Culture and service-related positive disconfirmations

Abstract

It has long been understood in the service sector that positive disconfirmations of expectations drive customer satisfaction. Using a sample of 334 consumers’ travel blog postings that describe positive disconfirmations of international hotel guests, this research finds that a traveler’s home country culture influences whether or not the positive disconfirmation is service-related. Specifically, travelers from individualistic countries and low power distance countries experience a greater proportion of service-related positive disconfirmations than those from collective or high power distance nations. From a theoretical perspective, this research extends the emerging body of research that demonstrates the various influences of culture on consumer satisfaction.

Keywords

Blog analysis collective cultural distance international travel power distance travel blog

Introduction

First conceptualized by Oliver (1980), the expectancy–disconfirmation paradigm (EDP) posits that customers purchase products or services with prepurchase expectations about anticipated performance. According to EDP, the expectation level serves as a psychological benchmark against which the product’s performance is ultimately judged. More specifically, once the product or service has been consumed, each consumer will compare outcomes against expectations to formulate a satisfaction judgment (Bearden and Teel, 1983; Oliver, 1980; Oliver and Burke, 1999). EDP is now one of the most frequently cited frameworks used by tourism researchers in understanding consumer satisfaction (Oh and Parks, 1997; Weber, 1997; Yüksel and Yüksel, 2001).

Although a number of recent studies examine various correlates and consequences of customers’ cultural characteristics in service exchanges and relationships (Reimann et al., 2008; Reynolds and Smith, 2010; Schoefer, 2010), none has explicitly examined how a consumer’s culture influences his/her EDP perceptions. With hotels around the globe attending to millions of international guests on a daily basis, understanding how a guest’s cultural characteristics influence satisfaction judgments is of high managerial relevance. The purpose of this research is to explore this domain through the use of travel blog narratives as a data source.

Blogs are becoming one of the most popular communication platforms on the Internet. For example, in 2006 a new Internet blog was created every second and there were 60 times more blogs in 2006 than in 2003 (Ko et al., 2008). Accounting for a significant portion of this growth in blog activity are travel blogs (Pekar and Ou, 2008). As a consequence, travelers are increasingly considering online opinions when making their travel decisions (Pan et al., 2007). Likewise, researchers are increasingly text mining blog postings in efforts to extract managerially relevant information (Crotts et al., 2009; Pan et al., 2007; Pekar and Ou, 2008). Thus, this study extends this body of research by using travel blog narratives to examine cultural influences in customers’ EDP perceptions.

Literature review and hypothesis development

According to Oliver’s (1980) EDP, when consumers mentally compare their actual consumption experiences with their expectations, one of three outcomes is possible. Confirmation occurs when the actual experience matches expectations (Blodgett et al., 1993). Negative disconfirmation transpires when the actual experience falls short of expectations and positive disconfirmation occurs when the actual experience exceeds expectations (Oliver, 1980). In the current research, the first cultural facet posited to influence EDP perception is individualism/collectivism.

The cultural dimension of individualism/collectivism was first identified by Hofstede (1980) when he surveyed 116,000 IBM employees in 50 countries from 1967 to 1973. Individualism is a mindset in which personal interests are more focused upon than group interests (Wagner and Mock, 1986). Those from an individualistic national culture perceive an individual as an autonomous unit with a distinctive set of qualities (LaRoche et al., 2005: 281). That is, individualists view themselves as more differentiated and separate from others and focus more on establishing their individuality (Bochner, 1994: 274). Hence, those from individualist cultures typically look after themselves more—relative to the group—than those from collective societies (Wagner, 1995).

On the other hand, people from collective societies generally consider the interests of the group as a higher priority than the needs of individuals (Wagner, 1995 ). A collective person feels that his/her actions are substantially influenced by the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of others (LaRoche et al., 2005). That is, in a collective society the distinction between the individual and the group is not salient and individuals view themselves as parts of interactional social systems (Bochner, 1994). Therefore, collectivists perceive themselves as more connected with the people with whom they interact (Bochner, 1994). Interestingly, according to a meta-analysis conducted by Kirkman et al. (2006), individualism versus collectivism is the most widely studied cultural value in the extant business literature.

To relate individualism/collectivism to service-related positive disconfirmations (SRPDs), previous research indicates that individualists are more “sensitive to the service provider’s ability to facilitate their desired outcomes” (Mattila, 1999: 258). This notion that individualists focus more on the service provider’s ability to deliver their desired outcomes stems from their self-orientation and mental programming of self-fulfillment (LaRoche et al., 2005). Within the context of the current study, this self-orientation should be reflected in blog narratives; thus, we make the following prediction:

Hypothesis 1 (H1). A greater proportion of the positive disconfirmations of travelers from individualistic countries will be SRPDs compared to those travelers from collective countries.

Next, this research seeks to relate the reporting of SRPDs to the traveler’s national cultural dimension of power distance. The cultural dimension of power distance addresses the degree to which members of a society accept inequality (Hofstede, 1980, 1983). In cultures characterized by low power distance, relationships between individuals, regardless of formal titles, are generally democratic and consultative. On the contrary, in high power distance societies, people are psychologically conditioned to seek dependence (Hofstede, 1980, 1983). This cultural dimension is manifested in service transactions in the sense that in high power distance cultures, the lower status of the frontline associates mandates that they provide a higher level of service (Mattila, 1999). Since travelers coming from a low power distance country into a high power distance country would typically not be accustomed to such an environment, the following hypothesis is offered:

Hypothesis 2 (H2). A greater proportion of the positive disconfirmations of travelers from low power distance countries will be SRPDs compared to those travelers from high power distance countries.

Finally, cultural distance can be defined as the difference between the national cultural characteristics of home and host culture (Hennart and Larimo, 1998; Shenkar, 2001). Stated differently, the cultural distance construct captures the extent to which two country cultures are different or similar. Cultural distance has been considered in a number of previous research investigations to include the study of hotel expatriate adjustment (Magnini, 2009), technology transfer (Gomez-Mejia and Palich, 1997), multinational expansion (Kim and Hwang, 1992), and the management of international joint ventures (Agarwal, 1994). In a tourism context, Crotts (2004) found that cultural distance between home and host country influences a traveler’s propensity to travel alone and the length and characteristics of the excursion itself.

With regard to applying cultural distance to the current study, the marketing literature clearly indicates that a consumer’s expectations of service are influenced by myriad information sources both formal and informal, and originating from both the provider, as well as other consumers (Zeithaml et al., 1993). Nevertheless, regardless of these building blocks of expectations, in an international travel situation (with all other factors being equal) the more disparate the home and host culture, the more difficult it is for consumers to formulate salient expectations. Thus, this research predicts that this lack of expectation clarity spawned by cultural distance fosters more opportunity for customers to be positively surprised by service-related facets in the ensuing transactions. Based on this logic, the following hypothesis is offered:

Hypothesis 3 (H3). Travelers with high cultural distance (between home and host) will experience a greater proportion of SRPDs than travelers with low cultural distance.

Methods

Sample

To test our hypotheses, a dataset was acquired with permission from TripAdvisor.com, using the travel blog website’s search engine and the phrases “pleasantly surprised,” “delightful surprise,” “excellent surprise,” and “positive surprise” during May–June, 2009. This approach yielded 8944, 183, 53, and 32 results, respectively, for these four phrases. For the purpose of practicality, the first 1000 “pleasantly surprised” results and all of the “delightful surprise,” “excellent surprise,” and “positive surprise” were then content analyzed. In summary, a total of 1,268 blogs were text-mined. Since hotels served as the context of this study, the blogs that pertained to free-standing restaurants and tourist attractions were removed from analysis. In addition, among the hotel cases, 359 blogs did not contain a specific cause of the “surprise,” and were also removed from subsequent analysis resulting in 743 blog narratives remained after this initial screening.

In the next step of data screening, all the blogs that described domestic travel, as opposed to international travel, were also removed for this study. As a result, the final usable dataset was composed of 334 blog narratives. The 334 usable blogs were posted by residents of 31 different nations and described hotel properties in 59 countries. In terms of property type, 74% of the blogs described stays in full service and 26% in limited service hotels. Finally, regarding affiliation, 57% of the study’s sample was composed of recent visitors to independent hotels and 43% were recent guests of chain hotels.

Measurement of variables

Positive disconfirmations

Positive disconfirmations were operationalized as being experienced by bloggers who included one of the following phrases in their hotel narrative: “pleasantly surprised,” “delightful surprise,” “excellent surprise,” and “positive surprise.” In addition, the text-mining software used in this study also detected and included variations of these four phrases such as “pleasant surprise”; therefore, the grammatical composition or structure of the phrase(s) should not intervene to influence the results of this study.

SRPDs

SRPDs were operationalized as those positive disconfirmations (described above) that specifically refer to interpersonal interaction with a service provider. This conceptualization is consistent with Surprenant and Solomon’s (1987: 87) research that describes a service encounter as “the dyadic interaction between a customer and a service provider.” Excerpts from blog narratives that comprise this category include “… the staff was very helpful …” and “… everyone was very friendly …”

Individualism/collectivism

To operationalize this variable, first, the blogger’s home country was recorded from the blog posting. Next, Hofstede’s widely available individualism/collectivism index was used to assign the blogger with a score based on his/her home country as per Reisinger and Crotts (2010). For the purpose of our data analysis, the sample was then divided into two groups based on a median split of this variable. It is prudent to note that the individualistic group in this study is larger than the collective group due to the number of blog postings by US residents.

Power distance

As with the previous construct, first the blogger’s home country was recorded from the blog posting. Next, Hofstede’s widely available power distance index was used to assign the blogger with a score based on his/her home country. For the purpose of our data analysis, the sample was then divided into two groups based on a median split of this variable. It is prudent to note that the low power distance group in this study is larger than the high power distance group due to the sheer number of blog postings by US residents.

Cultural distance

The cultural distance between the blogger’s home country and destination was calculated using Kogut and Singh’s (1988) established measure of cultural distance. In accordance with this method, the difference between the home and host country’s cultural index score is squared and then divided by the variance of the index. The resulting figures for the four indices are then arithmetically averaged to derive a cultural distance score. The sample was then divided into two groups based on a median split of this variable.

Results

Regarding the testing of H1, 7% of the positive disconfirmations reported by travelers from collective nations were service-related, whereas 21% of the positive disconfirmations reported by travelers from collective nations were service-related. As depicted in Table 1, a cross-tab analysis of the two variables indicates that this difference with regard to SRPDs is statistically significant (one-tailed p-value = 0.013, χ ² = 4.99, df = 1). Therefore H1 is supported; these travel blog-generated data indicate that travelers from individualistic countries will experience more SRPDs than travelers from collective countries. According to odds ratios, it can be stated that travelers from individualistic countries are 3.6 times more likely to report SRPD’s than those from collective nations.

Table 1.

Summary of hypothesis testing

Hypothesis	Comparison group: SRPDs		χ2 value	p-value (one-tailed)	Odds ratio
H1	Individualistic: 61 of 290^a (21%)	Collective: 3 of 44 (6.8%)	4.986	0.013	Individualistic/collective: 3.6
H2	Low power distance: 61 of 297^a (20.5%)	High power distance: 3 of 37 (8.1%)	3.282	0.035	Low power distance/high power distance: 2.9
H3	Low cultural distance: 32 of 158 (20.2%)	High cultural distance: 24 of 162 (14.8%)	1.639	NS

^aHigher likelihood of occurrence than comparison group.

SRPD: service-related positive disconfirmation; NS: not significant.

With regard to testing H2, 21% of the positive disconfirmations reported by travelers from low power distance nations were service-related, whereas 8% of the positive disconfirmations reported by travelers from high power distance nations were service-related. As with the previous hypothesis testing, a cross-tab analysis of the two variables reveals that this difference with regard to SRPDs is statistically significant (one-tailed p-value = 0.035, χ ² = 3.28, df = 1). Therefore H2 is supported; these travel blog-generated data indicate that travelers from low power distance countries will experience more SRPDs than travelers from high power distance countries. According to odds ratios, it can be stated that travelers from low power distance countries are 2.9 times more likely to report SRPD’s than those from high power distance nations.

Regarding our cultural distance prediction (H3), 14.9% of the positive disconfirmations reported by travelers in high cultural distance travel scenarios were service-related, whereas 20.3% of the positive disconfirmations reported by travelers in high cultural distance travel scenarios were service-related. A cross-tab analysis of the two variables reveals that this difference with regard to SRPDs is not significant (one-tailed p-value = 0.10, χ ² = 1.64, df = 1). Therefore, H3 is not supported by our travel blog data: high cultural distance travel scenarios do not appear to produce more SRPDs than low cultural distance scenarios.

Discussion

Through an analysis of travel blog postings, this research found that a greater proportion of the positive disconfirmations of travelers from individualistic countries are service-related (SRPDs) compared to those travelers from collective countries. This finding extends previous research that indicates that individualists are more “sensitive to the service provider’s ability to facilitate their desired outcomes” (Mattila, 1999: 258) and that individualists are self-oriented and programmed for self-fulfillment (LaRoche et al., 2005).

Furthermore, the text mining of international travel blog postings also revealed that a greater proportion of the positive disconfirmations of travelers from low power distance countries are service-related (SRPDs) compared to those travelers from high power distance countries. From a theory-building perspective, these findings represent a modest incremental contribution to extant cross-cultural psychology literature. This finding extends previous research that indicates that in high power distance cultures, the lower status of frontline hotel associates mandates that they provide a high level of service (Mattila, 1999); thus, travelers from a low power distance country in a high power distance country would typically not be accustomed to such an environment.

From a methodological perspective, this research serves as an illustration of how travel blog analysis can be used to investigate relationships between variables that cannot be easily investigated using other research methods. That is, it would have been extremely difficult, for example, to reliably incorporate cultural distance measures (between scores of home countries and scores of host countries) through the use of survey data. Since millions of travelers regularly write rich blog postings describing their sentiment regarding various facets of their travel experiences, these blog postings hold significant potential as a valuable source of consumer data. Such blog data can be superior to many forms of survey data because blog data are not prone to some of the response and non-response biases often inhibiting reliable survey research. Blog data, however, are limited in a number of other ways. For instance, while researchers work to develop deception detection techniques for interpreting written language (Hancock et al., 2005; Yoo and Gretzel, 2008; Zehrer et al., 2011; Zhou and Sung, 2008), concern still remains whether a given posting reflects genuine consumer sentiment or some other form of corporate-generated content. Furthermore, the large number of US residents included in this study is a sampling issue that should be considered when designing future research extensions.

While this research served to illustrate the merit in text-mining travel blogs, in the spirit of methodological pluralism, alternate research approaches could serve to further build upon the evidence brought forth in this study. Since the expectancy–disconfirmation model is a premier paradigm in the study of customer satisfaction, other research approaches that delve deeper into travelers’ positive disconfirmations are both academically and pragmatically relevant. For instance, qualitative methods such as depth interviews and/or photo elicitation sessions could probe deeper into consumers’ psychology than did the current study.

Future research extensions, either with or without the use of blog analysis, should consider retesting the SRPD findings in other service settings such as in restaurants or air travel. Nuances of each setting deem them unique with regard to SRPDs. Hotel stays, for example, are typically associated with a greater number of opportunities to spawn an SRPD than restaurant settings. Air travel situations are often ripe for SRPDs due to the low expectations that many consumers possess entering into the consumption experience. This point gives rise to another nebulous area to consider in the study of consumer disconfirmations: the chicken and egg dilemma. Specifically, if a consumer reports an SRPD in a blog posting, is the SRPD a result of top-rate service, low expectations, or both? If both, then which factor dominates? In sum, this appears to be a rich and relevant area of future investigation.

Finally, since blogging is simply one form of consumer word-of-mouth behavior, it could be both theoretically and managerially informative to investigate whether consumers in individualistic or low power distance cultures place higher psychological weighting on service-related information when receiving and interpreting word-of-mouth communications. Such avenues could also be explored in advertising research as multinational companies become increasingly aware of the need to tailor advertising content to account for facets of consumer culture.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Acknowledgement

This article was presented at the 2011 Conference on Social Media and Tourism held in Verona, Italy.

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