Does National

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Does national culture

influence consumers'

evaluation of travel

services? A test ofHofstede's model of

cross-cultural differences

John C. Crotts and

Ron Erdmann

Introduction

The role of customer satisfaction in

influencing repeat patronage and positive

word of mouth is well-documented (Crotts,

1999; Augustyn and Ho, 1998; Kotler et al.,

1998; Oppermann, 1998; Heskett et al.,

1997). Without meeting or even exceeding

customer expectations, a tourism enterprise

as well as an entire destination should not

expect to find loyal patrons who not only

repeat purchase but also ``clone'' themselves

among their friends and relatives (Ford and

Heaton, 2000; Pine and Gilmore, 1998).

Therefore, it has become a critical strategic

task for management to systematically gain

feedback from their guests as to their service's

ability to satisfy needs and meet expectations.The task becomes more problematic where

guests come from different national cultures.

Do national cultural differences influence

consumer evaluations? Cultural psychologists

suggest that they do. According to Hofstede

(1991), a prominent dimension of culture is

the masculinity versus femininity dimension

(i.e. competitiveness vs. cooperation) where

certain cultures find desirable assertive

behavior, while others emphasize behavior

that is more modest. The degree to whichconsumers from a specific culture are willing

to provide assertive and critical evaluative

responses to consumer satisfaction surveys is

a visible sign of this cultural dimension.

According to Hofstede, individuals from

societies where masculine values prevail more

frequently evoke behaviors that are assertive,

judgmental and have less concern for the

feelings of others, which in turn should be

reflected in their consumer satisfaction scores.

On the other hand, guests from societieswhere there is more tenderness and sympathy

for others and where assertiveness is not a

desirable characteristic should be overtly

moderate as to the extent they are willing to

provide criticism in their evaluations. If this is

true, not accounting for cultural differences in

such measures may lead to over-estimating

customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and

positive word of mouth.

This research is organized around the

following two questions:(1) Do international visitors from masculine

cultures evaluate tourist services more

negatively than visitors from more

feminine cultures?

The authors

John C. Crotts is at the Research Centre of Bornholm,

Denmark and is Director and Associate Professor at the

School of Business and Economics, College of Charleston,Charleston, South Carolina, USA.

Ron Erdmann is Senior Market Research Analyst/Deputy

Director, Tourism Industries, US Department of

Commerce, International Trade Administration,

Washington, DC, USA.

Keywords

Customer satisfaction, Measurement, Tourism, USA,

National cultures

Abstract

The influence of national culture on consumer evaluations

of travel services was the focus of this study. Drawing

from a representative sample of overseas visitors to the

USA, and controlling for socio-economic and trip

characteristics, results provide a limited indication that

national culture influences how customers evaluate travel

services and their willingness to repeat purchase and

recommend a service to others. The implications for

researchers are that national cultural differences are one

of many forces influencing consumer decision making. It

is a measurable construct, like gender and socio-economicclass, that conditions how consumers interact with others

and should be taken into account in our attempts to

better understand consumers needs and expectations.

Electronic access

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Managing Service Quality

Volume 10 . Number 6 . 2000 . pp. 410419

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(2) What influence does national culture have

in predicting repeat patronage and the

probability of positive word of mouth?

The research rests on the widely-held

assumption that customer satisfaction is

linked to customer loyalty and customerloyalty is linked to a firm's profits and future

growth potential (Crotts, 1999; Augustyn and

Ho, 1998; Kotler et al., 1998; Oppermann,

1998; Heskett et al., 1997). The significance

of the study rests on determining if

satisfaction measures alone are the best

predictors of the probability of repeat

patronage and third-party endorsements, or

should other social-cultural should be

included.

International visitors contribute much to

the export earnings of tourist receiving

nations, generating sales, labor earnings and

employment. However, the marketplace is

highly competitive. We contend that those

destinations that can appreciate the relevant

subtleties of cultural differences when gaining

feedback from its visitors will have strategic

advantages over those which do not.

Literature review

Customer satisfaction has become the

buzzword of the 1990s, generating much

interest and research among academic

researchers. Today, leading hospitality and

tourism firms recognize that profits hinge on

the perceived level of customer satisfaction

and the ability to achieve some level of

consumer loyalty. Loyal customers have often

been touted to be the profit engines of

businesses, generating as much as 80 percent

of a firm's total sales and profits through theirrepeat patronage (Noe, 1998). Even this

percentage may be low, in that high-repeat

customers also become a firm's willing

apostles generating the positive word of

mouth that drives new customers to a

particular firm (Heskett et al., 1997).

Systematically listening to customers allows

management to measure how well they are

doing in serving their customers and when

benchmarked with other firms gain some

understanding of their competitive position inthe marketplace. Gaining feedback also helps

management to identify customer segments

who are most predisposed to value their

service, as well as the almost satisfied and

dissatisfied who need extra attention in an

effort to elevate their user status (Heskett et

al., 1997). Performance measures that are

simple, consistent and elicit customer

feedback on dimensions that are important to

the consumer allows management to track

performance and predict service outcomes.

Only by measuring can a firm become

confident in its ability to retain customers and

generate positive word of mouth.

There are many methods used in gaining

customer feedback that are generally accepted

as valid and reliable. Fairfield Inns employs

touch screen computers asking guests who are

checking out to rate or score their

performance. The Promus hotel group

employs a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee

to encourage customer complaints, which areinputted into a reporting system for

identifying the root causes of service failures.

Arguably the most common customer

feedback mechanism is the self-administer

survey (Parasuraman et al., 1990). The

question arises as to the reliability and validity

of these feedback measures particularly in a

cross-cultural environment.

Cultural values is an umbrella concept that

includes such elements as shared values,

beliefs and norms that collectively distinguish

a particular group of people from others

(Pizam et al., 1997). These widely shared

values are programmed into individuals in

subtle ways from quite an early age (Otaki et

al., 1986), are resistant to change (Hofstede,

1991) and remain evident when at home or

while traveling abroad (Pizam and Reichel,

1996; Pizam and Sussmann, 1995). Cultural

differences have often been purported as the

basis for specific ``stereotypes'' given to

tourists from specific national origins. For

example, residents have been reported tostereotype French and Italians as excessively

demanding (Boissevian and Inglott, 1979),

English as stiff, socially-conscious and honest

(Pi-Sunyer, 1977), and American as cautious,

calculating and purposeful (Brewer, 1978).

Though there is considerable debate as to the

accuracy of such national stereotypes (Dann,

1993), there is little doubt that culture is one

of many forces influencing consumer decision

making (You et al., 2000; Pizam and

Sussmann, 1995; Assael, 1987). According toPizam and colleagues, the focus of tourism

research in this area should be to identify and

understand the cultural differences that are

not only scientifically valid but provide

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John C. Crotts and Ron Erdmann


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information useful to practitioners. We

contend that determining the extent to which

national culture influences a consumer's

willingness to report dissatisfaction and its

subsequent influence on the likelihood that

the customer will recommend the service to

others are issues worthy of investigation.

National culture has been defined in

hundreds of ways (Erez and Early, 1993).

Arguably, the most widely utilized dimensions

of culture are the five presented by Hofstede

(1980) and his colleagues (Hofstede and

Bond, 1988) from their instrument called the

Values Survey Module or VSM. Briefly,

they are:

(1) power distance (a tolerance for class

differentials in society);

(2) individualism (the degree to whichwelfare of the individual is valued more

than the group);

(3) masculinity (achievement orientation,

competition, and materialism);

(4) uncertainty avoidance (intolerance of

risk; and later,

(5) the Confucian dynamic, or long-term

orientation (stability, thrift, respect for

tradition and the future).

Drawing from Hofstede's (1991) research,

Asian societies tend to score high in long-term

orientation, collectivism and power distance,

but mixed in terms of masculinity and

uncertainty avoidance characteristics. On the

other hand, Western societies tend to score

low long-term orientation, collectivism,

power distance and uncertainty avoidance,

but mixed in terms of masculinity. The

masculinity index was selected since it most

clearly articulates the cultural traits that are

assertive, judgmental and have less concern

for the feelings of others, which in turn shouldbe reflected in their consumer satisfaction

scores.

Method

The data for the study were from the 1996,

1997 and 1998 Inflight Survey of Overseas

Visitors to the United States. Annually, the

US Department of Commerce's Tourism

Industries surveys more than 80,000 overseasvisitors on regularly scheduled flights with

self-administered questionnaires distributed

in-flight by airline flight crew personnel after

departure from the USA. Employed is a

random cluster sampling procedure, where all

passengers on randomly selected flights. on

randomly selected days, are administered the

self-administrated survey instrument.

Currently there are 61 US and foreign flag

carriers cooperating with the survey and

response rates are generally quite high,

averaging 58 percent (Tourism Industries,

1999).

The survey itself is composed of 29

questions and is available in 11 languages.

Each language version of the survey has been

forward and back translated to insure

uniformity among the versions. The purpose of

the survey is to elicit visitor feedback and travel

party and trip characteristics of overseas

visitors that firms can use to better understand

and serve the overseas markets. Two of thesequestions ask respondents to rate the quality of

the airport in which they had just departed, as

well as the airline they were using, on a variety

of attributes along a five point scale (where 5 =

excellent; 1 = poor). A third question attempts

to estimate customer loyalty by asking

respondents if they would ``choose or

recommend the airline they were using on their

next trip on this route''. Responses are

recorded along a five point scale where

1 = definitely would, 2 = probably would,

3 = probably would not, 4 = definitely would

not and 5 = unsure. These three ratings were

used as dependent measures in the subsequent

analysis. The principle limitation of the data is

that the name of the airline the respondent

evaluates is considered proprietary information

that is not released to researchers.

For purposes of the analysis, the dataset

was limited to those respondents who

indicated their country of birth was the UK,

Germany, Japan, Brazil and Taiwan. These

countries were selected for their significanceto the USA's overseas market (i.e. in 1998,

55.1 percent of overseas arrivals resided in

these six nations) but also due to their unique

scores along Hofstede's (1980, 1991) national

culture measures. In addition, the selection of

country of birth was made over country of

citizenship since research has shown that

virtually all of the cultural dimensions of

interest are learned by the age of ten years and

remain relatively immune to change over the

remaining life span (Hofstede, 1991).The second phase in the sample selection

process delimited the final sample to those

visitors who had not visited the USA in the

previous five years; whose primary trip

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purposes were deemed discretionary (i.e.

holidays, leisure, visiting friends and

relatives); who were between the ages of 45 to

60 years of age; and were employed in

managerial or professional occupations.

Hofstede (1991) warned that comparisons of

countries should always be based upon people

of the same socio-economic groupings since

social class also influences behavior.

Controlling for the number of previous visits

(e.g. no previous visits to the USA in past five

years) and trip purpose (e.g. discretionary)

was also deemed appropriate since the trip

planning characteristics can be quite different

between these groups (Oppermann, 1998;

Guy et al., 1990, Gitelson and Crompton,

1984) and not controlling for their effects may

have biased the results. The specific age andoccupation categories were selected by way of

the frequencies of responses to preserve the

sample sizes while still controlling as much as

possible the influence on the study's

dependent measures. The net effect of

employing the five criteria reduced the entire

database to 983 respondents, or less than

1 percent of the available database.

Subjects were next assigned to one of three

groups based upon Hofstede's (1980, 1991)

national cultural rankings along the

masculinity index. Specifically, subjects from

Japan were assigned to the high masculine

group (Japan ranked first of 53 nations),

subjects from the UK and Germany (ranks

tied at ninth/tenth of 53 nations) were

assigned to the middle masculinity group and

subjects from Brazil and Taiwan (27th and

32nd of 53 nations) to the low masculinity

group. Though these measures of national

culture are dated, Hofstede notes that national

cultures change very slowly and when:

Cultures shift,F F F

they shift together, so that thedifferences between them remain intact (1991,

p. 77).

Given that the six nations selected in this

study were chosen for their unique

differences, the relative national cultural

differences between them should have

remained unchanged. In all, three matched

samples were derived where 582 (59.2

percent) subjects were assigned to the high

masculine group, 283 (28.8 percent) to the

middle group and 118 (12.0 percent) to thelow masculine group again for a total of

983 respondents.

These national culture measures and their

subsequent groupings provided a means in

which to explore if national culture indeed

predicts tourist behavior. Specifically,

individuals born in a cultural setting where

modest behavior is the norm (i.e. femininity)

will be less critical in the evaluations of tourist

services when compared to respondents born

in cultural settings where aggressive (i.e.

masculine) behaviors are the norm.

Furthermore, national cultural differences

will be evident in explaining differences in

customer loyalty as reflected by visitors' self

reported intentions to make a repeat purchase

and recommend the service to others.

Results

Description of sub groupsDescribing the sub samples' social

demographic characteristics would be

meaningless since the sampling criteria

eliminated most differences. However, a

number of issues are interesting from a

methodological perspective. First, self reports

of country of birth differed from country of

residence in only nine (0.9 percent) of the 983

cases. This was somewhat disappointing in

that a priori we wished to explore the effects

of culture of residents on culture of birth

values. Though an intriguing issue, such an

analysis is not often possible since one

measure tends to mirror the other even in

large datasets of this nature.

Even with the sampling criteria being

employed, further steps were warranted to

test for differences between the sub sample

groups. When asked to indicate their gender,

approximately three-quarters of each sample's

respondents indicated they were female (see

Table I). However, the proportion of

respondents who were female wassignificantly higher in the high masculine

group at 84.4 percent. Gender, like

nationality of birth, is an important factor to

account for in analyses of this nature since

men, on average, are programmed with

tougher values than women, though the gap

between them varies by country. According to

Hofstede (1991), the gap between genders

rises along with masculinity scores, implying

that the higher representation of females in

the high masculine group should producemore moderate or less harsh evaluations in

contrast to what was predicted. Though

gender differences should be anticipated,

Hofstede has warned that they are:

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F F F statistical rather than absolute, [implying]

that there is an overlap between the values of

men and women so that any given value may be

found among men and women (Hofstede, 1991,

p. 85).

To further determine, where possible, that the

sub groups were matched in all important

areas, crosstabs were produced on where the

respondents were sitting on the aircraft.

Approximately nine out of ten respondents

indicated they were sitting in the economy or

coach section of the airplane. Though the

distribution across the three groupings wassimilar, respondents in the high masculine

group as a whole reported sitting in business

class significantly more often than the other

two groupings (see Table I). Predicting the

potential effect of such differences is difficult.

On the one hand, the vast majority of

published complaints in newspapers indicate

that passengers in the economy class

experience the most frustration due to the

frugal level of service. On the other hand,

perceived service quality is often defined asthe value received for the price paid (Murphy

and Pritchard, 1997; Chang and Wildt, 1994)

so first-class and business-class passengers

may be more discerning when it comes to

evaluating service quality when compared to

their economy-class counterparts. However,

such differences should be revealed in the

level of service and not so much in the airport

or airline facilities that made up the majority

of dimensions respondents could evaluate.

Does national culture influence customer

evaluations?

Respondents ratings of airport facilities, on

average, were in the average to good range.

Only the ratings of concessionary prices

dipped into the poor range (Table II). As

predicted, respondents assigned to the low

masculinity national culture group reported

on average more positive evaluation of airport

facilities. Moreover, the between group

differences were most pronounced when

respondents in the low to middle masculinity

groups were compared to respondents in the

high masculinity (i.e. Japan) group. Both

Sceffe and Donnett T3 post hoc tests revealed

significant differences between the high and

low masculinity groups on all ten criteria in

the directions predicted. On the other hand,

differences between the medium masculinity

group with either the low or high masculinity

groups were few. Though the average ratings

across all three groups were in the direction

predicted, respondents assigned to the

medium group reached statistical significance

only in ratings of quality concession goods

and airport security.

Similar differences were revealed

comparing the responses of the lower tomiddle masculinity groups with the high

masculine group on their evaluations of the

airflight (Table III). Respondents in the high

masculine grouping reported on average

lower ratings of airline service quality than

their lower masculine counterparts on 14 of

the 15 evaluative criteria. However, no

statistical differences were found between the

lower and middle masculinity groups.

It is worth noting that the three groups

virtually mirrored one another in terms oftheir average rating of airline ability to have an

on-time departure. On a relative basis, this

dimension of service quality was ranked low

by all three groups, suggesting that when

Table I Description of the samples national cultural groupings by gender and where seated on aircraft

Low Medium High

Gender

Male (percent) 23.3 26.0 16.0

Female (percent) 76.7 74.0 84.4

100 100 100Chi 13.60, p < 0.001

Where are you sitting on the airplane?

1st class (percent) 0.8 0.3 1.5

Business class (percent) 4.2 2.6 10.4

Economy (percent) 95.0 97.0 88.1

100 100 100

Chi 22.63, p < 0.000

Sample sizes 118 283 582

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delay occurs it has a negative influence on

ratings, regardless of cultural norms.

What influence does national culture

have in predicting customer loyalty?

Asked ``Would you choose or recommend this

airline for your next trip on this route?'', 18.8

percent indicated that they definitely would,

59.6 percent said they probably would, 5.0

percent they probably would not, 1.7 percent

definitely would not and 12.0 percent were

unsure. Responses to this question were used

to classify into two separate groups, which are

similar to Heskett et al.'s (1997) classification

strategy. They were the definite repeat

purchasers and third party endorsers

(hereafter refered to as loyals) comprised of

216 respondents and the unlikely to repeat

purchase or recommend to others (hereafter

refered to as potential defectors) comprised of

190 respondents. The large 59.6 percent of

the sample who indicated they probably

would repeat purchase was dropped from the

analysis in an effort to create the greatest

possible distances between the bivariate

loyalty groups.

A canonical discriminant analysis with the

stepwise procedure was conducted with the

Table II ANOVA table mean differences between national cultural groups in evaluation of US airport facilities

Low Medium High F p-value

Dimension rated

Airport access 3.92a 3.90b 3.62a,b 12.31 0.000

Ground transportation 3.84a 3.78b 3.31a,b 30.5 0.000

Terminal convenience 3.82a 3.74b 3.26a,b 33.03 0.000Cleanliness 3.96a 3.92b 3.47a,b 36.89 0.000

Concession goods 3.68a,b 3.20a,c 3.07a,b,c 17.58 0.000

Concession prices 2.97a 2.60b 2.52a,b 5.31 0.005

Terminal seating 3.73a 3.48b 3.05a,b 31.67 0.000

International facilities 3.53a 3.36b 3.00a,b 22.15 0.000

Security 3.93a,b 3.59a,c 3.33a,b,c 28.15 0.000

Overall evaluation 3.74a 3.54b 3.32a,b 15.45 0.000

Notes: Scored on a five point scale where 5 = excellent and 1 = poorMean values with the same subscripts significantly differ from one another employing both Scheffe and DonnettT3 tests at p < 0.01

Table III ANOVA table mean differences between national cultural groups in evaluation of airlines

Low Medium High F p-value

Dimension rated

Convenient schedules 3.99a 3.90b 3.57a,b 17.12 0.000

Ticket price 3.34a 3.76b 3.23a,b 26.01 0.000

Reservation service 3.75a 3.81b 3.43a,b 15.63 0.000

Check-in waiting time 3.66a 3.55b 3.14a,b 26.60 0.000

Check-in personnel 3.79a 3.95b 3.41a,b 34.50 0.000

Departure time 3.54 3.58 3.57 0.044 0.957

Food and beverage 3.55a 3.65b 3.33a,b 10.14 0.000

Flight attendants 3.98a 4.07b 3.78a,b 10.77 0.000

Cabin cleanliness 3.88a 4.02b 3.58a,b 28.74 0.000

Cabin noise level 3.36a 3.29b 2.97a,b 18.64 0.000

Seat comfort 3.13 3.13a 2.86a 8.22 0.000

Cabin layout 3.54a 3.47b 3.07a,b 28.28 0.000

Carry on storage 3.68a 3.63b 3.14a,b 42.11 0.000

Overall evaluation of aircraft 3.84a 3.80b 3.46a,b 19.88 0.000

Overall evaluation of airline 3.85a 3.86b 3.50a,b 24.61 0.000

Notes: Scored on a five-point scale where 5 = excellent and 1= poorMean values with the same subscripts significantly differ from one another employing both Scheffe and DonnettT3 tests at p < 0.01

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loyals and defectors variable as the group

membership variable (1, 0). The purpose of

the disciminant analysis was to identify the

relative importance of national culture in

combination with satisfaction measures in

discriminating between loyalty and defectors

customers. In addition, the two dummy

variables describing the compartment of the

aircraft in which the respondent was sitting

(i.e. first class, business class, economy class)

and gender were included to test other

competing hypotheses simultaneously. The

stepwise procedure provided a means to

determine the relative importance of each of

the variables to significantly increase the

loyalty prediction. Again the analysis rests on

the assumption that not accounting for social-

cultural differences in satisfaction measures

may lead to less accurate loyalty measures.

A test of equality of group means revealed

significant differences between those

respondents in the loyal and defector groups

on five of the six independent variables. Table

IV shows the means and statistical differences

of the independent variables relative to the

group membership. As predicted, loyalty

groups differed significantly on satisfaction

measures. Subjects indicating high loyalty

tendencies rated the aircraft and flight in the

good to excellent range while subjects

revealing terrorist tendencies rated the same

attributes in the fair to average range. In

addition, subjects who indicated that they

were born in the less masculine societies a

measure of national culture reported greater

loyalty tendencies than those born in more

masculine societies. Conversely, those

subjects reporting their country of birth in

masculine societies were more likely to report

defector attitudes. Significant differencesbetween males and females were also found

where females were most likely to report

loyalty than males. Surprisingly, no significant

differences were found between

compartments in the aircraft in which the

passenger was sitting.

Results of the canonical discriminate

function, shown in Table V, reveals the

discriminant function was statistically

significant, as measured by the chi-square

statistic. With an eigenvalue of 0.124 and a

canonical correlation value of 0.744, the

variables accounted for a significant amount

of the variance. The Wilks lambda which is

the ratio of the within-group sum of squares

to the total sum of squares for the model

indicated that both groups were significantly

different from one another.

Of particular importance in this study was

the need to identify which variables would be

retained in the stepwise procedure as well as

their relative importance in discriminating

between loyal and defector groups. Step 1

retained respondents' overall evaluation of theflight, step 2 the national culture measure and

step 3 respondents' overall evaluation of the

aircraft (Table VI). Gender and where

respondents were sitting on the aircraft were

not significant as to their ability to reduce the

Wilks lambda values and account for the

residual variance.

The final step in the discriminant analysis

was to test the function's ability to correctly

classify respondents into the appropriate

group. The classification accuracy of the

model achieved a relatively high accuracy hit

rate at 88.4 percent where 80.2 percent of the

defector group and 94.9 percent of the loyal

group could be correctly classified.

Discussions and implications

Before summarizing the results of this study

and discussing their implications, it is

important to review this study's limitations.

First, the results should not be construed to

be representative of all tourists from Japan,

the UK, Germany, France, Brazil and

Taiwan, let alone those who visit the USA,

due to the highly delimited nature of the

sample. Without additional research it is far

too premature to make such generalizations.

Table IV Test of equality of group means: loyalty group membership

Independent variables Loyal Defectors F p

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Does National