Service failures away from home: benefits in intercultural service encounters

TLDR

Consumer travel and multinational service corporations create more opportunities for service failures when customers from one culture encounter problems in another cultural setting, a phenomenon that has important implications for providers serving diverse clientele. This study extends the Stauss and Mang model by investigating whether intercultural service failures are perceived as less serious because customers attribute errors to cultural distance. The authors used a pretest with the critical incident technique to identify common failures and recovery strategies, then compared domestic (Taiwan) and foreign (outside Taiwan) service encounters in both failure and recovery stages through an online survey employing a modified critical incident technique. Results show that the perceived lower seriousness of intercultural failures stems from greater acceptance of recovery strategies, highlighting the crucial role of recovery attempts in mitigating such failures and extending the Stauss and Mang model.

Abstract

Consumer travel and multinational service corporations have increased the opportunity for service failures where consumers from one culture experience service problems in another cultural setting. This study extended the Stauss and Mang model, which proposed the possibility that intercultural service failures exhibit lower seriousness ratings due to the customer's attributing errors to cultural distance. Such a possible outcome has important implications for service providers whose customers are from different cultures, such as tourist or visiting businesspeople. A pretest, employing the critical incident technique, established descriptions of common service failures and recovery strategies for the sample frame. Domestic (in Taiwan) and foreign (outside Taiwan) service encounters were then compared in both failure and recovery stages, reported in an online survey employing a modified critical incident technique. Results showed that the apparent reduction in intercultural failure seriousness can be attributed not to the error itself, but to increased acceptance of the recovery strategy. These findings broaden the Stauss and Mang model by including the importance of recovery strategies, and the benefit gained by any recovery attempt within an intercultural service setting.