Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Additional Remark: This research was conducted when the author was in Tokyo Institute of
Technology, advised by Prof. Takao Enkawa with cooperation of Mr. Zheng Huang.
1. Introduction
Customer satisfaction has long been a central issue in marketing theory and practice. While the
extant literature examined antecedents and consequences of customer satisfaction, there has been
relatively little study on its antecedents. Moreover, despite increasing concern about
internationalization strategies of companies and organizations, the aspect of cultural difference has
been lacking in customer satisfaction research.
A recent development in customer satisfaction research has been the emergence of the National
Customer Satisfaction Indexes, which not only measure customer satisfaction at the individual
company level, but also provide aggregated results at the industry, sector, and national economy
levels. Sweden was first to establish Swedish Customer Satisfaction Barometer (SCSB), followed
by American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI; Fornell et al. 2005), and currently such indexes
have been operating in Germany, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Iceland, Norway, and in South
Korea. Based on the periodical surveys which are conducted through computer-assisted telephone
interviews from a considerable number of domestic consumers, the scores of individual respondents
are assessed for each company. The company-level scores are aggregated to produce the industry-
level scores, and then the industry-level scores are aggregated to the scores at the level of national
economy.
Johnson et al. (2002) discussed validity of comparisons of these indexes among countries and
industries. Ogikubo et al. (2007) compared customer satisfaction levels among nine countries and
indicated effect of economic institutions and national culture. While the availability of aggregate-
level customer satisfaction data is limited at this point, individual-level analyses will enable more
detailed investigation with higher reliability. This research explores effects of culture and values of
individual consumers on customer satisfaction and repurchase intent.
80 80
USA USA
Finland Finland
Denmark Denmark
70 70
Hong Kong Hong Kong
Norway Sweden Norway Sweden
S. Korea S. Korea
50 50
r = 0.641
Figure 1. Comparison of Customer Satisfaction among Countries (Source: Ogikubo et al., 2007)
To explore validity of Hypothesis 1, correlations between the cultural dimension scores and
customer satisfaction are presented in Table 2Table for the eight products/services and for their
total. The results are separately listed for high-switching-costs industries (mobile terminal, mobile
carrier, hair salon, and bank) and low-switching-costs industries (TV, PC, shampoo, and portal site).
The cultural dimension score was calculated by averaging the results of the three corresponding
questions for each dimension. Broadly, most of the correlational results were insignificant.
Rather, there is a positive correlation between uncertainty avoidance and customer satisfaction with
TV. However, the coefficient sign is negative for the relationship between uncertainty avoidance
and customer satisfaction with mobile terminal, mobile carrier, and hair salon which are high in
switching costs. Therefore this result implies that switching costs intervenes between the cultural
factors and customer satisfaction.
Table 2 Correlations between Cultural Dimension Scores and Customer Satisfaction
Mobile Terminal 0.040 (0.496) 0.056 (0.347) 0.069 (0.240) -0.061 (0.307)
High Mobile Carrier 0.041 (0.481) 0.040 (0.490) -0.010 (0.873) -0.091 (0.118)
Switching Hair Salon -0.089 (0.130) 0.099 (0.090) 0.024 (0.693) -0.031 (0.599)
Costs Bank 0.018 (0.757) -0.151 (0.009) 0.039 (0.532) 0.065 (0.263)
Switching Shampoo -0.039 (0.518) 0.071 (0.242) -0.088 (0.133) 0.069 (0.252)
Costs Portal Site 0.007 (0.911) -0.018 (0.775) 0.096 (0.095) -0.021 (0.734)
All Products/Services -0.017 (0.413) 0.019 (0.366) 0.029 (0.170) 0.002 (0.937)
PDI: Power Distance, IDV: Individualism, MAS: Masculinity, UAI: Uncertainty Avoidance
With respect to sample variability, aggregate customer satisfaction data is the result of averaging
tens of thousands of people therefore individual differences are balanced out. Culture also differs
among individuals but it is cancelled out after aggregation processes. On the other hand, this sort
of individual-level study cannot avoid influence of individual variance, which probably resulted in
the low explanatory power of the results. However, the results of regressing customer satisfaction
with the cultural factors and customer characteristics (gender, age, and occupation) and
product/service type as dummy variables proved that the effect of cultural factors are far stronger
than customer characteristics in the high-switching-costs group.
To further increase the precision of the analysis, the same regression analyses with Table 3 were
carried out after stratifying all the high-switching-costs samples by gender, age, and occupation.
As can be seen from Table 4, the gender-segregated results indicate that the regression coefficient
for uncertainty avoidance is significantly negative in the group of male, and individualism is
significantly positive in the group of female. In the age-separated results, the regression coefficient
for uncertainty avoidance is significantly negative in the group younger than 30s, and individualism
is significantly positive in the group older than 40s. The results of the analysis for the groups
separated by occupation suggested a negative effect of uncertainty avoidance for the student group
and a positive effect of individualism for the working people group. The explanatory power was
improved to be one digit higher in these results than the results in Table 3.
Table 4 Multiple Regression Results Separately Conducted for each Customer Characteristics
Similar to the previous analyses, the negative effect of uncertainty avoidance can be observed in
the results for each product or service. For example, the coefficient for uncertainty avoidance is
negative and significant for mobile carrier and hair salon. On the other hand, such tendency was
not found in the results for TV and PC therefore switching costs which are inherent in the
product/service may also be relevant to the culture-satisfaction relationship.
From the results of the analyses, it was found that customer satisfaction is negatively influenced
by uncertainty avoidance and positively influenced by individualism in cases in which switching
costs is high and switching costs has a role as a moderator of the culture-satisfaction association.
Although explanatory power is marginal, the effect of cultural factors on customer satisfaction is
much stronger than customer characteristics.
5. The Consequences to Repurchase Intent
In order to test Hypothesis 2, the association between the cultural dimension sIn order to test
Hypothesis 2, the association between the cultural dimension scores and variety seeking was
analyzed in the first place. As the variety seeking score, a factor analysis was conducted to the
results of the two relevant questions (with a cumulative percent variance explained of 0.751), and
the first factor score was used. Similar results were obtained from the subsequent analysis when
the average score of the two items was used instead of the factor score. Variety seeking is
positively correlated with individualism (r = 0.159, p = 0.005), negatively correlated with
uncertainty avoidance (r = -0.136, p = 0.017), and positively correlated with masculinity (r = 0.096,
p = 0.089), but not correlated with power distance. Table 5 presents the results of regressing
variety seeking with the four cultural factors using the backward selection method. Similar to the
results of correlation analysis, the negative effect of uncertainty avoidance and the positive effect of
individualism and masculinity can be observed, which supports Hypothesis 2.
Subsequently, a regression analysis by backward selection was carried out using repurchase intent
as the dependent variable and variety seeking, switching costs, and customer satisfaction for each
product/service and for their total. As can be seen from Table 6, in the results for all products and
services, one can observe positive regression coefficient for customer satisfaction and switching
costs and a negative coefficient for variety seeking. These results indicate that repurchase intent is
high under the condition that customer satisfaction and switching costs is high and variety seeking is
low.
In the regression results for each product/service, customer satisfaction has a highly significant,
positive coefficient in all models. The regression coefficient for switching costs was positive and
significant in the seven models except bank. Variety seeking has a significantly negative
coefficient in the results for hair salon, portal site, and bank. These results correspond to
Hypothesis 3 which predicts that variety seeking has a negative effect on repurchase intent but the
magnitude of the impact differs by a product/service.
Table 5 Multiple Regression Results of Variety Seeking with Cultural Dimension Factors Scores
Satisfaction p-value 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
Adjusted R2 0.309 0.223 0.249 0.429 0.289 0.264 0.383 0.305 0.290
To further the examination whether switching costs has a moderating effect also on the
satisfaction-intent or variety-intent relationship, regression analysis of repurchase intent was carried
out to the data stratified by switching costs. From result of regressing repurchase intent with
customer satisfaction, a strong positive effect of customer satisfaction was confirmed in both high-
and low-switching-costs group. The regression result with variety seeking also suggested a
significant negative effect on repurchase intent in both groups. From these results, switching costs
do not work as a moderator on the relationship between customer satisfaction and repurchase intent
or on the relationship between variety seeking and repurchase intent relationship, unlike its
moderating effect on the culture-satisfaction association. Rather, it only works as an explanatory
variable of repurchase intent as shown in Table 6.
6. Discussion
On the basis of the previous results of correlation and regression analysis, this section attempts to
establish an overall model incorporating the cultural factors, variety seeking, switching costs,
customer satisfaction, and repurchase intent. The structural equation model proposed in Error!
Reference source not found. was tested by AMOS 5 (Analysis and Modeling of Optical Systems).
Overall goodness of fit in this model was as follows: χ2 = 633.6,d.f. = 74,GFI = 0.962,AGFI =
0.946,RMSEA = 0.057. While GFI, AGFI, and RMSEA indicate acceptable fit, the model was
rejected by chi-square test. However, Kano (1997) argued that appropriate indicators of goodness
of fit depend on number of sample: χ2 approximation is not enough when the number of sample is
small, while a model is almost inevitably declined for enormous number of sample. χ2 is suitable in
case the number of sample is around several hundred, while GFI or CFI should be applied when the
number of sample is around 10,000. According to his argument, GFI, AGFI, and RMSEA should
be prioritized as the number of sample used in the analysis is 2286, and then the goodness of fit
would be acceptable though not completely supported. In addition, the same analysis was
conducted for each product/service and the results suggested that χ2 ranges from 119.3 at minimum
to 193.9 at maximum (d.f. = 74), and GFI was over 0.90, AGFI around 0.90, and RMSEA under
0.080 for all products/services, which supports high degree of fit for the models.
As can be seen from Figure 3, the standardized estimate for the relationship between the cultural
factor (composed of individualism and uncertainty avoidance) to variety seeking is significantly
positive, and the same is observed for every product and service. Though the path from the cultural
factor to customer satisfaction is not significant, this is due to the moderating effect of switching
costs as explained above (this moderating effect is illustrated as the dotted line drawn from
switching costs to the culture-satisfaction relationship in Figure 3). Accordingly, the model was
constructed separately for high-switching-costs group and low-switching-costs group. In the results
for the high-switching-costs group, there is a highly significant, positive effect of the cultural factor
on customer satisfaction. The path coefficient onto the cultural factor from individualism is
positive and from uncertainty avoidance is negative, and the cultural factor has a positive effect on
customer satisfaction, which means a positive effect of individualism and a negative effect of
uncertainty avoidance on customer satisfaction. These results correspond to the results obtained in
the last section. In addition, the path coefficient from variety seeking to repurchase intent was
significant in the models for portal site and bank. Moreover, customer satisfaction and switching
costs has a significantly positive impact on repurchase intent, and the same was confirmed from the
results for each product/service.
UAI1: Uncertainty Avoidance (C10), UAI2: Uncertainty Avoidance (C11), IDV1: Individualism (C4),
IDV2: Individualism (C5), Variety1: Variety Seeking (B1), Variety1: Variety Seeking (B2)
Figure 3. Structural Equation Model of the Relationship between Cultural Factors, Variety Seeking, Switching
.
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