Service recovery in higher education: Does national culture play a role?

Abstract

Biography Thorsten Gruber is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing andAbstract: It is now well recognised that an effective service recovery system plays a crucial role in service organisations. However, the importance of such systems has not yet been acknowledged by the higher education industry. Given the need for more research on service recovery expectations of students, this exploratory study attempts to shed light on what students believe to be the desirable attributes of professors during recovery encounters. To investigate how national culture influences student expectations during such encounters, 40 students from the United Kingdom and Bangladesh were interviewed and 210 questionnaires were completed by students. Using the semi-standardised laddering interviewing technique in combination with Kano questionnaires, the study provides an indepth insight into the qualities and behaviours that students expect professors to portray during service recovery encounters. The research reveals that the key attributes desired by both groups of students include being approachable, listening actively, showing empathy and providing an explanation. Among a wide range of benefits, students link these attributes to enhanced teacher-student relationship, better academic performance and at a more abstract level, to desired end-states such as harmony and wellbeing.

Determining adequate tangible compensation in service recovery processes for developed and developing countries: The role of severity and responsibility

“…The countries under study are Switzerland as representing a developed country [1] and Madagascar as representing a developing country [2] because these countries were not covered by previous studies. Previous cross-national studies on service recovery focused on comparisons of American, Asian and European countries (e.g., Chan and Wan, 2008;Gruber et al, 2011;Mattila, 1999a;Mattila and Patterson, 2004;Sizoo et al, 2011). Furthermore, it is interesting to study consumers' reactions to different service recovery attempts in these two countries because, on the one hand, they differ with regard to the level of development, but the other hand, in both countries, the service sector generates over 50 percent of the gross domestic product.…”

C.U.L.T.U.R.E.: marketing education in the age of cultural diversity

“…Cultural factors will have implications for learning approaches and assessment practices within homogenous cultures. Given the diversity of students' backgrounds within Business Schools in Universities it is becoming increasingly important to understand the implications of students' cultural backgrounds on their perceptions of assessment practices, as a clear link has been identified between students' national culture and their expectations and behaviours (Gruber et al, 2011). This is illustrated by the work of Jackson and Chapman (2012) and Hearns et al (2007) who call for further understanding of cultural diversity within education curricula.…”

A cross‐national investigation of university students' complaining behaviour and attitudes to complaining

“…People in these societies tend to define their self-image in terms of "we" instead of "I" (Liu and McClure, 2001). Most conclude that people from collectivist cultures tend to discourage complaining behaviour (Markus and Kitayama, 1991;Blodgett et al, 2006;Gruber et al, 2011;Hui et al, 2011) particularly voicing (Baker et al, 2011). Liu and McClure (2001) argue that members of collectivist cultures are more likely to repress negative emotions in public settings, perhaps to save face for all parties (Nyer and Gopinath, 2005), but that does not mean that people from a collectivist cultures are passive in response to service failures.…”

“…In addition, the focus of the current study is on a failure of service rather than a failure of education process. Recent studies in higher education (Iyer and Muncy, 2008;Mukherjee et al, 2009;Hart and Coates, 2010;Gruber et al, 2011) have supported the importance of understanding consumers experiences of service failure and how they should be managed.…”

“…Consumer response to service failure and the resultant complaining behaviours vary between cultures (Yuksel et al, 2006;Chan and Wan, 2008;Souiden, 2011). This is because culture influences perceptions of consumption and what is socially acceptable Students' complaining behaviour (Steenkamp et al, 1999;Zhang et al, 2008;Gruber et al, 2011;Wang and Mattila, 2011). However, most of the research specific to complaining has explored consumers from Europe and the USA yet consumers from Asia are becoming more affluent and more important to many organisations (Chan and Wan, 2008;Hart and Coates, 2010;Wang and Mattila, 2011).…”