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This study aims to investigate whether and how strongly cultural (mis)matches influence immigrant customers’ satisfaction, as well as if this relationship is mediated by cultural or service employee performance attributions. In addition, the authors test whether attributions differ depending on the service delivery outcome (success vs failure).

The 2 (origin of service employee: Austria or Turkey) × 2 (service delivery outcome: success or failure) scenario-based experiment includes 120 Turkish immigrant customers in Austria.

Contrary to previous research, the results indicate that in an immigrant customer context, cultural (mis)match does not influence customer satisfaction. The service delivery outcome is a boundary condition. With a positive service delivery outcome, immigrant customers attribute the results to the cultural background of the employee if it is the same as their own, but they attribute success to employees’ performance if they belong to the immigration destination culture. For negative service delivery outcomes, neither cultural nor performance attributions arise.

This study is the first to focus specifically on immigrant customer behavior in a high-involvement service context. The results challenge the predictions of social identity theory and the similarity-attraction paradigm and highlight that the immigrant context is unique. In this context, attributions play a key role in determining customer satisfaction.

Followers are assumed to use implicit leader prototypes when evaluating leader behavior. Cross‐cultural theorists suggest that these leader prototypes are influenced by national culture. To test this relationship, the present study examined leader prototypes in a cross‐cultural study with Danish and American participants. These two cultures have been found to differ significantly on two major cultural dimensions: individualism and masculinity. It was expected that individuals would rate a leader candidate that matched their own culture as more effective and more collegial than a leader that did not match. Unexpectedly, the highest leader ratings were not in conditions with a cultural match between participants and leader candidate. Rather, both cultures saw feminine leaders as most collegial and feminine‐individualistic leaders as most effective.

This study uses Hall's (1976) theory of low/high context culture with theories of interpersonal adaptation (Gudykunst, 1985; Patterson, 1983) to test communication preferences, flexibility, and effectiveness in same‐ and mixed‐culture negotiation. Ninety‐three same‐culture low context (Israel, Germany, Sweden, and U.S.), 101 same‐culture high context (Hong Kong, Japan, Russia, Thailand), and 48 mixed‐culture mixed context (U.S.‐Japan, U.S.‐Hong Kong) dyads negotiated a 1 ½ hour simulation. Transcripts were content coded for direct and indirect integrative sequences and analyzed with hierarchical linear regression. Supporting the theory, results revealed more indirect integrative sequences in high context dyads and more direct integrative sequences in low context and mixed context dyads. Direct integrative sequences predicted joint gains for mixed context dyads.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a framework that creates a common language to enhance the connection between the domains of cultural heritage (CH) artifacts and instruction.

The CH and instruction domains are logically deconstructed into dimensions of functions, semiotics, CH, teaching/instructional materials, agents and outcomes. The elements within those dimensions can be concatenated to create natural-English sentences that describe aspects of the problem domain.

The framework is valid using traditional social sciences content, semantic, practical and systemic validity constructs.

The framework can be used to map current research literature to discover areas of heavy, light and no research.

The framework provides a new way for CH and education stakeholders to describe and visualize the problem domain, which could allow for significant enhancements of each. Better understanding the problem domain would serve to enhance instruction informed from collections and vice versa. The educational process would have more depth due to better access to primary sources. Increased use of collections would reveal more ways through which they could be used in instruction. The framework can help visualize the past and present of the domain, and envisage its future.

Attempts to transfer Western management theories without considering the host's cultural value system is a prescription for failure. While conceptual frameworks for understanding cultural differences exist, such as the ones developed by Hofstede and Hall, we know little about which managerial practices are relevant in what cultural settings. Adopting the view that the effectiveness of different management behaviors depends on the culture in which they are practiced, this paper develops various propositions that match specific managerial behaviors with cultural work values. The matching of managerial behaviors with cultural values has a wide range of applications in overseas selection decisions and training programs.

‘Black Africans’ in England are disproportionately and highly affected by the heterosexually contracted HIV epidemic. Policy and practice frameworks have advocated ethnic matching in HIV prevention. We explore how self‐identifying ‘black African’ workers in London were co‐producers of ‘black African’ identities to target in preventative HIV interventions. Drawing on a focused literature review and 12 in‐depth interviews with workers, the paper identifies themes associated with co‐production of an African identify by workers. The historical inclusion of the category ‘black African’ in the 1991 census coincided with the emergence of Africans as at higher HIV ‘risk’. In co‐producing an African public, the workers projected their heterosexual and Christian affiliations on to the targeted population, perceiving themselves as ‘insiders’ knowledgeable about rumours that had historically co‐produced African identities. Fear of those in authority galvanised the formation of African‐led agencies, offering entry points for HIV prevention to Africans. By projecting aspects of their complex ‘selves’ on to the ‘other’, encounters in public spaces were deemed ‘opportunities’ for outreach interventions. The ethics of ‘cold calling’, confidentiality and informed consent were taken as ‘given’ in these socially produced ‘private’ spaces located in ‘public’ venues. In following HIV prevention frameworks as advocated by Pulle et al (2004), the workers endorsed yet problematised the notion of ethnic matching.

With rising globalization, Western and Eastern brands are increasingly collaborating and co-branding. Drawing on the theory of dialectical self that captures the degree of cognitive tendency to tolerate conflicts, inconsistencies and ambiguities in self-concept, this paper investigates the effect of consumer dialectical self on co-branding that encompasses Western and East Asian cultural brand personality traits.

Two studies were conducted using Chinese participants to examine the effects of the dialectical self on co-brand evaluation under single-and dual-personality conditions and to explore the mediating role of ideal social self-congruence and the moderating role of product type (high vs low conspicuous).

The findings suggest that counterintuitive to the received wisdom, the dialectical self negatively influences one's attitude towards a co-brand in the dual-personality condition only. Further, ideal social self-congruence mediates the relationship between the dialectical self and dual-personality co-brand evaluation in the high conspicuous product condition only.

Important implications are offered to international marketing managers for managing the dialectical self that lead to positive co-brand evaluations. Moreover, managers should highlight ideal social self-congruence for co-branding success for particular product types.

This paper examines co-branding from a novel perspective of consumer dialectical self and shows the pivotal role it plays when brands carry varying cultural traits engage in co-branding. By identifying the role of the dialectical self and the important mediator and moderator, the paper fulfils an important gap in co-branding literature and offers key implications.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the context of ad pictures differs between Chinese ads and US ads and whether it can influence consumers' ad attitudes.

An ad content analysis and a laboratory experiment were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Findings suggest that contextualized ads appear more frequently in Chinese magazines because East Asians have a context‐dependent mode of thinking while westerners have a context‐independent mode of thinking. However, the effect of culture on advertising is moderated by product class (goods vs service), product category, and magazine category. Moreover, East Asians prefer contextualized ads to non‐contextualized ones, while westerners prefer non‐contextualized ads to contextualized ads. However, the effect of culture on ad attitudes may be moderated by ad involvement.

The limitations of this study stem from its being based on ad samples from China and its use of students to test ad attitudes.

The findings allow managers to better determine whether and under what conditions to use contextualized or non‐contextualized advertisements.

The study's examination of the effect of culture on the context of ad format and effect of context on persuasion in this context constitutes a unique and valuable contribution to the literature. The paper also contributes much to the literature by checking cultural differences across 17 magazine categories, compared to the vast majority of studies analyzing ad content between eastern and western cultures, which have been based on ads from only a few sources.

The purpose of this research was to identify and create a decentralized development system specific for the whanau (family) and hapu/runanga (sub-tribe) members of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu. In New Zealand, a number of Maori tribes have negotiated compensation with the New Zealand Government for past injustices. These assets are typically centralized within iwi (tribal) corporate structures to protect and grow the asset base on behalf of tribal constituents. This centralization of assets has caused political tension within tribes.

This paper provides a case study of whanau/hapu-level businesses facilitated by the post-settlement iwi – Ngāi Tahu – to demonstrate how each level can work synergistically to encourage multi-level economic development in a way that matches cultural patterns and expectations. Participant action research theory and practice was utilized by researchers from Toitu Te Kainga (Regional Development Unit of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu) between 2008 and 2012. This was informed by an Enterprise Facilitation person-centred perspective and a Kaupapa Māori philosophy of respect and empowerment of the participants needs.

This paper argues that while a certain level of centralization is required, to ring-fence and protect tribal assets at an iwi (tribal) level, the benefits gained by that centralization can then be utilized to provide a springboard for decentralized economic development at the whanau (family) and hapu (sub-tribe) levels.

This new indigenous development system is referred to as the symbiotic development model and is an original outcome of this research paper. The paper concludes that tribal economic development in the post-settlement era in New Zealand needs to combine aspects of both centralization and decentralization.

The purpose of this special issue is to extend the growing research on the challenges and opportunities facing services marketers in an increasingly culturally diverse global marketplace.

The nine papers included in this special issue use a variety of research methods (e.g. case study, experiments and surveys), participants (e.g. customers, employees and online panel members) and service settings (e.g. fast food, post office, weight loss, bank, home loan, personal fitness and offshore outsourcing).

All the nine papers highlight the importance of studying the unique perspectives of the customers and employees involved in intercultural interactions in diverse service settings in marketplaces and societies that are either already or have recently become multicultural.

The findings from the nine papers have useful implications for future research on services marketing in multicultural markets, although these may not always be generalisable beyond the unique context of the studies reported in each of these papers.

All the nine papers also present some useful directions for services marketing managers in the multicultural markets, to help them understand and manage the expectations of their culturally diverse customers, as well as employees.

This special issue is unique because it is one of the first attempts to understand the unique challenges and opportunities for services marketers in the growing multicultural global marketplace, from a theoretical, as well as empirical, point of view.