Reference no: EM133336364
With rapid globalization, the number of people traveling abroad for business, education, employment, migration, and tourism has grown dramatically in recent years, resulting in an unprecedented increase in the number of interactions among people from different cultures. While such intercultural interactions expose people to other cultures, motivating people to learn about them, accept their cultural differences, and adapt their behavior via acculturation or cross-cultural adjustment can be a big challenge. Cross-cultural contact is also associated with ethnocultural identity conflict and problems such as misattributions, communication gaps, stereotyping, ethnocentrism, prejudice, discrimination, emotional labor, surface acting, and inter-group anxiety.
Given the above, it is not surprising to see a growing interest in intercultural service encounters (ICSEs), in which customers and employees from different cultures interact. Marketing academics and practitioners have begun recognizing ICSE as an inevitable outcome of globalization and ubiquitous features of an increasingly diverse global marketplace. There is also a growing acknowledgment of the need to understand the challenges posed by the differences in the perceptions, expectations, and evaluations of customers and employees from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Culture represents shared knowledge and implicit theories about the world. It includes a wide range of attitudes, beliefs, and values that we need to interpret and navigate in complex and diverse social environments. Cultural knowledge consists of various rules and guidelines that people use to define their social realities, which are transmitted to future generations through socialization. There is growing research interest in measuring the impact of culture on consumer attitudes and behavior because of an increase in the diversification of consumer segments and the rapid expansion of global brands and marketing companies triggered by the rise in globalization.
Case:
Company "A" Travel Services launched a transportation service for tourists in the Riviera Maya. The service included transportation to and from the airport to the leading hotels and resorts. Customers must request the service through an app and rate the service at the end of the ride. The app is in English. The company conducted a marketing research study before implementing this service and designed the service model and the app based on the insights. The research study was conducted among American customers and in English.
After six months of operations, the company realized that American customers highly rated the service but not Latin American customers. American customers rated the service very high in terms of reliability, safety, and easy-to-operate. Latin American customers rated the service deficient in terms of usability and price and described it as poor customer service.
Questions
Besides the language barrier, what else do you think is impacting the customer service perception? How is ethnocentrism reflected in this case?