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Abstract
Intercultural contact occurs on a daily basis across all facets of life, and is reflective of Australia's multicultural society. This trend is observed in many Western industrialised nations and has contributed to a growing body of research and literature in the field of managing cultural diversity. While much of this research is focused on the internal context of the workplace, relatively little attention has been given to the impact of culture on the service provider and customer interface. In an effort to shed some light on the service experiences of culturally diverse customers, a series of exploratory interviews were conducted. The findings suggest that on the basis of service provider behaviors (both verbal and nonverbal), culturally diverse customers perceive they are the recipients of inequitable service and consequently experience low levels of satisfaction.
Keywords
Service encounter; Cultural diversity; Communication; Discrimination
Introduction
Over the last few decades Australia has witnessed the settlement of various cultural groups. According to the 2001 Census of Population and Housing, just over one fifth (22%) of Australia's population were born overseas and 15% of the population speak a language other than English at home. Coinciding with a culturally diverse population, Australia has also enjoyed phenomenal growths in the service sector, a trend mirrored across many Western industrialised nations. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2003), service industries have surpassed the manufacturing sector in terms of employment, number of businesses and gross value added. It is therefore no exaggeration that Australia's prosperity rests in part, on the success of the service sector.
The influx of immigrants and a growing service sector have each attracted scholarly interest. Nevertheless, the two streams of literature have largely developed independently, and therefore provide limited consideration to the growth of intercultural service encounters. Despite growing awareness of the purchasing power of ethnic minorities (Pires & Stanton, 2000), service encounters as experienced by culturally diverse customers remain largely under-investigated. The key objective of this paper, therefore, is to shed some light on this issue and identify the relationship between service provider behaviors (verbal and non-verbal) and customer satisfaction. This paper will proceed with an overview of the theoretical background, followed by a discussion of the methodology and findings.
The Dyadic Intercultural Service...