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“good” and “bad” (Trompenaars, 2003). A hotel should be set cultural norms of what 
behaviors are helpful, should be awarded to gain the customer satisfaction and what 
behaviors are harmful, should be discouraged. 
 
Basic assumptions (or implicit culture): pattern of taken-for-granted assumptions about how 
a given collection of people think, act and feel as they go about their daily affairs (Hall, 1976 
and Weiermair, 2000) 
 
 
Figure 7: Levels of culture 
(Source: Adapted from Trompenaars and  Woolliams (2005)) 
4.3 Dimension of culture difference 
 
There are many ways to divide the culture difference. In the hotel industry, the most popular 
divisions is based on power distance; individualist versus collectivist culture and uncertainty 
avoidance (Hofstede, 1980); or contextual variation (Hall, 1976).  
 
 
Power distance: According to Hofstede, 1980, power distance is the extent to which the less 
powerful members of a society expect and accept that power is distributed unequally. Most 
of Asian countries (for example, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand etc) are high in 
power distance (Mattila, 2000; Patterson et al. 2006). Whereas, in many Western countries 
(for example, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and the 
Scandinavian nations), the power distance is very low. 

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Individualist versus collectivist culture: Individualism and collectiveness refer to the degree to 
which individuals are integrated into groups (Huang et al. 1996). Loose ties between people 
characterize the individualist society such as the United States, United Kingdom, whereas 
strong and cohesive ties between group members are characteristics of the collectivist society 
(for example Japan, China). The person in the individualist society is more apt to seek control 
over her or his own fate while in the collectivist cultures everyone are expected to look after 
each other. Consequently a high context communication style is a feature of collectivist culture 
and the low context communication style is a feature belonging to the individualist society. 
 
 
Uncertainty avoidance: “indicates the extent to which a society feels threatened by uncertain 
and ambiguous situations” (Hofstede 1980, p.45). The societies with the high uncertainty 
avoidance level (for example, Japan) attempt to minimize the possibility of happening 
uncertainty by adhering to strict laws and measures or establishing the close relationship with 
the service providers. Many non- Asian countries like Canada, the United States… are low 
uncertainty avoidance cultures. 
 
 
Contextual variation: According to Hall, 1976, the countries have high context cultures such as 
Japan, the building of relationships and trust comes before business. Whereas, in low context 
countries such as Germany and Switzerland the opposite is true. Canada and the United States 
are considered as a relatively low context countries. The low context cultures emphasize 
explicit meaning; the meaning is taken from words. In these cultures the topic is handled 
straightforward. In the other side, the high context cultures pay attention on the context, in 
which the some information is provided and it need not to be verbalized (for example, the 
setting and the status of people involved). In low context cultures, individual achievement and 
individual welfare are the most important factors; whereas, in high context cultures, the 
welfare of the group and the maintaining of group harmony keep the top positions.  

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Figure 8: High/Low context by culture 
(Source: Hall et al, 1976) 
4.4 Impact of culture on customer satisfaction 
According to Wiermair (2000), “cultural norms have an impact on both tourists’ expectations 
and their perceptions of received service quality”; while expectations and perceptions are both 
important factors in the customer satisfaction (Parasuraman, 1995). In other words, the service of 
the hotel service provider is perceived in different ways by different people.  
 
Also refer to the impact of culture on customer satisfaction, Schmitt&Pan, 1994 reported that in 
Asia, the key ingredient of good service seems to be personal attention or customization and not 
the efficiency and time savings that appear so highly valued in the Western countries. This 
service concept is a significant element of overall quality to the Asian consumer. For example, in 
many Asian luxury hotels, a bellboy accompanies guests to the departing car and waits until the 
guests have departed. But this situation almost does not appear in the Western countries. 
 
Another research of Riddle, 1992 suggested that hotel guests from cultures preferring low-
context communication tend to focus their evaluations on task completion and efficient delivery, 
whereas guests from cultures that prefer high context communication tend to focus on the quality 
of the interactions between employees and guests. In large power distance cultures, the lower 

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status of service employee requires them to provide guests with a high level of service. In those 
countries, even guests of low-cost services expect a relatively high level of service (Schmitt & 
Pan, 1994). In other words, Asian guests tend to have higher expectations for the interaction 
quality in a service encounter. Conversely, Western guests are more likely to focus on the 
outcome rather than the process component of the service delivery 
 
 
Impact of culture on consumer complaint behavior 
Guests in different cultures have different types of complaint behaviors and intentions (Liu and 
McClure, 2001). One side, customer complaints express the dissatisfaction of customers. In 
another side, they are the opportunities for managers more understand their guests’ desires and 
find the direct methods to improve the service quality so that they can maintain the competitive 
advantage. The marketers also agree that guests who were encouraged to complain reported 
greater increase in satisfaction and service evaluation compared to guests who were not 
explicitly asked to complain. Therefore, it is important for managers to have knowledge about 
the impact of culture on consumer complaint behavior. 
Jacoby and Jaccard (1981) defined consumer complaint behavior as an action taken by an 
individual which involves communicating something negative regarding a product or service 
either to the firm manufacturing or marketing that product or service or to some third-party 
organizational entity. 
Singh (1988) reported that there were three kinds of complaint behavior: 
•
 
Voice responses ( seeking redress from the seller, the service provider or no action) 
•
 
Private responses ( word- of- mouth communication) 
•
 
Third party responses ( implementing legal action) 
It is not good for the service providers when dissatisfied guests keep in mind the complaint and 
only warn to their family, friends about the weakness of the service instead of commenting to 
service providers. In these cases, service providers are impossible to respond to their guests. 
Moreover, the service providers do not know the weakness in their service which leads to 
unimproved service quality. Besides, in the serious incident that a guest could not tolerate, he or 
she will induce to complain (Nyer, 2002). 

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