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

Abstract

Technological advances extend the after-sales services portfolio from traditional service encounters to voice- and 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 face-to-face service encounter, the perceived quality–satisfaction relationship is particularly moderated by national culture in the case of an after-sales service contact mode mediated by technology.