Does culture impact preferred employee attributes in complaint-handling encounters?

Abstract

Recently, Gruber et al."s (2011) Kano study revealed that complaining customers in Saudi Arabia are less difficult to delight than UK customers. The present study investigates whether these differences are caused by different service sector development stages, as suggested in their study, or by cultural differences instead. Data were collected using Kano questionnaires from 151 respondents with complaining experience in Singapore. This country was chosen as it has a highly developed service economy (like the UK) but also a collectivistic culture (like Saudi Arabia). The analysis reveals that Singaporean customers show the same preferences as those in the UK. We consider this as a strong indicator for the suggested impact of the stage of service sector development rather than cultural differences on complaining customers" preferences of frontline employee attributes. Our results support the findings by Gruber et al.(2011). By doing so, they surprisingly refute previous research which concluded that national culture plays a significant role in shaping customer expectations during complaint handling encounters. Our study especially corroborates the notion of a life cycle of quality attributes that had been found for goods and services and the preferred attributes of frontline employees dealing with customer complaints.

TQM implementation through ISO 9001: findings from Chinese construction firms in Nigeria

“…Quality has the objective and subjective aspects, where the latter is influenced by the national culture as supported by studies linking customer satisfaction to deeply entrenched values based on Kano's model (Tontini et al, 2013;Yang, 2013). Depending on how the subjective aspects of quality are managed, positive or negative outcomes could result (Gruber et al, 2013). A conflict can create an atmosphere to consider new ideas and approaches for improved performance so much so that parties' responses to a conflict eventually determine whether the conflict (task or relational) is functional or dysfunctional (Spector, 2008).…”

Differences and Similarities in Perceptions of Hotel Experience: The Role of National Cultures

“…In contrast, Gruber et al (2013) suggested that the service-sector development stages of countries rather than cultural differences have a strong impact on their consumers' preferences of frontline employee attributes. In their investigation of customer complaints in Singapore, Gruber et al (2013) found that two countries with highly developed service economies (Singapore and the UK) seem to be more similar with regard to customer expectations than two countries having a collectivistic culture (Singapore and Saudi Arabia), and thus considered that customer expectations vary across countries due to their different stages of service economy development. Nevertheless, we found that evaluations of Singaporean travelers are more similar to Chinese travelers than to Western travelers.…”

“…Hofstede (2002) also argued that nations are not the best units for studying culture, but they are usually the only kind of units available for comparison. National cultures primarily shape the behaviors, values, and beliefs held by a majority of their members (Gruber, Abosag, Reppel, Szmigin, & Löfgren, 2013), and they could be a more effective way to assess operational decisions than considering cross-border or regional differences based on geographical boundaries (Pagell et al, 2005). Although divergent national cultures are inclined to change into convergence of cultures because of technological advancement, global communication, travel and collaboration, increasing immigration, and cross-national and ethnic marriage (Reisinger & Crotts, 2010), this change is only slow (Burgess, 1995).…”