Haksin Chan and Lisa C. Wan
Executive Summary
The increasing trend toward globalization of markets has created a challenge for managers to straddle different cultures. The challenge is particularly daunting for service operations, which are inherently failure prone and culture sensitive because of the prominent role of human elements in the production and consumption of services. Against this backdrop, Chan and Wan highlight a distinct pattern of culture-based resource preferences and demonstrate how these cultural preferences might affect consumer responses to service failures across cultures.
A synthesis of previous research reveals that, relative to other consumers, those in individualist cultures (e.g., American consumers) exhibit a stronger preference for concrete, economic resources (e.g., money, time), whereas those in collectivist cultures (e.g., Chinese consumers) focus more on symbolic, social resources (e.g., status, esteem). This pattern has important cross-cultural implications for managing service failures, which could involve the loss of economic resources (i.e., outcome failures) or the loss of social resources (i.e., process failures). Moreover, dissatisfied consumers in different cultures might prefer different complaining behaviors because some actions (e.g., seeking redress from the firm) are driven primarily by economic motives and others (e.g., spreading negative word of mouth) are driven primarily by social motives.
The results of a cross-cultural study on American and Chinese consumers in the context of a computer repair service largely confirm the predictions based on contrasting resource preferences. Compared with their Chinese counterparts, American consumers are more dissatisfied with an outcome failure but less dissatisfied with a process failure. Correspondingly, American consumers assign more blame for an outcome failure but less blame for a process failure. When it comes to complaining behaviors, American consumers are more likely to voice their discontent to a responsible party, but they are less likely to express their dissatisfaction through switching or negative word of mouth.
Chan and Wan offer culture-specific guidelines for managing the inevitable service failures. First, it is important to invest in outcome controls for service operations in individualist cultures and to invest in process controls for those in collectivist cultures. Second, information and separation tactics help deflect blame for outcome and process failures, respectively. The former should be geared toward individualist consumers and the latter toward collectivist consumers. Third, collectivist consumers should be encouraged to complain directly to the firm, as they tend to resort to complaint options that preclude any recovery effort. To break the silence of the collectivist consumers, it is imperative that service firms establish and emphasize simple, efficient complaint channels.
Biography
Haksin Chan is an assistant professor in the Department of Marketing at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He received his BBA from CUHK and his MBA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His main research interests are in consumer behavior and global marketing. In addition to Journal of International Marketing, he has published in International Journal of Hospitality Management and Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research. His work has also been presented at numerous marketing and psychology conferences. Besides teaching and research, he has consulted for public companies and nonprofit organizations in Hong Kong and the United States.
Lisa C. Wan is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Marketing at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). She holds a BBA and an MPhil from CUHK. Her PhD dissertation concerns the impact of relationship norms on customer satisfaction in different cultures. In addition to Journal of International Marketing, her research has appeared in International Journal of Hospitality Management.
Journal of International Marketing, Vol. 16, No. 1, March 2008
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