The Influence of Culture in Customers’ Expectations about the Hotel Service in Latin Countries with Different Human Development Levels

Franco Mara () and Meneses Raquel ()
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Franco Mara: Centre for Tourism Research, Development and Innovation, University of Madeira, Funchal, Portugal Campus Universitário da Penteada, 9020-105 Funchal, Portugal
Meneses Raquel: School of Economics and Management of the University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation, 2020, vol. 10, issue 1, 56-73

Abstract: Due to their dynamic nature and importance in the service process definition, customers’ expectations have gained attention from researchers and practitioners, and have been essentially focused in developed countries from the Northern Hemisphere. Still, countries, regardless of the hemisphere, have different levels of socioeconomic development and cultural patterns that can have different influence on customers’ expectations about a service. In this sense, the main purpose of this research is to understand if culture equally influences customers’ expectations about a service in countries with different cultural patterns and human development levels. The multigroup analysis using structural equation modelling was used to calculate the regression weights for all the path combinations in the analysis for each proposed group of countries. About 1262 customers from 10 Latin countries were enrolled in this study to determine their expectations about the hotel service and cultural dimensions. Findings show that cultural dimensions influence customers’ expectations about the hotel service differently in groups of countries with different cultural patterns and levels of human development. Results also indicate that hotel managers should adapt the service to the level of human development of each group of countries when it comes to internationalisation.

Keywords: Customer’s expectations; Hotel; Service dimensions; Cultural dimensions; Latin countries; Human development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:ejothr:v:10:y:2020:i:1:p:56-73:n:5

DOI: 10.2478/ejthr-2020-0005

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