Hospitality-based critical incidents: a cross-cultural comparison

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a cross-cultural comparison of Chinese and American hospitality customers who report critical incidents and the resulting influences that these incidents and recovery efforts had on behavior. Recognizing that hospitality-based organizations are increasingly operating internationally, the study provides insights for managing customer relationships. Design/methodology/approach – The study utilizes the critical incident technique in conjunction with a structured self-administered questionnaire. The sampling approach resulted in 1,146 usable responses. Findings – The results demonstrate statistically significant cultural differences between American and Chinese consumers in terms of reported critical incident types, recovery approaches, and post-incident private voice, public voice, and repurchase intention. Research limitations/implications – This research uses cultural value scores for China and the USA as a way to explain and discuss the findings. Hofstede's model was not tested and the provided explanations should be viewed with caution. Practical implications – The results of this research can provide practitioners with guidelines in regards to service recovery tactics, as well as insights into how customers respond to critical incidents across different cultures. Originality/value – This study adds to the existing literature by investigating empirically critical incident types, recovery tactics, and the consumer post-encounter behaviors of public voice (i.e. complaining), private voice (i.e. negative word-of-mouth, positive word-of-mouth), and repurchase intention in China and the USA.