As customers with different cultural values are unsatisfied with the services, what are their responses and how different would they be? How do managers correctly recognize them and take corresponding actions? On June 29th, Doctor Anders Wäppling, from Newcastle Business School of Northumbria University in England, came to visit the School of Business of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies(GDUFS). Combining Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory, he analyzed concrete expression of customers’ acts of complaint, so as to help managers to have an insight into them in advance and timely cope with customer relations.
This lecture was hosted by Zhu Wenzhong, Executive Dean of the School of Business, and attended by Lin Fengfeng, Supervisor of Admission Promotion, Mrs. Liang Yan， Supervisor of Master of Business Administration(MBA) education, Professor Du Yuping and students of MBA.
Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory believes that cultural differences can be considered through five dimensions: individualism vs. collectivism(IDV), power distance index(PDI), masculinity vs. femininity(MAS), uncertainty avoidance index(UAI), long-term orientation vs. short-term orientation(LTO). Based on this theory, Doctor Anders Wäppling put forward four hypotheses of customers’ acts of complaint under different cultural values.
Specifically, customers’ acts of complaint mainly include the following four expressions: negative publicity, departure, the third party mediation and direct expression. Negative publicity is to spread negative judgments. Departure means the service is no longer accepted. The third party mediation is to appeal to a third party. And direct expression means to rightfully offer criticism.
With diagrams and data, Doctor Anders showed the relations between the five dimensions of cultural differences and the four expressions. For instance, when PDI is higher, customers are less likely to use ways like negative publicity and complaint. For customers with higher degree of UAI, they are more likely to apply negative publicity, the third party mediation and direct expression while less likely to choose departure. Besides, by offering comparison diagram of the cultural difference between countries like America, British, Russia, Brazil and Chinese, he provided multiple typical scenarios so as to guide students to think and discuss on the topic of dealing with customer relations around the world.
