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| Chinese customers need to feel face-up. |
In the competitive environment in which hospitality business exist, customer satisfaction is a vital mechanism which enables to achieve competitive advantages. In common with many other service-related industries, competition for loyal consumers is rife. These businesses provide an operating environment where competition is getting extremely intense and sustained. Such competitive conditions have led to many businesses striving to attract repeat customers in order to reach their long-term success which is not an easy job in such conditions where a plethora of properties provide similar offerings. As well as the ability to measure customer satisfaction is limited to assessing whether or not the service provided fully meets customer's desire. For that reason, the importance of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty has been considerably highlighted in hospitality industry. In addition to this, with emergence of globalization in today's hotel sector, numerous hotel business groups are intending to expand their markets worldwide. Consequently, a number of foreign customers are rapidly increasing in major cities in Asia and forming ever-greater part of the total proportion. Therefore, the level of service and quality of products has been reinforced by those who operate hotel properties by approaching extensive markets such as establishing Western-themed restaurants and internal multilingual training for staffs. However, despite the equivalent endeavors offered, the level of customer satisfaction and demands are varied depends on different perceptions and expectations. There are some literatures existed which raise arguments regarding how cultural factors may influence on service satisfaction and their demands. It contains that pervasive Confucian cultural values are important variables in understanding interpersonal relationships. In this stage, it is worth taking into consideration which quality attributes contribute to the different experiences and perceptions.
The notion of culture is multi-faced and can be defined in many ways. Considering it is such a broad concept, it is obviously difficult to understand and adapt. Cultural values are often reflected as widely shared beliefs about how individuals are expected to behave within their cultural scope. According to Hofstede's arguments, it has been raised that cultural values are correlated with consumer behaviors. Describing that national cultures mainly differ based on four dimensions; power distance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity and uncertainty avoidance. These four cultural dimensions have been widely applied in defining customer's expectation, perception as well as evaluation of service quality in different cultures. More interestingly, it has found that fundamental differences in both consumer behaviors and expectations between Eastern and Western cultures. In the Eastern context, majority studies model applied was about the influence of cultural values directly on attitudes, behavioral intentions. For instance, Korean consumers' attitudes are more likely to be significantly affected by face saving as normative values dominate the formation of intention. Similar to Korean culture, when it comes to Chinese culture it is particularly characterized by a strong desire to gain or protect their face. Given the fact that China is postulated as a collectivism society which emphasizes the group and authority instead of its individual, protecting their face is viewed extremely important in the presence of their family and friends. This can be probably influenced by the gap between rich and poor as people who are in high class or own big business tend to show off their status and authority by spending huge amounts of money. It can be particularly applied to the host of a dining group. As mentioned before, due to importance of protecting face during service delivery within Chinese society, service providers pay more attention on giving face-up to the host with respect and sensitivity, and avoiding embarrassing and criticizing them in public in front of their families or friends.
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| Knowing the customer's needs before serving. |
By doing so, customers feel that their status has been slightly enhanced satisfaction while service experience is made. As a result, repeat customers are more likely to be maintained when the 'face' is present in the service encounter. Furthermore, in Chinese society, keeping their face is very important in maintaining good interpersonal relationships. As one shining example, if hotel consistently provides unlimited opportunities for guests to fain face, then the Chinese customers are more likely to bring goodwill to the hotel by introducing new consumers from their social networks. Within the catering environment, mutual relationship builds positive emotions. Once positive emotions are formed between a customer and service provider, then there would be more possibilities of repurchase behavior from the customers. The second essential characteristics to promote and pursue that Chinese customers consider is harmony. Chinese people tend to try their best to maintain harmony. The pursuit for harmony is particularly reflected in the Chinese collectivist culture of conforming to group norms. Group conformity is the reason that Chinese consumers tend to stay with the same brand that is recommended by their acquaintances. Hence, a collectivist culture factor, such as group norms may have more influence on repurchase intentions other than satisfaction.
On the other hand, given the fact that Western cultures are more focused on family-oriented and individualism, Western consumers consider availability of repurchase or revisit based on actual quality of products and personal experiences on previous visits. Rather than being recommended by other groups, they tend to discover on their own. Therefore, the process which intangible service is being made is very important for them to evaluate. Alike Chinese consumers, Western people tend to be less aggressive and less risk-taking on overall service evaluation. This is because they are more likely to conform. As it is riskier to switch a service provider to try something new, it is expected that Western customers who emphasize brand standard and appropriate service will be more influenced on satisfaction. More specifically, in a service encounter experiment Expat customers are more affected by relational information such as employees being polite and proactive service. Put differently, more favorable attitudes when service providers displayed concern or provided compensation in a service breakdown situation, although they tended to prefer more voice in this situation.
Consequently, showing that guest satisfaction for Westerners was an outcome construct of perceived quality by encompassing diverse quality factors for comprehensive interpretation of their service experiences. Considering quality perception from the perspective of a highly satisfied customer, it has shown that differences actually exist between perceptions of those who highly satisfied and not satisfied with regard to crucial attributes of the quality facets during the consumption experience is being formed. While the majority of Chinese customers desire customized service with showing respect and less care about quality attributes, Western consumers however critically perceive quality attributes. Availability of healthy options, freshness and attentive employee service were more reveled as crucial factors to enhance their satisfaction than visually appealing displayed presentations. The fact that face saving and group conformity seem to be the most influential predictors in determining behavior intentions in Chinese society can be also related to Korean context. However, group conformity is less salient factor than face saving in Korean culture since most of Koreans tend to emphasize their authority and hierarchy to others. Hence, service providers should be able to manage ways of giving to the host of dining group particularly for Chinese and Korean customers. In overall, the whole idea of service delivery can be designed to honor them. Besides, a sincere welcome and farewell can make the consumer feel that his social status has been enhanced in public, thus this will lead to increase guest satisfaction.
All in all, in terms of comprehensive management, service personnel are required to promptly react customer's needs and wants and treat them personal attention and customization. In general, Chinese customers who live in a collectivist society may have low expectations on service and thus this may put less emphasis on interaction quality. Whereas, with regards to the importance of food appeal to loyalty, 'tangibles' are more important than 'intangibles' in arousing customer loyalty in Chinese culture. Accordingly, identifying service components that are significant and raising the performance standards for these service elements are key tasks to consider for those who deliver service.
