CULTURED MINDS

REVIEWS & EVALUATION

 

Review etiquette is, unsurprisingly, culturally influenced so research from this area can help companies tailor their responses to consumer praises, complaints and requests. Underlying themes such holistic (involving both negative and positive) versus analytic (more unidimensional) perception and the dialectical emphasis on moderation compared to a logical-thinking preference for defined yes-or-no outcomes are useful for explaining patterns in review behaviours. 

 

For example, a study observing reviews for electronic products on Amazon.com/cn revealed that Chinese customers tended to focus more on negatives and provided shorter reviews than American customers did. Americans also gave more recommendations (He, Lai & Zhou, 2012). This does not mean that Chinese people are more negative or more succinct than Americans; it implies that norms concerning reviews are different. Some studies suggest that people from collectivistic cultures can find negative information more useful (Lee, Aacker & Gardner, 2000) and interpret negative feedback as more motivational (Van-Dijk & Kluger, 2004; Peters & Williams, 2007). Or perhaps in China customers generally only decide to write reviews if something has gone wrong, whereas Americans treat product feedback pages more like a forum to discuss products and help others. 

 

 

Evaluations of services (rather than products) using a dentist office setting revealed that Japanese customers are more conservative in their evaluations of superior service but are less critical (or more forgiving) of inferior service. 

 

 

(Furrer, Liu & Sudharshan, 2000) went further and researched the relative importance of seven service quality dimensions from one culture to another. Among other observations, they posit that people from high power distance cultures expect to feel assured in their interactions with companies. Meanwhile people from cultures high in individualism do not value feeling assured (to the same extent) but instead demand a high level of service quality and expect companies to be very responsive. The most typical/common combinations of these dimensions were codified into different ‘profiles’ with interesting predictions for their different consumer service requirements.