As service firms look to international markets for growth opportunities, they often encounter consumers who have significantly different expectations and perceptions of service performance. Little is known of the relationships between service performance, price perceptions, satisfaction and behavioral outcomes in diverse cross-cultural consumer segments. Prior work also questions the equivalence in cross-cultural settings of service performance instruments developed in U.S. service environments. Using the international airline industry as the context, an industry-specific service performance instrument is developed and found invariant across Western and Asian settings. The results also reveal both similarities and differences in service performance evaluation and behavior across cultures. This study addresses the need for invariant service performance measures in order to be able to evaluate cross-cultural differences in service performance evaluation effectively; and the importance of service strategy differentiation for diverse cultural groups in international travel settings.

Introduction

International tourism services pose special challenges. These often relate to differences in consumer evaluations across nations and cultures, and dissimilar expectations and preferences as to optimal and adequate service encounters (Bolton and Myers, 2003). Service managers need to be cognizant of the parts of the service experience that are open to cultural influences, and be aware of those that remain stable across cultures. However, there are significant gaps in our understanding of the trade-offs between service performance and price in satisfaction assessment, and the role of satisfaction in influencing behavioral intentions across diverse cultures. Cross-cultural tourism research is largely limited to English-speaking countries, and requires a greater focus on cross-cultural issues in emerging markets (Cohen et al., 2014). It is important also to investigate whether there are differences in how consumers interpret and respond to service performance measures (Li, 2014). Attention to construct, data collection and measure equivalence is critical (Hult et al., 2008). Without evidence of data equivalence, interpretations of cultural differences are problematic, as it is not established that members of different groups are using the same conceptual frame of reference when responding to survey items (Riordan and Vandenberg, 1994). Studies investigating the invariance of service performance and satisfaction measures across national groups support partial measurement invariance only (e.g., Alden et al., 2010; Laroche et al., 2004).