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The Impact of Culture and Gender on Customer Evaluations of Service

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Article  in  Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research · May 2000

DOI: 10.1177/109634800002400209

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 Mattila
JOURNAL / CUSTOMER EVALUATIONS
OF HOSPITALITY OF SERVICE
& TOURISM ENCOUNTERS
RESEARCH

THE IMPACT OF CULTURE

AND GENDER ON CUSTOMER
EVALUATIONS OF SERVICE
ENCOUNTERS
Anna S. Mattila
The Pennsylvania State University

Despite the growing interest in cross-cultural research in the hospitality literature, little
empirical research has been conducted on the effects of culture on consumers’assessment
of service quality. This study was designed to close this gap by investigating culture-based
biases in the evaluation of service encounters in a hotel and restaurant setting. Based on
prior research in consumer behavior, gender was hypothesized to moderate the impact of
culture-based biases. The results of this field study suggest that customer evaluations of
service encounters might indeed be culture bound. Asian travelers gave significantly lower
ratings to the service provider in both settings (hotel checkout and fine dining). Contrary to
our predictions, customer gender failed to have an impact on service encounter evalua-
tions. Power distance and communication context are used as a theoretical framework to
discuss the results obtained in this study.

KEYWORDS: service encounters; cross-cultural research.

As global competition increases, understanding the cultural impact of services

becomes more critical for hospitality firms. Because culture provides the frame-
work for social interactions, the social rules and customer expectations that are
related to service encounters are likely to vary from culture to culture (Pucik &
Katz, 1986). For example, the international travelers least satisfied with airline
in-flight service are likely to be Japanese, as indicated by customer satisfaction
surveys conducted by international airlines (Zeithaml & Bitner, 1996). For high-
contact services such as hotels and restaurants, good employee-customer interac-
tions are key to successful relationship building (Chase & Tansik, 1983), and a
better understanding of ways to adapt service delivery behavior to the values of
major cultural groups would be highly beneficial to hospitality managers.
Despite the relevance of this topic, however, very little research has examined
the influence of culture on service perceptions (Malhotra, Ugaldo, Agarwal, &
Baalbaki, 1994), and our understanding of how customers from different coun-
tries evaluate service encounters is very limited (Winsted, 1997). This study

Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, Vol. 24, No. 2, May 2000, 263-273
© 2000 International Council on Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Education
263
264 JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY & TOURISM RESEARCH

attempted to close that gap by empirically investigating the influence of culture on

consumer perceptions of service encounters in a hotel and restaurant setting. The
present investigation concentrated on two main groups with distinctively different
cultural backgrounds: Asians and Westerners, respectively.
Another objective of this research was to consider moderators of potential
culture-based biases. We suggest that gender might influence consumer evalua-
tions of service encounters. Prior research in consumer behavior has reported sig-
nificant gender differences for product evaluations (McDaniel, 1998; Moutinho,
1995), consumer responses to music levels (Kellaris, 1993), and message elabora-
tion (Meyers-Levy, 1991). Furthermore, gender differences have been shown to
extend to satisfaction judgments within a service context (Dube & Morgan, 1996).
Iacobucci and Ostrom (1993) found women in general to be more sensitive to rela-
tional aspects of service encounters than men.

Culture-Based Differences
Today’s hospitality managers need to be aware of the parts of the consumer
experience that are open to cultural influences in contrast with those that remain
stable across cultures. It can be argued that the core service of the product—a bed
for the night, for example—can be easily standardized (Lovelock, 1996). How-
ever, cultural definitions of hospitality may differ widely from one culture to
another. For example, a person raised to believe that hospitality is an overriding
obligation will have difficulty dismissing social niceties for the sake of efficacy.
Customizing the supplementary elements of the service bundle not only add value
to the service experience, but they also provide means for differentiation by tailor-
ing peripheral services to match culture-based norms of global customers.
Because first-class hotel and restaurant services are delivered by people, cul-
tural factors are likely to mediate the hotel customers’ attitudes toward the service
component of their consumption experience. In Asia, the key ingredient of good
service seems to be personal attention or customization and not the efficiency and
time savings that appear so highly valued in the West (Schmitt & Pan, 1994). This
service concept, institutionalized in Asia, is a crucial element of overall quality to
the Asian consumer. For example, in many Asian luxury hotels, a bellboy accom-
panies a guest to the departing car and waits until the guest has departed.
A relatively small number of models have been developed for a systematic
comparison of cultures (de Mooij, 1998). For the purposes of global marketing,
the most useful ones are those that distinguish dimensions of culture. In this study,
we sought to relate the customer’s expectation of personalized service to two
basic dimensions of culture: communication context and power distance. These
two factors have been proven particularly useful for comparing cultures with
respect to service consumption–related values (Mattila, 1999). By adopting these
well-established typologies of culture, we can gain a better understanding of the
functional relationship of culture to service encounter evaluations. Edward Hall,
for some 40 years, has studied dimensions of culture in a consumer behavior and
marketing contexts. Hall (1984) observed that some cultures prefer communica-
tions that are explicit, direct, and unambiguous (low-context communication),
whereas other cultures prefer a more nonverbal mode of communication (high-
 Mattila / CUSTOMER EVALUATIONS OF SERVICE ENCOUNTERS 265

context communication). Most Asian cultures prefer high-context communica-

tion, whereas most Western cultures prefer low-context communication. Ameri-
can consumers particularly rely on concrete evidence, such as data, in their
evaluations of services (de Mooij, 1998). Service consumers from cultures prefer-
ring low-context communication tend to focus their evaluations on task comple-
tion and efficient delivery, whereas consumers from cultures that prefer high-
context communication tend to focus on the quality of the interactions between
employees and customers (Riddle, 1992).
Hofstede’s typology of cultures has been confirmed empirically and has been
heavily cited in social science, international, and cross-cultural business studies
as the most important popular theory of culture types (Donthu & Yoo, 1999).
Power distance (Hofstede, 1980, 1991) refers to the extent to which status differ-
ences are expected and accepted within a culture. Prior research has established
that the cultures of most Asian countries (e.g., Hong Kong, India, Singapore,
Thailand, etc.) are characterized by large power distances. Conversely, the cul-
tures of many Western countries (i.e., Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, the
United States, and the Scandinavian nations) are less accustomed to status differ-
ences and score low on the power distance dimension (Hofstede, 1991). In cul-
tures characterized by large power distances, the lower status of service employ-
ees requires them to provide customers with a high level of service. Broadly
speaking, service styles in Asia are more people-oriented than in the West, where
the efficiency of the service delivery is highly valued (Riddle, 1992). In the ser-
vice culture of Asia, even consumers of low-cost services expect a relatively high
level of service (Schmitt & Pan, 1994).
To summarize, based on their cultural norms, Asian customers tend to have
higher expectations for the interaction quality in a service encounter. Conversely,
Western travelers are more likely to focus on the outcome rather than the process
component of the service delivery. Hence, it is hypothesized that service encoun-
ters designed to meet the standards of the global traveler (mainly influenced by
Western cultural norms) will be less satisfying to Asian hotel and restaurant cus-
tomers than their Western counterparts. Consequently, the following prediction is
made:

Hypothesis 1: The mean evaluations of the service provider’s performance will be sig-
nificantly higher for Western customers than their Asian counterparts.

Gender-Based Differences
The abundance of empirical evidence suggests that men and women differ in
their information processing styles (Dube & Morgan, 1996; Maheswaran &
Meyers-Levy, 1991; Meyers-Levy, 1991). Women seem to engage in more
detailed elaboration of information, whereas men tend to have a more general
information processing style. Women (being more scrutinizing processors) tend
to overweigh negative information, whereas men appear to give more salience to
positive information (Dube & Morgan, 1996). Moreover, Iacobucci and Ostrom
(1993) reported that women might be more sensitive to relational aspects of the
service interaction than their male counterparts. Hence, in the context of the pres-
266 JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY & TOURISM RESEARCH

ent study, women are expected to give more negative evaluations of the service
encounter than their male counterparts. Because information processing strate-
gies are believed to be universal, no interaction effects between gender and culture
are hypothesized. Consequently, the following prediction is put forth:

Hypothesis 2: The mean evaluations of service provider’s performance will be signifi-

cantly lower for female customers than for male customers.

METHODOLOGY

The data were collected at a first-class hotel in Singapore. The 450-room hotel,
mainly catering to the needs of a global business traveler, is affiliated with an
international chain and offers the following amenities: 24-hour room service, two
restaurants (cafe and fine dining), outdoor pool and fitness club, meeting rooms,
laundry, and gift shop. A single property was chosen because it enabled the
researchers to control for a potential confounding variable of service quality. Cus-
tomers at the checkout counter were randomly selected to complete a short survey
immediately after the service encounter had ended (n = 75). Similarly, for fine
dining customers, one member of each dinner party was randomly selected and
approached at the end of the meal (n = 74). In the checkout sample, the average age
of respondents was 43 years, with the typical respondent being a male (69%) trav-
eling for leisure purposes (79%). In the restaurant sample, average age was
slightly lower at 36 years, with the typical respondent being a male (65%) dining
for pleasure (80%). Of the respondents, 41% were Western travelers mainly origi-
nating from the United States, Canada, Australia, and Scandinavia. For the pur-
poses of this study, travelers from Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, main-
land China, and Korea were categorized as Asians. Overall, the respondents were
familiar with the target services: 67% of the checkout sample reported having
stayed at a first-class hotel more than three times during the previous 12 months,
and 75% of the fine dining sample reported having dined at a fine dining restau-
rant more than three times during the previous month.
A 2 × 2 factorial design was employed to test the hypotheses. The first factor
was the respondent’s gender (male/female), and the second factor reflected the
individual’s ethnic background (Asian/Western). A factorial design is highly effi-
cient because every subject supplies information about all the factors included in
the experiment (Snedecor & Cochran, 1989, p. 297). Unlike in true experimental
designs, the manipulation of independent variables (gender and cultural back-
ground) was impossible in the present investigation. Consequently, the use of
classification variables leaves open the possibility of nonequivalence among
study subjects regarding some other individual difference variables. To control for
these subject-based differences across Western and Asian travelers, we employed
statistical control in terms of covariates in the data analysis. The customers’mood
state and purpose of stay (dining occasion) were therefore included as covariates
in the MANCOVA analysis. To ensure measure equivalence, controlling for the
customers’ past use of first-class hotels (fine dining restaurants) was also deemed
necessary (Parameswaran & Yaprak, 1987). Finally, to ensure that the type of
 Mattila / CUSTOMER EVALUATIONS OF SERVICE ENCOUNTERS 267

service (front desk vs. fine dining) would not interact with our results, the service
setting was included as an additional covariate in the data analysis. Statistical
comparisons of income levels were not possible because of varying currency
exchange rates and different standards of living. However, the top management of
the hotel felt that similar segments were represented.

Measures
To remain consistent with previous research, this study employed measures
taken or adapted from previous studies in marketing, management, and psychology.
Service encounter dimensions. To measure customer evaluations of service
provider performance, a 5-item, 7-point, bipolar scale was employed, ranging
from 1 (low) to 7 (high). The dimensions of interest were understanding customer
needs, provision of special attention to customer, perceived authenticity of
employee behavior, competency of employee, and meeting of customer expecta-
tions. These dimensions were derived from Price, Arnould, and Deibler’s (1995)
work on customer evaluations of service provider performance. In their study, the
results of a confirmatory factor analysis established convergent and discriminant
validity of their multi-item scales. To minimize intrusions in the service delivery
process, the management of the hotel insisted on the parsimony of the measure-
ment instrument. Consequently, our measures of the service provider’s perfor-
mance were limited to a single-item scale of each service encounter dimension.
The Pearson correlation coefficients among the five dimensions are shown in
Table 1. Consistent with prior research (Price et al., 1995), all correlations were
significant, thus justifying the use of MANCOVA analysis.
Customer’s mood state. A 5-item, short-form mood scale was employed
(Peterson & Sauber, 1983). Customers were asked to indicate their feelings on the
following 5-point Likert scale: “At this moment I feel edgy or irritable,” “For
some reason, I am not very comfortable right now,” “As I answer these questions, I
feel cheerful,” and “Currently, I am in a good mood.” The Cronbach alpha coeffi-
cient of reliability for this four-component measure of mood was .81.
Overall assessment of the service provider. Because acquiescence and modera-
tion of extreme responding may be culturally variable (de Mooij, 1998; Van de
Vivjer & Leung, 1997), measures reflecting the customer’s overall evaluation of
the hotel (restaurant) were included in the survey. Three items were measured on a
bipolar 7-point scale: customer satisfaction, repurchase intention, and value for
money.

RESULTS

The quasi-experimental nature of the research design resulted in unequal cell

sizes. Due to the unbalanced design, the analyses were based on unweighted
means (see Keppel, 1991). Two-way multivariate analyses of variance were car-
ried out separately for the customers’ encounter level and overall level evalua-
tions. An analysis of variance on the covariates showed that the nonrandom sam-
268 JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY & TOURISM RESEARCH

Table 1
Pearson Correlation Coefficients for Service Encounter Dimensions

Competence Special Needs Genuine Expectations

Competence 1.0
Special .564 1.0
Needs .598 .706 1.0
Genuine .608 .725 .712 1.0
Expectations .762 .692 .710 .768 1.0

Note: All correlations are significant at the .01 level.

ples did not differ significantly in past usage of first-class hotels (restaurants),
purpose of stay (dining occasion), or mood state.

Service Encounter Level Analysis

Multivariate and univariate results of the analysis are shown in Tables 2 and 3,
respectively.
The results from the multivariate analysis of variance for the service provider’s
performance indicated that the interaction effect between ethnic background and
gender was not significant, F(5, 138) = .889, thus enabling us to proceed with cul-
tural factor effects. Wilks’s lambda statistic for the ethnicity factor was signifi-
cant, F(5, 138) = 2.9, p = .016. This significant main effect implies that the two
ethnic groups (Westerners and Asians) evaluated the service provider’s perfor-
mance in a different manner.
As shown in Table 3, the univariate F ratios were significant for all five service
encounter dimensions, thus indicating that these variables contributed to the dif-
ferences between the two groups. Furthermore, an analysis of the cell means
shown in Table 4 shows that the service provider’s performance evaluations were
consistently higher with Western travelers than with their Asian counterparts.
Taken together, these findings provided support for Hypothesis 1.
The factor effect for gender, on the other hand, was not significant as indicated
by its low F statistic, F(5, 139) = .439. Consequently, Hypothesis 2 was rejected.
Among the covariates, customers’ mood state was the only variable that reached
the level of statistical significance. Although no gender differences were detected
for the mood measure, it is possible that effect might have contributed to the null
findings regarding the gender factor. Future research is needed to examine the
impact of emotions on customer evaluations of service encounters.

Overall Assessment of the Service Organization

To control for culture-based biases in response style (Chun, Campbell, & Hao,
1974; Zax & Takashi, 1967), overall satisfaction with hotel stay (restaurant meal),
perception of value, and repurchase intention were analyzed using the ANCOVA
method. For all three dependent variables, the interaction between ethnicity and
gender was not significant, as were the two main effects, suggesting that the
results obtained with the service-related measures could not be explained by con-
 Mattila / CUSTOMER EVALUATIONS OF SERVICE ENCOUNTERS 269

Table 2
Multivariate Test Statistics

Source Wilks’s Lambda F Value

Covariate
Past usage .964 1.02
Purpose .972 0.80
Mood .745 9.44*
Category .971 0.83
Main effects
Ethnicity .905 2.91*
Gender .984 0.44
Interaction
Ethnicity by sex .969 0.89

*p < .05.

Table 3
Univariate F Tests

Variable Genuine Needs Special Expectations Competence

Past usage 0.94 0.96 1.73 2.74 0.03

Purpose 0.44 0.57 2.5 1.39 0.03
Mood 30.9* 23.03* 40.05* 35.21* 22.07*
Category 0.27 1.24 0.28 0.37 0.01
Ethnicity 9.21* 4.98* 12.48* 4.26* 5.04*
Gender 0.08 1.42 0.53 0.77 0.99
Interaction 1.08 1.53 2.98 0.24 1.22

*p < .05.

sistently higher or lower responses. The mean responses for these overall evalua-
tions are shown in Table 5.

DISCUSSION

The involvement of people in service delivery implies that cultural diversities

and norms inadvertently come into play when customers evaluate service encoun-
ters. The results of this study suggest that customer evaluations of service provid-
er’s performance may indeed be culture dependent. Contrary to our predictions,
gender differences were not significant. The tendency for women to be more scru-
tinizing information processors (e.g., Dube & Morgan, 1996; Maheswaran &
Meyers-Levy, 1991) might not hold true for service encounter evaluations. How-
ever, the context of our study (front office and fine dining services) might have
contributed to the null findings. Women in general might be more sensitive than
men to relational aspects of service encounters (Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993), but
in our context of highly routinized interactions, both genders might have been
equally focused on the service outcome.
270 JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY & TOURISM RESEARCH

Table 4
Mean Customer Evaluations by Service Dimension

Encounter Dimension Ethnicity Gender Mean Rating

Genuine behavior W M 5.83

W F 6.16
A M 5.20
A F 5.03
Understanding of customer needs W M 5.61
W F 6.16
A M 5.15
A F 5.10
Special attention W M 5.51
W F 6.00
A M 5.05
A F 4.86
Expectations met W M 5.85
W F 6.16
A M 5.36
A F 5.40
Competency W M 5.90
W F 6.31
A M 5.55
A F 5.53

Note: W = Western customers, M = male, F = female, A = Asian customers.

Table 5
Mean Evaluations for Global Satisfaction, Value, and Repurchase Intention

Satisfaction Value Repurchase Intentiona

Western 5.9 5.4 1.8

Asian 5.7 5.0 1.7
Male 5.7 5.2 1.8
Female 5.9 5.2 1.8

a. Reverse coded.

As compared to their Western counterparts, Asian hotel and fine dining cus-
tomers gave significantly lower ratings to the service encounter. These perceptual
differences were expected because service-oriented Asian cultures (Schmitt &
Pan, 1994) support high-service expectations. In addition, many Asian cultures
are characterized by high-context communication (Hall, 1984) and large power
distances (Hofstede, 1991). Although tentative, these two cultural dimensions
might help us to understand why the Asian customers who participated in this
study were less happy with the service provided by the hotel or the restaurant than
their Western counterparts. Asians tend to prefer high-context communications in
which nonverbal cues are more crucial than explicit utterances. This emphasis on
 Mattila / CUSTOMER EVALUATIONS OF SERVICE ENCOUNTERS 271

contextual cues highlights the importance of the interaction quality of the service
encounter (Riddle, 1992).
Power distance (Hofstede, 1980, 1991) is another cultural dimension that
might explain the differences in the ratings provided by Asian and Western cus-
tomers. Most Asian cultures are accepting of large power distances and support
expectations of status differences between customers and service employees. As
customers, Asian leisure travelers expect to be treated as deserving of high-
quality service, regardless of the type of service encounter. Prior research sug-
gests that Japanese consumers, for example, are more interested than Western
consumers in the ritualistic aspects of employee behavior (Winsted, 1997). The
standardization of global hotel and restaurant services, mainly designed in West-
ern cultures that downplay the importance of status differences, has resulted in
service delivery styles that might not meet the expectations of Asian consumers.
To conclude, the results of this study indicate that hospitality firms might bene-
fit from providing cultural training for their customer-contact employees. Hall
and Hall (1990) suggest that the concept of high versus low context culture might
need to be considered when developing employee training programs for
customer-contact employees in the hotel industry. The dominant cultural values
of the service firm’s target markets will affect the degree to which cultural cus-
tomization is necessary. Prior research suggests that the customers’ definition of
what constitutes a hospitality product might depend on their cultural heritage
(Houghton & Treblay, 1994).

Limitations
The results of this study are exploratory and preliminary in nature and, there-
fore, should be used with great care. Probably, the most important limitation of
this study is its field study design. A controlled laboratory experiment is needed to
validate our findings. Furthermore, due to the single-study nature of this investi-
gation, replications and extensions to other types of hospitality services are
needed before managerial implications can be based on a solid foundation of
empirical evidence. We used classification variables to create conditions; hence,
there is a possibility that subjects might differ systematically from group to group
in characteristics other than ethnicity and gender. The null result for the gender
effect is somewhat difficult to interpret due to the proportionally smaller cell size
for females in each experimental condition. Future research is clearly needed to
rule out alternative hypotheses. Finally, to supply more stringent tests of our rea-
soning, the dimensions of culture should be measured in future studies.

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Submitted June 30, 1999

First Revision Submitted September 2, 1999
Second Revision Submitted October 18, 1999
Accepted November 3, 1999
Refereed Anonymously

Anna S. Mattila, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Hotel, Restaurant

and Recreation Management, The Pennsylvania State University (225 Mateer Building,
University Park, PA 16803-1307; e-mail: asm6@psu.edu).

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