The Role of National Culture on Relationships Between Customers’ Perception of Quality, Values, Satisfaction, and Behavioral Intentions

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of individualistic cultures (such as the American culture) and collectivistic cultures (such as the Chinese culture) on the interrelationship among service quality, food quality, perceived value, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions in the fast-food industry. First, the authors provide empirical evidence of the robust relationships among the constructs across diverse cultures. Second, they investigate how moderator variables such as customer age, gender, and national culture affect customer behavioral intentions. Moreover, they examine how national culture, as a moderator, affects the magnitude of the relationships among these constructs. Using survey data collected from the United States and China, results indicate that national culture does have a moderating effect on the relationships and there are differences in the behavioral intentions of American and Chinese customers. More specifically, in the United States, service quality and food quality have a stronger influence on customer satisfaction than in China. Also, the effect of perceived value on customer satisfaction and the effect of customer satisfaction on customers’ behavioral intentions are stronger in China than in the United States. Overall, the findings provide rare crosscultural insights and thus serve as building blocks for strategies in the global fast-food domain