Effects of Culture and Service Quality on Affective Service Experience Quality of Guests

This study examined the effect of culture and dimensions of service quality on positive affect, negative affect and satisfaction of hotel guests following a service encounter. Each of 82 participants viewed eight video clips of staged service encounters. Video clips ranged from 5-8 minutes in duration. Based on an orthogonal design, each video depicted a unique combination of levels of five service quality dimensions: reliability, responsiveness, empathy, tangibles, and assurance (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry 1988). Following each clip, participants completed self-report measures of affect and satisfaction. Data were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling techniques (Raudenbush and Bryk 2002; Luke, 2004). The presence or absence of each service quality dimension in the model was indicated with dummy vectors. Results indicate that service experience of guests is substantially affected by the five service quality dimensions, but, in the population included in the experiment, those dimensions do not interact with culture. This study suggests that service providers might optimize guest experiences by focusing on preparation of staff to meet empathy and assurance needs of guests, in addition to the other service quality dimensions