Intercultural Service Encounters

Abstract

This chapter begins with a review of the literature on cross-cultural differences in the customer and employee attitudes, expectations, perceptions, and evaluations about intercultural service encounters, followed by a discussion on the limitations of this cross-cultural perspective. The author then reviews the past research on intercultural service encounters, beginning with the conceptual definitions of all the key constructs, including perceived cultural distance, interaction comfort, inter-role congruence, adequate and perceived service levels, customer satisfaction, intercultural competence, cultural and non-cultural attributions, personal cultural orientations, and acculturation. Next, he describes the main conceptual frameworks developed by researchers to study intercultural service encounters, followed by a discussion of the significant findings from empirical studies in this area and their conceptual contributions.