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Introduction
Globalization and its allied factors have created a more culturally diverse and complex marketplace (Sharma et al., 2015; Sharma et al., 2016). Culturally diverse marketplaces represent service encounters among customers and employees of different origins who have their own expectations and outlooks toward service interactions (Sharma et al., 2009). Differential expectations in intercultural service encounters can lead to misinterpretations, eventually resulting in displeased customers, reduced satisfaction and loss in patronage (Sharma et al., 2015; Sizoo et al., 2005). While managing expectations and sensitivities of diverse customers is daunting, a more serious concern is the context of these service encounters: an increasingly intolerant environment in the developed economies toward minorities and other vulnerable customers (Beauchamp, 2016). Against this backdrop, service firms need to develop a better understanding of the varying expectations and outlooks of diverse customer groups if they desire to provide great service experience and enjoy customer satisfaction. One way to manage service experience is to embrace customer language preferences in service encounters (Holmqvist and Grönroos, 2012; Zolfagharian et al., 2017).
Language plays a central role in interactions between employees and customers and often forms the basis for their evaluation of service encounter (Holmqvist et al., 2017). The use of language in intercultural service encounters is further exacerbated by the fact that language can imply inclusion or exclusion with respect to a social group (Linke, 2004; Miller, 2000). As globalization and multiculturalism continue to broaden, the sociopolitical consequences of choice and use of language will increase (Heller, 2010). The appropriate choice and use of language can reduce the misunderstandings that permeate intercultural service encounters and lead to better service outcomes, including customer satisfaction (Touchstone et al., 2017).
Despite the importance of language, limited attention has been directed toward understanding its role in shaping customer service encounter experience (Holmqvist and Grönroos, 2012; Holmqvist et al., 2017). Extant literature on intercultural service interactions identify that service employees may attune several communication modes (e.g. style, etiquette and speech) to arrive at a compromise when dealing with culturally diverse customers (Gaur et al., 2017). Literature also recognizes other related influencers of service experience, including attribution (Tam et al., 2014), intercultural communication competence (Ihtiyar and Ahmad, 2015) and...