where they would fulfil social obligations just to be part of the community (Ekiz and Au, 2011). Collectively speaking, these findings confirmed the chain reaction of TPB, which is consistent with previous research across different contexts (French and Cooke, 2012, Hongwei and Liuning, 2011, Han et al., 2010 ...
The satisfaction of guests is of paramount importance to ensure the continuity and profitability of hotels. This study aims to determine guests' satisfaction with hotels by analyzing the online comments of guests. The text mining method has been utilized in this study. 58,193 Turkish comments about 5-star hotels in Turkey have been examined. These comments have been subjected to frequency and association analysis by models with Rapid Miner program. It may be stated that the guests are satisfied with 5-star hotel management in Turkey, and they are also satisfied with hotels in general and the services provided by hotels.
Presents a dynamic model of the consumer complaining behavior
process. Is unique in that it distinguishes between negative
word-of-mouth that occurs prior to seeking redress (or in lieu of
seeking redress) and negative word-of-mouth that occurs after seeking
redress. Another unique aspect of this study is that it specifically
recognizes positive word-of-mouth as a possible post-complaint response.
The results indicate that the major factor that determines why some
dissatisfied consumers seek redress and give the seller a chance to
remedy the problem, while others exit and engage in negative
word-of-mouth behavior, is the perceived likelihood of success. Results
also show that, once a dissatisfied customer seeks redress, that person
expects to receive a fair settlement but, more importantly, to be
treated with courtesy and respect. Based on these results, discusses the
pervasive effects of customer service on consumer complaining behavior,
and offers managerial recommendations.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to provide a cross-cultural comparison of Chinese and American hospitality customers who report critical incidents and the resulting influences that these incidents and recovery efforts had on behavior. Recognizing that hospitality-based organizations are increasingly operating internationally, the study provides insights for managing customer relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
– The study utilizes the critical incident technique in conjunction with a structured self-administered questionnaire. The sampling approach resulted in 1,146 usable responses.
Findings
– The results demonstrate statistically significant cultural differences between American and Chinese consumers in terms of reported critical incident types, recovery approaches, and post-incident private voice, public voice, and repurchase intention.
Research limitations/implications
– This research uses cultural value scores for China and the USA as a way to explain and discuss the findings. Hofstede's model was not tested and the provided explanations should be viewed with caution.
Practical implications
– The results of this research can provide practitioners with guidelines in regards to service recovery tactics, as well as insights into how customers respond to critical incidents across different cultures.
Originality/value
– This study adds to the existing literature by investigating empirically critical incident types, recovery tactics, and the consumer post-encounter behaviors of public voice (i.e. complaining), private voice (i.e. negative word-of-mouth, positive word-of-mouth), and repurchase intention in China and the USA.
The purpose of this research is to examine the status of the complaint concept in the
international tourism literature with the document analysis method within the framework
of descriptive analysis. For this purpose, the Web of Science database has been
chosen as a research area. 97 articles were reached by searching the words
"complaint" and "tourism" on the related database between 1970-2019 to constitute the
sample of the research. The data were analyzed with the help of Citespace II
bibliometric analysis program. Research findings have shown that China has the
highest cooperation and Italy has the highest degree of centrality. It was understood
that the field of social sciences research area was the most cited and centralized, the
most cited author was Sparks B. A. When the keywords used in relation with the
subject of tourism and complaints are examined, it has seen that tourism, word of
mouth, satisfaction and social media come to the fore.
Chinese outbound tourism has been developing at a phenomenal pace, attracting the interest of both academics and industry practitioners. This article employs a hybrid review method that combines the narrative and systematic quantitative review methods to delineate the status of research on Chinese outbound tourism and to indicate areas that lack academic inquiry. It evaluates the scope, method, and themes of 161 articles published in 16 top tourism and hospitality journals between 2000 and 2014. The review calls for future research to shift from an advocacy stance to the sustainable and ethics platforms under research paradigms that are more fertile for cross-cultural research.
Cross-cultural service research is an important topic with a rich array of empirical evidence for differences in customer perceptions, attitudes and behaviours. However, the extant literature is almost exclusively focused on differences between cultures at each end of the diversity spectrum (most commonly East vs. West). Contemporary researchers have observed that existing studies fail to acknowledge the substantially greater levels of intra-cluster variation that exist. A cultural cluster is a group of countries that reflect values, attitudes and beliefs stemming from a common cultural ancestry. This seems surprising given the anecdotal evidence and stereotypes that are portrayed in popular culture, media and art. One area where intra-cluster variation may be evident is consumer complaint behaviour and in particular within the Anglo-cultural cluster in countries. A cultural cluster is a group of countries that reflect values, attitudes and beliefs stemming from a common cultural ancestry. The aim of this study is therefore to explore and elucidate the nature of differences in consumer complaint behaviour between cultures traditionally conceived and operationalised as identical. This study presents a qualitative study of 60 in-depth interviews with consumers in the United Kingdom and Australia and identifies differences in complaining styles, parental influence and the conceptualisation of complaining.
Recent policy changes, globalization and competition have called for the application of marketing models in the management of the higher educational institutions around the world. This study conceptualizes and empirically validates a model exploring the relationship between key relational constructs and customer loyalty among university students. A sample of 416 Nigerian university students was taken through multi-stage cluster sampling procedure. Partial Least Squares structural equation modelling was employed to analyse the data. Results suggest that the constructs of bonding, communication and personalization have significant effect on student satisfaction and trust which in turn predict student loyalty. Further, individual student long term orientation has moderating effect on the path between satisfaction and loyalty as against the path between trust and loyalty Theoretical and practical implications of the study were discussed and a conclusion drawn.
DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4p466
The purpose of this paper is to test the effect of dissatisfaction consumers that influence on negative customer behavior, base on demography and service quality. Design/methodology/approach, An integrated model is proposed, following recent developments in the service recovery literature. This model is tested using data from a survey with 216 customers. The paper reports results from structural aquation model. Findings, the results show significant influence service quality, demography and dissatisfaction customer have significant effect to negative customer behavior.
In spite of consolidation of Nigerian retail banks, the industry is still embattled by customer complaints, lost of customer confidence and loyalty erosion. Extant literature has amply reported the associations between relational dynamics of trust, bonding, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. However, these reports are contradictory and thus, inconclusive. Meanwhile, literature has argued extensively on the influence of cultural values on customer decision making and buying behaviour. Yet, very little is known of the interaction effect of long-term orientation on the link between trust, bonding and customer satisfaction in retail banking sector. Similarly, while several studies have documented the significant effect of customer complaints on customer loyalty, there is no noticeable research evidence on the intervening effect of service recovery on the relationship between the independent and the dependent variables. To fill these gaps, this conceptual paper is written.
Purpose
With the worldwide growth of the Chinese tourism market, a number of studies have emerged, that attempt to understand the phenomenon, including the influence of Chinese culture on Chinese tourist behavior. This research aims to answer four questions: How has Chinese culture been adopted in tourism literature? What is the current state of tourism research on Chinese culture? What are the similarities, differences and research gaps between international and Chinese studies in this area of investigation? What are the directions that future tourism research will take?
Design/methodology/approach
The articles for this systematic review were published in major international hospitality and tourism journals and Chinese journals over a period of 20 years (1993-2012). A meta-review was carried out on 80 Chinese and English tourism literature dating from 1993 to 2012.
Findings
This review showed that Chinese culture has been fragmentally operationalized due to underdeveloped Chinese cultural theories in tourism, independent and unrelated extant cultural systems and perspectives and lack of empirical testing for theory development. Two major theoretical systems of Chinese culture in tourist research were revealed in this review: cross-cultural theory and traditional Chinese cultural framework. The current state of tourism research on Chinese culture was also analyzed. The similarities, differences and research gaps were identified between international and Chinese studies on this inquiry. Implications for future tourism research in this area were suggested.
Research limitations/implications
Unveiling the evolving research progress of a single culture helps to provide a deeper insight into how culture was used to analyze the behavior of individual tourist markets, and hence to better understand a particular tourist market.
Originality/value
This research has synthesized a wide range of literature to unveil the extant understanding of Chinese culture as reflected in Chinese tourists and outline the ways forward in this area of investigation.
In any service environment, there is a strong possibility that customers’ expectations and the actual service delivery are not in unison. When service failures do occur, customers’ attitudes towards complaining directly influence their actual complaint behaviour. As not all customers want to build relationships with service providers, it is imperative that service providers gain a deeper understanding of the behaviour, and specifically the complaint behaviour, of those customers who do have relationship intentions. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of relationship intention on customers’ attitudes towards complaining and complaint behaviour following a service failure within the cell phone industry. Convenience sampling was used, and 605 respondents participated in the study. The results indicate that the majority of respondents who participated in this study had a propensity to complain, and that respondents with high relationship intentions are more likely to voice a billing error to their cell phone network provider than respondents with low relationship intentions. Furthermore, relationship intention should be considered as a variable that could influence customers’ attitudes towards complaining and complaint behaviour. The results make a valuable theoretical contribution and have managerial implications for service providers in the cell phone industry.
This study aims to examine the satisfied and unsatisfied of hotel customers by utilizing a word cloud approach to evaluate online reviews. As a pilot test, online commends of 1,752 hotel guests were collected from TripAdvisor.com for 5 selected hotels in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The research results revealed some common features that are identified in both satisfied and dissatisfied of customer reviews; including staff service skills, hotel environment and facilities and a quality of room and bathroom. On the other hand, the findings shown that dissatisfied customers pointed out more frequently on the booking systems of the hotel. Therefore, this article's results suggests some clearer managerial implications pertaining to understanding of customer satisfaction level through the utilization of world cloud technique via review online platforms.
This research tests a nomological model predicting organic food attitudes and purchase intentions in USA and India. Data were collected from India (n = 687) and USA (n = 632) using Amazon M Turk and were analyzed using structural equation modelling and multi-group moderation technique. Results revealed that over and above attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control, response efficacy and self-expressive benefits significantly affect consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions of organic food among American and Indian consumers. Findings reveal that response efficacy and attitude matter more in the USA while subjective norms and self-expressive benefits exert a greater influence in India. Therefore, marketers may reinforce belief related elements while selling organic food products in the USA and societal related elements while selling in India. Theoretically, this work adds to the Theory of Planned Behavior by adding self-expressive benefits and develops a common model on organic food across samples in USA and India.
There is great interest in understanding the complex behaviors of consumers. One facet of consumer behavior is the ‘involvement’ construct. Involvement is a person’s perceived relevance of the object based on inherent needs, values, and interests.
There is a plethora of shopping malls all over the US. Major metropolitan cities are over-malled! Despite the abundance of malls close to their residence, American travelers shop at comparable malls while tourists in another city. There exists a gap in the literature about this phenomenon.
This study surveyed 485 tourist shoppers residing in metropolitan areas to address this gap. It examined the interplay of their shopping involvement with demographics, push motivators, pull motivators, shopper-tourist cluster typologies, and the amount of time and money spent shopping while on a trip. This study created a profile of tourists based on their level of shopping involvement. It segmented them into high-, medium-, or low-involvement tourist shoppers.
The more highly involved tourist shoppers were female and had limited formal education. Further, they indicated they were more interested in shopping than in many other activities. Involvement levels were consistently associated with both push and pull factors in a hierarchical manner. Respondents strongly motivated to shop by push and pull factors were consistently found to be highly involved tourist shoppers. Involvement was a significant predictor of overall satisfaction with a shopping center. Involvement levels were significantly linked to tourist-shopper cluster typologies. High-involvement tourist shoppers were significantly more likely to have saved for shopping on their trip. However, involvement was not found to be a predictor of time or money spent on shopping while on a trip.
While several authors have urged the tailoring of the marketing mix to cultures served by multinational organizations, no research has specifically addressed the need to handle product-related customer dissatisfaction differently in different countries. This article presents evidence documenting the need to make such culture-specific adjustments and reports a cross-national comparison of consumer attitudes toward seeking redress in two countries.
If service quality relates to retention of customers at the aggregate level, as other research has indicated, then evidence of its impact on customers' behavioral responses should be detectable. The authors offer a conceptual model of the impact of service quality on particular behaviors that signal whether customers remain with or defect from a company. Results from a multicompany empirical study examining relationships from the model concerning customers' behavioral intentions show strong evidence of their being influenced by service quality. The findings also reveal differences in the nature of the quality-intentions link across different dimensions of behavioral intentions. The authors' discussion centers on ways the results and research approach of their study can be helpful to researchers and managers.
This purpose of this study was to investigate the negative impact of service failures on customer loyalty. More specifically, we examined the moderating role of affective commitment on post-failure attitudes and loyalty intentions under two service failure conditions: a successful and poor service recovery. Our findings indicate that emotionally-bonded customers might feel “betrayed” when a service failure occurs, thus resulting in sharp decrease in post-recovery attitudes. Conversely, this negativity effect was limited to poor service recovery among consumers with low affective commitment. Customers with lower levels of emotional bonding with the service provider were more “forgiving” when the service recovery was effectively handled. Poor service recovery led to more ambivalent post-failure attitudes irrespective of the degree of affective commitment between the customer and the service provider. Finally, the results suggest that affective commitment might reduce the spill-over effects of service failures to future loyalty behaviors. The implications for retention management strategies are briefly discussed.
As in other social exchanges, cultural norms and values are likely to influence customers’ perceptions of fairness and satisfaction with the service recovery process. This study contrasts the impact of two recovery attributes (compensation and explanation) on customers’ postrecovery perceptions in a cross-cultural context (East-Asia versus United States). The results from this experimental study indicate that compensation seems to drive customers’ fairness perceptions, in particular with American consumers. Offering an explanation for the failure had a positive impact on customer perceptions regardless of the customer’s cultural orientation. Finally, the study’s findings show that perceived fairness is directly linked to postrecovery satisfaction.
While marketing scholars have emphasized the importance of customer satisfaction, few studies have examined in detail consumers' responses to dissatisfaction. This study examines correlates of one possible response-telling others about the dissatisfaction-and identifies variables that distinguish this response from others. Variables investigated include the nature of the dissatisfaction, perceptions of blame for the dissatisfaction, and perceptions of retailer responsiveness. Marketing management and consumer behavior research implications are discussed.
Presents a dynamic model of the consumer complaining behavior
process. Is unique in that it distinguishes between negative
word-of-mouth that occurs prior to seeking redress (or in lieu of
seeking redress) and negative word-of-mouth that occurs after seeking
redress. Another unique aspect of this study is that it specifically
recognizes positive word-of-mouth as a possible post-complaint response.
The results indicate that the major factor that determines why some
dissatisfied consumers seek redress and give the seller a chance to
remedy the problem, while others exit and engage in negative
word-of-mouth behavior, is the perceived likelihood of success. Results
also show that, once a dissatisfied customer seeks redress, that person
expects to receive a fair settlement but, more importantly, to be
treated with courtesy and respect. Based on these results, discusses the
pervasive effects of customer service on consumer complaining behavior,
and offers managerial recommendations.
Some recent studies have shown that culture influences how consumers perceive service quality. Others have shown the relationship between perceived service quality and behavioral intentions. In this article, the authors study how culture influences behavioral intentions toward services on the basis of services marketing and cross-cultural psychology literature. They tested and found that customers from cultures with lower individualism or higher uncertainty avoidance tend to have a higher intention to praise if they received superior service. On the other hand, the same groups tend not to switch, give negative word of mouth, or complain even if they received poor service quality. Customers from cultures with higher individualism or lower uncertainty avoidance tend to switch, engage in negative word of mouth, or complain if they received poor service quality. But they do not tend to praise when they received superior service. Managerial implications, contribution, and future research directions are also discussed.
Tourism forecasts suggest that China is a growing tourism market to international destinations. It is likely that these tourists will encounter a range of service experiences and, at times, service failures or problems. Gaining an insight into how Chinese tourists interpret service failure events can help firms develop more effective service recovery strategies. This study aimed to explore the cultural values Chinese hold for service failure and service recovery, using means-end chain methodology. The analysis of 70 in-depth interviews found five key themes representing the values that were threatened in poor service situations. The attributes and consequences were analyzed, and then linked to the five values of “face”, “equity”, “value”, “harmony” and “junzi” aspiration. Implications for hospitality service recovery with Chinese customers are discussed. Yes Yes
Customer complaints provide valuable quality assurance, service and marketing data. But the challenge was to use the data to make decisions that result in substantive action. To use complain data to solve problems, one should have a basic understanding of customer complaint and market behavior. This understanding will provide a framework for interpreting the data and extrapolating it to the entire customer base. This paper discusses eight factors of quantifiable data that can be integrated into quality assurance decisions.
Geert Hofstede received an M.Sc. in mechanical engineering from Delft Technical University in 1953 and earned his Ph.D. in social psychology, cum laude, from Groningen University in 1967. He worked for six years for IBM Europe where he founded and managed the Personnel Research Department. He first entered academics in 1971 when he assumed a visiting lecturer position at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland. Subsequently Professor Hofstede held faculty positions at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management in Brussels and at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. In 1980 he returned to industry as a director of human resources of Fasson Europe in Leyden, the Netherlands. Just previously, he had published Culture's Consequences, the book which is the subject of this Retrospective, and opened wide the door of comparative cultural analysis in business and elsewhere, as a tool for both academics and practitioners. He returned to academics in 1983 to serve as dean of the Semafor Senior Management Program in Arnhem. In 1986 he was appointed professor of organizational anthropology and international management at Maastricht University where he received emeritus status in 1993. During his time at Maastricht, he published a student-level book. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (1991) which has been translated into 16 other languages. Since retiring in 1993, Professor Hofstede has served as a fellow at the Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation and of the Center for Economic Research, both at Tilburg University, and has held visiting professorships in Hong Kong, Hawaii, and Australia. An entirely re-written second edition of Culture's Consequences appeared in 2001, and a re-written Third Millennium Edition of Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, co-authored by Gert Jan Hofstede, followed in 2004. Professor Hofstede is a fellow of the Academy of Management and an eminent scholar with the Academy of International Business. He has received honorary doctorate degrees from universities in the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Greece, and Sweden. Geert Hofstede has been married to Maaike van den Hoek since 1955. They have four sons and eight grandchildren. Contact: hofstede{at}bart.nl.
The influence of cultural values on behavior has been well documented (Adler and Graham, 1989; Hofstede, 1980). However, very limited research has been reported on the linkages between cultural values of the Chinese people and their preferences and expectations as consumers. The China market, with one quarter of the world population, has been recognized as the market with the greatest buying potential for the 21st century. This paper aims to highlight and discuss the dominant Chinese cultural values and their implications for travel and tourism marketing. A conceptual framework of dominant Chinese cultural values is presented and it is followed by a discussion of the cultural attributes of the framework with possible marketing implications for each attribute for the hospitality and tourism industry. Based on the framework, hypotheses are presented to stimulate future research.
Unlike most previous tourism research that has focused on Western tourists, this article investigates the interactions between Chinese tourists and Vietnamese hosts in border tourism in Vietnam. It proposes that a study of non-Western tourism between non-Western destinations is long overdue. The last decade has witnessed a massive influx of Chinese tourists into many Asian tourism landscapes. As a category of non-Western tourists, they are certainly producing immense economic and cultural impacts on the host societies. Conceptually, this article extends Urry's tourist gaze to the host, showing that the hosts, rather than being passive objects of the tourist gaze, are in fact active agents casting fierce gazes on the tourists. It also examines the Chinese tourist gaze, which serves as a point of departure of looking into Chinese moving desire and transnational modernity within the context of expanding Asian tourism.
Complaint management has become increasingly important in the tourism and hospitality fields, yet little is really known about how complainers assess the organizational response, and how those assessments affect their future consumer behavior as far as word-of-mouth activity and repurchase intentions are concerned. This research suggests an answer by presenting and testing a model of complainants’ perceptions of the organizational response and the impact of the organizational response on postcomplaint customer behavior. The results provide partial support for the model. Attentiveness is the most important organizational response dimension, affecting both word-of-mouth activity and repurchase intentions. Managerial implications are discussed.
The present study explored the relationship between cultural norms and customers’ expectations for service by means of a pancultural factor model of restaurant service expectations. A survey instrument was developed in a three-stage process using input generated from focus groups in both the United States and Hong Kong. The service encounter was the level of measure and the instrument emphasized the behavioral components of service. Data were collected from comparable samples in the United States and Hong Kong. A six-dimensional model of service expectations was generated. Subsequent analyses indicated that the two groups differed significantly in their assessments of importance for each of the six dimensions. The results provide meaningful implications for managing service quality and training customer contact employees.
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Purpose – This paper aims to test the differences in the consumer complaint behaviour of Asian and non-Asian hotel guests in terms of culture dimensions. It also aims to examine the relationship between demographic factors (age, gender and education level) and complaint behaviour. Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts the Hofstede's typology of culture as a framework to investigate cultural differences and demographic characteristics in the complaint behaviour of hotel guests. A face-to-face interview survey is conducted to collect data in this research. Data are then analyzed by various statistical methods such as two-way contingency table analysis, non-parametric Mann-Whitney U and Chi-square tests. Findings – The survey reveals that older complainants tend to resort to “public actions,” but people with a higher level of education tend not to complain publicly. In addition, Asian guests are less likely to complain to the hotel for fear of “losing face” and are less familiar with the channels for complaint than non-Asian guests. They are more likely than non-Asian guests to take private complaint action, such as making negative word-of-mouth comments. The findings also indicate that there is a significant relationship between “complaint encouraging factor” and respondents' nationality and between “effective complaint handling method” and respondents' nationality. Originality/value – Few studies have focused on the cultural differences in complaint behaviour of Asians and non-Asian hotel guests in the hotel industry. The result will be most valuable in assisting hotel managers and marketers to better understand the customer complaint behaviour and intentions both from the Asian and non-Asian contexts, and help formulate strategies and tactics to effectively manage the customer complaint.
This study investigates the effects of various organizational responses to complaints on post-complaint customer behaviors. Specifically, the study investigates the effects of apology, atonement, promptness, facilitation, explanation, attentiveness and effort on complainant satisfaction and loyalty, and the association between satisfaction and loyalty. The study uses a sample of Turkish guests in the Northern Cyprus hotel industry. The hypothesized relationships are tested using LISREL 8.30 through path analysis. Results provide empirical support for ten of the 15 hypotheses examined. The path analysis reveals that apology, explanation, and effort are three organizational response options that exert significant positive effects on complainant satisfaction and loyalty. Empirical findings also suggest that effort appears to be the most influential organizational response affecting satisfaction and loyalty. Discussion of the results, implications, and limitations of the study are also presented.
Both practitioners and academics understand that consumer loyalty and satisfaction are linked inextricably. They also understand that this relation is asymmetric. Although loyal consumers are most typically satisfied, satisfaction does not universally translate into loyalty. To explain the satisfaction-loyalty conundrum, the author investigates what aspect of the consumer satisfaction response has implications for loyalty and what portion of the loyalty response is due to this satisfaction component. The analysis concludes that satisfaction is a necessary step in loyalty formation but becomes less significant as loyalty begins to set through other mechanisms. These mechanisms, omitted from consideration in current models, include the roles of personal determinism ("fortitude") and social bonding at the institutional and personal level. When these additional factors are brought into account, ultimate loyalty emerges as a combination of perceived product superiority, personal fortitude, social bonding, and their synergistic effects. As each fails to be attained or is unattainable by individual firms that serve consumer markets, the potential for loyalty erodes. A disquieting conclusion from this analysis is that loyalty cannot be achieved or pursued as a reasonable goal by many providers because of the nature of the product category or consumer disinterest. For some firms, satisfaction is the only feasible float for which they should strive; thus, satisfaction remains a worthy pursuit among the consumer marketing community. The disparity between the pursuit of satisfaction versus loyalty, as well as the fundamental content of the loyalty response, poses several investigative directions for the next wave of postconsumption research.
In the hotel industry, exceptional service failure recovery is a key determinant of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Western-based hotel corporations should adapt their failure recovery training programs for their properties in China. Adjustments are necessary because of differences in cognitive processing. Modifications are also required due to various Chinese cultural characteristics.
Purpose – This study aims to investigate the influences of the selected antecedents on each type of complaining intentions and its relationship to complaining behavior of 582 university library users in South Korea. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected through a survey, using a convenience sample of 582 dissatisfied university library users from five major universities located in Taegu Metropolitan City and Kyoung-pook Province in South Korea. The sample was proportionate to general users in the university libraries in these areas. Findings – Perceived severity of dissatisfaction and personal norms had significant influences on the choice of negative word-of-mouth intention, direct and indirect voice intentions, and third-party complaint intention. Societal benefits had significant influences on the choice of exit, negative word-of-mouth intention, and direct and indirect voice intentions. Difficulty of complaining and service importance had significant influences on negative word-of-mouth intention, and likelihood of success had significant influences on the direct and indirect voice intentions. There were significant relationships between experiences of doing the same types of complaining behavior before and the same types of complaining intentions. Research limitations/implications – This study was exploratory inorder to separate complaining intentions from the complaining behavior itself. Some variables, including external attribution and loyalty, which were not proved to be critical variables for complaining intentions, need to be investigated further to investigate whether or not they can be a useful variable for complaining behavior and intentions of academic library users. Some results from this study did not confirm the results of the study on the public library users that measured the complaint behavior and intentions together. Compared with the results of the study on the public library users, the values of adjusted R square in the regression of each dependent variables were much higher in this study except for the case of exit intention. Practical implications – This study proved that the complaining intention model, separated from complaining behavior, could successfully be applied to academic library services. Originality/value – Opines that feedback information through complaints can solve many problems and/or improve performance and service quality – and eventually help libraries satisfy their customers.
The area of customer complaint behaviour has received considerable attention from hotel managers as dissatisfied customers engage in a variety of complaint actions that could ruin the reputation of a hotel. This study examined Chinese customer complaint behaviour towards Hong Kong hotel restaurant services. The main objectives were to identify complaint patterns and the relationships between customers’ demographic backgrounds such as age, gender and education levels; and their complaint behaviours. Based on a survey of 220 hotel restaurant diners, complainers and non-complainers were identified. The research findings suggested that at most customers are likely to engage in private complaint behaviours such as word-of-mouth communication and ceasing to patronize the restaurant. It highlights that the complaint intentions of Chinese diners were quite low and they were passive about communicating dissatisfaction to restaurateurs. Restaurateurs can make use of these findings to improve their existing customer feedback systems and complaint handling strategies.
Reviews Chinese and Western literature on the concept of "face." Serious conceptual and methodological difficulties (specifically ethnocentric bias) were often present, rendering conclusions ambiguous and suspect. A consensus of results shows that the rituals of face behavior operate to avoid confrontation and to conserve the traditional Chinese sociopolitical structure characterized by dominance of vertical authority relationships. There was unanimous agreement that the Chinese attach great importance to "face," although there was disagreement on whether or not this attachment was unique to them. Analysis of this point of disagreement showed that the Chinese are more conscious of the significance of "face" in social processes than are other peoples. This greater awareness can be traced in part to the Chinese language, which has been richly endowed with symbolic representations of face behavior since early history. It is suggested that variations in face behavior should be studied in different cultural contexts. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A dissatisfied consumer's decision to seek redress from third parties has significant implications for society in general and the focal industry in particular, yet little is known about why consumers choose such actions. To address this gap, a generalizable, comprehensive, and testable model of the processes that result in consumers’ decisions (not) to engage in one or more third party actions is developed. In addition, results from an empirical investigation of a portion of the proposed model are presented. The empirical model explains 65 percent of the variance in the dependent construct. Several implications and avenues for future research are discussed.
How culture-proof are the social sciences? Travelling in another continent, one meets culture's influences not only in the objects of social science research, but at least as much in the minds of the researchers. Researchers' problem definitions and choices of issues to be addressed and questions to be asked limit what they will find; they are a potential source of ethnocentric bias. A case example of the discovery of such a bias was the emergence of a fifth dimension of national cultures supplementing Hofstede's four, through Bond's Chinese Value Survey. In the area of personality research, a number of newer and older findings by Asian and European researchers suggest the need for expanding the ‘Big Five’ model of personality traits with a sixth factor, Dependence on Others, in order to make the model culturally universal. In general, researchers recognize primarily those aspects of culture for which their own culture differs most from others. For escaping from the cultural constraints in our own research we therefore need to trade ideas with colleagues from other parts of the world. In this respect, Asian researchers have an important role to play.
Hofstede's five cross-cultural dimensions have been broadly applied in the literature. Money and Crotts recently applied the dimension of uncertainty avoidance to a matched sample comprised of low uncertainty avoidance German and high uncertainty avoidance Japanese tourists, finding their behaviours consistent with those behaviours predicted by Hofstede. This study both replicates and extends their research across a representative sample of first time leisure visitors to the USA representing 58 nations. It was found that visitors from high uncertainty avoidance cultures exhibited behaviours consistent with those of the Japanese in the Money and Crotts research, whereas visitors from low-uncertainty avoidance cultures behaved similarly to their German subjects. Such findings, across a broad sample population, validate the original research through a more rigorous test of its propositions, provide increased confidence regarding their generalisability, and further contribute to our understanding of the influence of national culture on tourist behaviour. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley &Sons, Ltd.
The increasing globalization of business provides a compelling reason for understanding the cultural context of consumer behavior. The research reported here examines the impact of culture on consumers’ perceptions of service recovery efforts. In particular, we studied in an experimental setting, across East–West cultures, the combined effects of explanation and compensation in shaping customers’ attributions and post-recovery perceptions in a medium contact service—a restaurant setting. Our findings show that the differential sensitivity of East Asian and American consumers to situational constraints influence their attributions for service failures, and thus moderate their satisfaction with service recovery process. More specifically, the results suggest that a causal explanation for service failure decreases the likelihood of US consumers falling prey to the fundamental attribution error. Conversely, among East Asians, an explanation had minimal influence in attributional processes. Finally, our results indicate that attributional processes influence customer perceptions of employee effort, which in turn is linked to post-recovery satisfaction.
Perceptions of injustice are likely to occur in intercultural relations because cultures often define justice and its implementation differently. This article reviews factors and processes that are unique to intercultural relations and that may give rise to feelings of injustice during intercultural interactions. Antecedents that can trigger a sense of injustice with regard to distributive, procedural, and retributive justice are reviewed. The consequences of perceived injustice are also analyzed. The implications of our analysis for research and practice are discussed.
The project conceived in 1929 by Gardner Murphy and the writer aimed first to present a wide array of problems having to do with five major "attitude areas"--international relations, race relations, economic conflict, political conflict, and religion. The kind of questionnaire material falls into four classes: yes-no, multiple choice, propositions to be responded to by degrees of approval, and a series of brief newspaper narratives to be approved or disapproved in various degrees. The monograph aims to describe a technique rather than to give results. The appendix, covering ten pages, shows the method of constructing an attitude scale. A bibliography is also given.
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/36290/2/b1412322.0001.001.pdf http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/36290/1/b1412322.0001.001.txt
This study examines the influence of four personality characteristics (self-efficacy, Machiavellianism, perceived control, and risk-taking) on consumer attitude toward complaining and propensity to complain. The proposed model is tested on two groups of consumers classified as "complainers" and "non-complainers." The findings reveal that the two groups differ distinctly on the pattern of relationships among the variables. The implications of these differences are discussed. (c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The effects of distributive and interactional justice on complainants' repatronage intentions and negative word-of-mouth intentions
- J.G Blodgett
- S.S. Tax
Research Methods of Business
- Hair, J.F. Jr, Money, A.H
- P Samouel
- M. Page
Culture's Consequences
- G. Hofstede
A partial theory of Chinese consumer behavior: marketing strategy implications
- T.I. Kindel
Cross-Cultural Behaviour in Tourism: Concepts and Analysis
- Y Reisinger
- L.W. Turner
The Chinese outbound tourism market
- UNWTO