Does Culture Impact Preferred Employee attributes in Complaint Handling Encounters?

Main author: Gruber, Thorsten
Other authors: Abosag, Ibrahim
Reppel, Alexander
Szmigin, Isabelle
Löfgren, Martin
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-21181
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
description 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.
format Journal Article
author Gruber, Thorsten
author_facet Gruber, Thorsten
Abosag, Ibrahim
Reppel, Alexander
Szmigin, Isabelle
Löfgren, Martin
authorStr Gruber, Thorsten
author_letter Gruber, Thorsten
author2 Abosag, Ibrahim
Reppel, Alexander
Szmigin, Isabelle
Löfgren, Martin
author2Str Abosag, Ibrahim
Reppel, Alexander
Szmigin, Isabelle
Löfgren, Martin
title Does Culture Impact Preferred Employee attributes in Complaint Handling Encounters?
publisher Taylor and Francis
publishDate 2013
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/21181/