| The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of culture (U.S citizens versus non-U.S. citizens) and the dimensions of service quality on positive affect, negative affect and delightedness. The sample consisted of students with United States citizenship (n = 34) as well as Korean, Chinese, and Japanese students (n = 48) of a university in the Western United States. In this experiment, SERVQUAL-based service quality dimensions (i.e., tangibles, assurance, reliability, empathy, responsiveness) were systematically manipulated according to an orthogonal design. This design implies that all main effects are uncorrelated. Procedures involved construction of eight scenarios to be evaluated by participants for displeasure (negativity of affect), pleasure/enjoyment (positivity of affect), and delightedness (inspired by Kano model).; The researcher invited a group of study participants to a viewing of a presentation regarding travel related services. After each video segment, students were asked to complete a 10-item questionnaire containing the positive and negative affect items and delightedness designed to measure the feelings they experienced during the video. Hypothesis testing was directed at evaluating main effect of service quality dimensions and the interaction effect of nationality (international vs. American) and service quality dimensions. Comparisons between null models and partial models (service quality dimensions) for all dependent variables indicated that the models were significantly different (for positive affect, chi2 = 575.04, p < .01; for negative affect, chi2 = 343.17, p < .01; for delightedness, chi 2 = 492.96, p < .01). However, the comparison of the partial model with the full model (interaction of nationality and service quality dimensions) was not significant for all of the dependent variables (for positive affect, chi2 = 13.48, p > .01; for negative affect, chi2 = 15.02, p > .01; for delightedness, chi2 = 8.46, p > .01). Results revealed that service quality explains a significant and meaningful portion of variance in all three outcomes, but the interaction of service quality and nationality is both nonsignificant and, in the sample data, negligible in strength. |
