Search results

The purpose of this study is to explore how service employee choice and use of language to initiate and maintain conversation with second generation immigrant customers (SGIC) influence customer evaluation of the service encounter, and whether such employee acts may lead customers to employee switching, branch switching (i.e. switching from one to another location within the same brand) and/or brand switching (switching to another brand altogether).

A scenario-based between-subjects experiment of 4 (employee: match, adapt, bilingual, no adapt) × 2 (fast food, post office) × 2 (English, Spanish) was used to examine the SGIC response to service encounters in different contexts arising from employee choice and use of language. These scenarios were complemented with a series of measurement scales. The instruments, which were identical except in scenario sections, were administered on 788 second-generation Mexican American customers, resulting in 271 (fast food) and 265 (post office) effective responses.

In both service contexts, when employees initiated conversation that matched (English or Spanish) the customer expectations, the SGIC perceptions of interaction quality was higher as compared to other scenarios, leading to subsequent satisfaction and lower switching intentions (employee and branch). Similarly, interaction quality was higher for adapt scenarios as compared to bilingual or no adapt scenarios. Bilingual customers perceived higher interaction quality in bilingual/no-adapt scenarios when compared to monolingual customers. In both contexts, service quality and satisfaction were associated with employee switching and branch switching, but not with brand switching.

By utilizing interaction adaptation theory to conceptualize the effects of employee choice and use of language, the study grounds the model and the hypotheses in theoretical bases and provides empirical corroboration of the theory. The study also contributes toward understanding the service encounters from the perspective of an overlooked group of vulnerable customers: second-generation immigrants.

Service research cautions service providers that a key factor in attracting and retaining customers is having detailed communication guidelines and empowering employees to follow those guidelines. The findings go a step further and underscore the critical role of communication from a managerial standpoint. It is in the interest of service organizations to develop guidelines that will govern employee choice and use of language during service encounters. So doing is commercially justified because unguided employee choice and use of language can result in customer switching and attrition.

The juxtaposition between assigned versus asserted identities is an important one not only in social sciences but also within service research. As service encounters grow increasingly multicultural, the need to educate employees on multiculturally appropriate communication etiquette rises in importance. The findings should encourage service firms and local governments to develop formal communication guidelines that begin with multiculturalism as a central tenet permeating all aspects of employee–employee, employee–customer and customer–customer communications. Service providers ought to take precautionary measures to ensure customers will be empowered to assert their identities in their own terms, if they wish so.

The study demonstrates how employee choice and use of language during service encounters may thwart SGIC, who might view such employee behaviors as acts of identity assignment and, consequently, feel stigmatized, marginalized and offended; and links such customer experiences to switching behavior through mediatory mechanisms.

Focused on multicultural service encounters, this paper aims to argue that the interplay between customer language preference, employee choice and use of language affects perceived interaction quality, which in turn influences loyalty, customer brand identification and positive word-of-mouth.

Using Mexican Americans (Spanish) as the focal ethnic group (language), a 3 (contexts: Fast food-English; Post office-English; Post office-Spanish) × 4 (scenarios: customer language preference adhered to; adapted to; mixed; ignored) between-subject scenario-based experiment was conducted.

Customers perceive a higher, or at least equal, level of interaction quality when the employee choice of language adheres to their preference than when the employee switches to their preferred language after missing it initially. Both of these scenarios lead to significantly higher interaction quality compared to when the employee ignores customer language preference or combines elements from two languages throughout the interaction. The adverse effects of ignoring customer preferred language or mixing it with another language are accentuated among customers with low ethnic identification and those with low level of bilingualism. Prior findings regard the interplay among interaction quality, and the remainder of outcomes variables were also corroborated.

The findings add to the literature that examines the dynamics of intercultural service encounters and draws attention to employee choice and use of language and its impact on a host of service outcomes, with interaction quality serving as a key mediator.

This study highlights the need for service firms to consider customer language preferences and train and empower employees to meet customer expectations. To the extent that the increasingly viable segments of minority customers remain underserved in most developed markets, this study provides insights into cultivating a profitable customer segment.

This study demonstrates the role of employee choice and use of language and its consequences.

This study aims to uncover relationships between content communities post language, such as parts of speech, and user engagement.

Analyses of almost 12,000 posts from the content community Reddit are undertaken. First, posts’ titles are subjected to electronic classification and subsequent counting of main parts of speech and other language elements. Then, statistical models are built to examine the relationships between these elements and user engagement, controlling for variables identified in previous research.

The number of adjectives and nouns, adverbs, pronouns, punctuation (exclamation marks, quotation marks and ellipses), question marks, advisory words (should, shall, must and have to) and complexity indicators that appear in content community posts’ titles relate to post popularity (scores: number of favourable minus unfavourable votes) and number of comments. However, these relationships vary according to the category, for example, text-based categories (e.g. Politics and World News) vs image-based ones (e.g. Pictures).

While the relationships uncovered are appealing, this research is correlational, so causality cannot be implied.

Among other implications, companies may tailor their own content community post titles to match the types of language related to higher user engagement in a particular category. Companies may also provide advice to brand ambassadors on how to make better use of language to increase user engagement.

This paper shows that language features add explained variance to models of online engagement variables, providing significant contribution to both language and social media researchers and practitioners.

This study investigates how game design, which divides players into static teams, can reinforce group polarisation. The authors study this phenomenon from the perspective of social identity in the context of team-based location-based games, with a focus on game slang.

The authors performed an exploratory data analysis on an original dataset of n = 242,852 messages from five communication channels to find differences in game slang adoption between three teams in the location-based augmented reality game Pokémon GO. A divisive word “jym” (i.e. a Finnish slang derivative of the word “gym”) was discovered, and players' attitudes towards the word were further probed with a survey (n = 185). Finally, selected participants (n = 25) were interviewed in person to discover any underlying reasons for the observed polarised attitudes.

The players' teams were correlated with attitudes towards “jym”. Face-to-face interviews revealed association of the word to a particular player subgroup and it being used with improper grammar as reasons for the observed negative attitudes. Conflict over (virtual) territorial resources reinforced the polarisation.

Game design with static teams and inter-team conflict influences players' social and linguistic identity, which subsequently may result in divisive stratification among otherwise cooperative or friendly player-base.

The presented multi-method study connecting linguistic and social stratification is a novel approach to gaining insight on human social interactions, polarisation and group behaviour in the context of location-based games.

This paper aims to report the results of a study into visitor evaluations of interactions with hotel employees in Mauritius. Given that the island's core tourism product is based on luxury resorts, tourist‐hotel employee interactions possess a potential for determining satisfactory or unsatisfactory holiday evaluations on the part of visitors.

A sample of 103 visitors is interviewed using a semi‐structured guide comprising open‐ended questions. This approach reflects the lived experiences of guests and helps to better assess the role played by nationality when reporting visitor‐staff interactions. Data are analyzed using both thematic analysis and textual analysis software.

Nationality, ethnicity and languages spoken are found to be factors that determine differences in requirements from hotel staff on the part of tourists. Nationality is the strongest discriminator of these requirements.

As with many examples of qualitative research, the findings are time and place specific. Yet nonetheless, the concepts of personal construct theory permit some generalization.

Resort complex staff and management need to note the differences required by guests of different national groupings, and to appreciate that less than warm responses by some clients are not indicative of dissatisfaction.

The paper distinguishes between guests not only on the basis of nationality and ethnicity, but also languages spoken. No similar study relating to resort complexes in Mauritius has been identified. The study also uses two modes of textual data analysis to support the interpretation offered.

Training programs designed to enhance managerial effectiveness at cross‐cultural communication tend to be directed at specific target cultures. This paper argues that an etic approach, one based on universal variables that occur in every culture and that vary across cultures, comprises an important alternative. This paper reviews anthropological/sociolinguistic research on one universal variable, “politeness.” Politeness, or linguistic indirection used to show social consideration, is a crucial element of interpersonal communication in all human cultures, yet it has received little mention in the literature. Implications of politeness for managerial cross‐cultural communication are explored. The implications of a universalistic approach to cross‐cultural communication training are discussed.

Social systems devise rules for member conduct and often specify punitive action for nonconformity. However, confronting and signaling the intent to punish a rule violator may be an inherently face‐threatening and volatile situation. As such, in this paper we seek to add to the research aimed at minimizing the negative effects of confrontation. We conducted an experiment to examine the impact of linguistic cues and coercive potential on message categorization and on receiver perceptions of threat and face‐sensitivity. Results suggest that threats might be considered a special class of warnings, distinguishable by a speaker‐based locus of punishment Locus of punishment did not, however, impact perceptions of having been warned. These findings thus call into question the assumed parallelism between researcher conceptualizations of threats and warnings and those of typical language‐users. Additionally, targets reported feeling less threatened and perceived more face‐sensitivity, in cases when the speaker was not the source of punishment. Perceptions of threat were decreased when disclaimers were employed and where the message originated from a peer rather than an authority. Power of speech had an impact in ambiguous situations. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.

This paper proposes a research method for analysing talk about accounting concepts, systems and numbers. The authors argue that studying accounting talk in situ is a fruitful way to understand both the role accounting plays in the framing of relationships between individuals and the associated emotional content of these exchanges. As such, the authors argue that conversation analysis (CA) is a useful complement to interviews in qualitative research.

The authors introduce a specific approach to CA called positioning theory, which captures the linguistic and emotional subtleties embedded within interpersonal interactions, and the way accounting impacts and mediates these relations through measuring, assessment and control. The authors draw on one particularly animated conversation about accounting in a manufacturing company. The conversation was a largely emotional and animated exchange between individuals where talk about accounting was imbued with metaphors, violence, sex and humour.

While participants in conversations may appear to draw on similar forms of language and expression, CA allows researchers to see that the meaning of these shared expressions change based on who is saying them, whom they are saying them to and how they are saying them. Dissecting conversations as they unfold, offers a more nuanced and multifaceted understanding of accounting as central to the social fabric of organisational life.

As opposed to interviews, which often suffer from the rationality of hindsight (referred to as retrospective rationality), CA captures the unfolding nature of accounting talk in real-time–not upon reflection.

This paper describes a communication and cultural code approach to ethnonational conflicts. More specifically, it describes theory and research emerging from transformative communication events aimed at building constructive relationships betwetact necessitated by conflict. These are dialogue groups organized according to principles established by Allport's (1954) contact hypothesis including sustained contact, cooperative interdependence, and norms of equality. Secondly, we state the assumptions of an interactional approach to conflict, which assumes that conflict is, by definition, interactive making communication impossible to avoid. These assumptions also include an emphasis on the relational aspects of communication, and the fact that interaction sequences become patterned over time and become constitutive of the defining characteristics of the conflict. Moreover, the participants are influenced by communication codes, which are culturally based orientations to producing and interpreting interactions. These codes are grounded in the work of Katriel (1986), Carbaugh (1990), Ellis (1994, 1999) and Philipsen (1997) and have implications for the meaning potential of individuals in conflict situations. Finally, we explicate these issues by describing research that is representative of this communication approach to conflict. This research conceptualizes reconciliation‐aimed contacts and demonstrates how communication codes are modified by situational constraints.