SOAS Research Online

A Free Database of the Latest Research by SOAS Academics and PhD Students

[skip to content]

Gruber, Thorsten, Abosag, Ibrahim, Reppel, Alexander, Szmigin, Isabelle and Löfgren, Martin (2013) 'Does Culture Impact Preferred Employee attributes in Complaint Handling Encounters?' Total Quality Management and Business Excellence, 24 (11-12). pp. 1301-1315.

[img]
Preview
Text - Accepted Version
Download (620kB) | Preview

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.

Item Type: Journal Article
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > School of Finance & Management
Legacy Departments > Faculty of Law and Social Sciences > School of Finance and Management
ISSN: 14783363
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1080/14783363.2013.822664
Date Deposited: 26 Oct 2015 15:54
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/21181

Altmetric Data

Statistics

Download activity - last 12 monthsShow export options
Downloads since deposit
6 month trend
609Downloads
6 month trend
383Hits
Accesses by country - last 12 monthsShow export options
Accesses by referrer - last 12 monthsShow export options

Repository staff only

Edit Item Edit Item