Customer evaluations of after-sales service contact modes : an empirical analysis of national culture's consequences

Technological advances extend the after-sales services portfolio from traditional service encounters to voiceand bit-based services. Technology enables service organizations to transcend geographical as well as cultural boundaries. It might even result in geographical convergence, often treated synonymously with cultural convergence. In this paper we address this issue. This paper examines the interaction between perceived service performance and national cultural characteristics in the formation of customer satisfaction for three types of after-sales service contact modes. The results suggest that, in contrast to the traditional faceto-face service encounter, the perceived quality-satisfaction relationship is particularly moderated by national culture in case of an after-sales service contact mode mediated by technology.

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