Effects of Culture on Service Encounters & Customers’ Satisfaction

Abstract

For many researchers and marketers, customer satisfaction has become a critical success factor and carries an important aspect of business process. Culture is believed to be an important social influence which has significant impact on consumers and the way they behave. Authors assert that culture is a prominent part of social interactions while customers’ involvement with others in business^1,2. Customers shape up their perception on service quality primarily during the service encounters because of embedded features of services as intangible and inseparable. Professor Geert Hofstede’s 5-Dimensional Model for cultural differences³offers a practical roadmap. However, for a firm operation in cross cultural environment, a deep down further analysis of other local cultural dimensions is helpful for better customer interaction. These days It is very important for service firms to be conscious to adapt new services excellence philosophy, though sustaining the fundamental service excellence benchmark. Particularly for high intangible and high contact services, good employee-customer interactions are key, and a better understanding of how to adapt service delivery behavior to the values of major cultural groups are highly beneficial to service firms.