A social exchange perspective on boosting customer loyalty through culturally competent servers

ABSTRACT

Limited research has examined how employees’ cultural competency may influence customers experience and behaviors. Building on social exchange theory, this study proposed and tested a model focusing on how guest gratitude mediated the relationships between three dimensions of servers’ cultural competency, cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, and cultural skills, on customers’ future behavioral intentions. Using empirical data collected from cross-cultural service encounters in luxury hotels in Australia, findings of the study revealed that cultural awareness and skills were significantly related to guest gratitude that, in turn, significantly influenced customers future behavioral intention. This study contributes to social exchange theory by adopting gratitude as a mediator in the reciprocal relationship between servers’ cultural competency and customer behavioral intentions. The study highlights the importance of training current hospitality employees and preparing future hospitality professionals. In particular, the findings emphasize the importance of enhancing hospitality employees’ cultural competency in cross-cultural service encounters.

有限的研究研究了员工的文化能力如何影响客户的体验和行为. 基于社会交换理论本研究提出并测试了一个模型该模型侧重于客人感恩如何调解服务者的文化能力、文化意识、文化知识和文化技能三个维度与客户未来行为意图之间的关系. 使用从澳大利亚豪华酒店的跨文化服务体验中收集的经验数据研究结果表明文化意识和技能与客人的感激感显著相关进而显著影响客户未来的行为意图. 本研究通过将感恩作为服务者文化能力和顾客行为意图之间的互惠关系的中介为社会交换理论做出了贡献. 该研究强调了培训当前酒店员工和培养未来酒店专业人员的重要性. 特别是研究结果强调了提高酒店员工在跨文化服务中的文化能力的重要性.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural competency
• guest gratitude
• future behavioral intention
• hospitality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).