Summary and key findings

This thesis focuses on shedding the light on how people from different culture expect in term of service quality and in different service context, especially the two services of higher education and healthcare. In specific, the relationship between culture and service quality expectation is studied through the analysis of the correlation between each dimension of Hofstede cultural dimensions and SERVQUAL dimension.

Throughout the study, these correlations have been examined through the previous literature for assumption and then tested through quantitative data for result. The result shows that there are both differences and similarities in the relationship between culture and service quality expectation in the two contexts. For instance, Individualism is found not correlated with any SERVQUAL dimension in both higher education and healthcare service. However, Masculinity is found positively correlated with all of SERVQUAL dimensions in higher education service but not correlated at all with those in healthcare service. These relationships are later compared with other previous studies. In addition, qualitative study by in-depth interview with correspondents is also implemented for a better understanding of the result. In brief, besides contributing both theoretically and managerially to the current literature of the field, this study also calls for further research on examining the cultural influence on service quality expectation in different

types of services because this thesis has pointed out that based on the nature of the service, the behaviours, attitudes and expectations of an individual customers for a service will vary among cultures. In addition, the sixth dimension of Indulgence should be put into more research, in both of qualitative and quantitative types for better understanding and application because this thesis also finds out the effect this dimension has on service quality expectation in healthcare service.

Firstly, this study contributes to confirming the fact that culture has a considerable influence on service quality expectation of customers. However, this cultural influence will vary across service types, depending on the nature of services. For example, Power Distance correlates with Empathy in the healthcare context, but there is no correlation found between Power Distance and SERVQUAL dimensions in the education context.

Thus, it is insufficient to conduct a one-size-fits-all study to approach and identify the relationship between cultural dimensions and service quality dimensions for a service context in general. In addition, during the analysis and comparison of the cultural influence on service quality expectation between two service contexts, it can be seen that even the categorisation of Lovelock et al. (2011) does help at some points in clarification and explanation of the correlation between cultural and service quality dimensions, there is still a bigger need to delve into the nature of each service type.

Moreover, because both education and healthcare services have people as their direct recipients, it is hard to identify the differences in term of cultural influences based on this service categorisation. Instead, this thesis applies a more specific categorisation of frequent and infrequent service type when explaining the influence of uncertainty avoidance.

Secondly, when it comes to the fact that culture has influence on service quality expectation, it does not mean that every cultural dimension will have the impact. For instance, in the higher education context, only Uncertainty Avoidance and Masculinity are correlated with SERVQUAL dimensions, whereas the other cultural dimensions are not. In addition, the levels of correlation are also different among cultural dimensions.

In the case of education context, Masculinity has a stronger correlation with Responsiveness than Uncertainty Avoidance does. As a result, based on the specific

service type and customer culture type managers should allocate resources and pay sufficient attention to the service quality dimension which receives ample interest from customers. In the context of healthcare, it can be seen that high uncertainty avoidance customers have high expectation of all service quality dimensions whereas high power distance customers expect more empathy from service providers only. In contrast, in the higher education context, it is impossible to rely on the uncertainty avoidance or power distance index of customers to allocate the resources because there is no correlation found in this case.

In order to grasp the overview about the correlations between culture and service quality expectation, the summary table is presented below. The symbol + indicates a positive correlation, the symbol - indicates a negative correlation and the symbol / indicates a non-correlation. The following abbreviaions are used for cultural dimension terms: PDI

= Power Distance, IDV = Individualism, MAS = Masculinity, UAV = Uncertainty Avoidance, LTO = Long-term orientation, IDG =Indulgence.

Table 27. Correlations between cultural and service dimensions in the healthcare context.

Reliability Responsiveness Assurance Empathy Tangibles

Healthcare

PDI / / /  /

IDV / / / / /

MAS / / / / /

UAV     

LTO  /   

IDG  / / / /

Higher education

PDI / / / / /

IDV / / / / /

MAS     

UAV / / / / /

LTO / / / / /

IDG / / / / /

Thirdly, this study also suggests other ways to categorise service types rather than the Lovelock et al. (2011)‟s method and later research could rely on this tentative result to establish other models or approaches in categorising a service type, mainly used for the purpose of culture and service quality study. In details, my study does not either confirm the contingency variables frequent and infrequent services or staff gender suggested by Furrer et al. (2000). It does not mean that these variables are neither applicable nor precise. Indeed, it suggests that there is a need to further delve into this matter because it helps understand the relationship between service quality and culture effectively and comprehensively. For instance, this thesis suggests considering the purpose of the service customers are looking for which may be the effect on the correlation between culture and quality expectation. Specifically, people go to a clinic with the aim to receive cure for a health problem. However, people go to universities for different purposes such as knowledge, degrees, personal development or because of family and social pressure to “get into university” as the case of many Vietnamese young people.

More details about this thesis findings will be discussed in the upcoming parts of theoretical and managerial contributions.