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This paper aims to test the differences in the consumer complaint behaviour of Asian and non‐Asian hotel guests in terms of culture dimensions. It also aims to examine the relationship between demographic factors (age, gender and education level) and complaint behaviour.

The paper adopts the Hofstede's typology of culture as a framework to investigate cultural differences and demographic characteristics in the complaint behaviour of hotel guests. A face‐to‐face interview survey is conducted to collect data in this research. Data are then analyzed by various statistical methods such as two‐way contingency table analysis, non‐parametric Mann‐Whitney U and Chi‐square tests.

The survey reveals that older complainants tend to resort to “public actions,” but people with a higher level of education tend not to complain publicly. In addition, Asian guests are less likely to complain to the hotel for fear of “losing face” and are less familiar with the channels for complaint than non‐Asian guests. They are more likely than non‐Asian guests to take private complaint action, such as making negative word‐of‐mouth comments. The findings also indicate that there is a significant relationship between “complaint encouraging factor” and respondents' nationality and between “effective complaint handling method” and respondents' nationality.

Few studies have focused on the cultural differences in complaint behaviour of Asians and non‐Asian hotel guests in the hotel industry. The result will be most valuable in assisting hotel managers and marketers to better understand the customer complaint behaviour and intentions both from the Asian and non‐Asian contexts, and help formulate strategies and tactics to effectively manage the customer complaint.

Hospitality organizations, whether large or small, are complex entities requiring managers to work through frontline employees to manage every guest's moment of truth and meet their firms' goals and objectives. This study aims to test propositions that firms whose staffing policies and systems are aligned with their strategic goals and objectives to outperform those firms with poorer organizational alignment.

Data were collected through a survey administered in winter of 2005 to 200 hourly wage employees from each of four matched hotels. Some 479 completed surveys were returned yielding a 59 percent response rate.

Between‐group differences in organizational alignment measures were statistically significant in the directions predicted. Specifically, subjects from the high organizational alignment hotels, on average, reported significantly higher organizational support, employee service commitment and employee satisfaction as compared to low organizational alignment properties.

The findings of this study provide a strong indication that the workplace environment is a concept that employees are aware of which in turn influences their commitment and satisfaction.

This research provides managers with an assessment tool useful for ensuring that a firm is being effectively managed.

The purpose of this paper is to determine a model of how a foreign businessman obtains and maintains cronyism from his Chinese counterpart that emphasizes on an insider perspective to convert him from a new friend to an old friend of his Chinese counterpart through a guanxi adaptation mechanism.

A vigorous analysis of extant literature and an investigation of insider dynamics within a new friend/old friend perspective.

Gift‐giving is strategic and a foreign businessman must manage its monetary value very cautiously in order to alleviate the “face” and provide renqing so as to generate ganging and to obtain cronyism from his Chinese counterpart. In saying that, relativism prevails. A foreign company must establish a zone of ethical tolerance so that its executive knows the limits when practicing gift‐giving. In China, an old friend is a supporter and therefore a foreign business should not openly criticize his Chinese counterpart. Frequent visits to China must be maintained.

A foreign businessman needs to understand the guanxi dynamics of renqing and ganging and their sequential arrangement in the adaptation mechanism. He should use gift‐giving to offer renqing so as to establish ganging with his Chinese counterparts.

Provides a depth analysis of two emotional aspects in the guanxi adaptation mechanism, i.e. renqing and ganging which is a definitive device to convert a foreign businessman from a new friend to an old friend of his counterpart in the Chinese market.

Among all the Asian markets, mainland China was least affected by the economic downturn. It provides a leading source of tourism revenue to Hong Kong. In order to fully capture this market, it is important to satisfy the needs of the mainland Chinese travelers. This study aims to measure the satisfaction levels of Chinese travelers in relation to the hotel services in Hong Kong. The satisfaction levels of the mainland Chinese travelers on 34 hotel service attributes were studied using the disconfirmation paradigm. A total of 203 mainland Chinese travelers were interviewed. The results indicated that mainland Chinese travelers were satisfied with “Availability of personal care amenities”, “Quietness of the room”, “Availability of food and beverage variety” and dissatisfied with “Recreation facilities” “Availability of frequent travelers’ program” and the “Baggage handling service”. Eight dimensions of hotel services were identified. “Service quality and value” and “Augmented product quality” dimensions were found to be more important than others in influencing their overall satisfaction levels and the likelihood of returning to the same hotels. Implications of the findings for hotel operators in Hong Kong were discussed.

The area of customer complaint behaviour has received considerable attention from hotel managers as dissatisfied customers engage in a variety of complaint actions that could ruin the reputation of a hotel. This study examined Chinese customer complaint behaviour towards Hong Kong hotel restaurant services. The main objectives were to identify complaint patterns and the relationships between customers’ demographic backgrounds such as age, gender and education levels; and their complaint behaviours. Based on a survey of 220 hotel restaurant diners, complainers and non‐complainers were identified. The research findings suggested that at most customers are likely to engage in private complaint behaviours such as word‐of‐mouth communication and ceasing to patronize the restaurant. It highlights that the complaint intentions of Chinese diners were quite low and they were passive about communicating dissatisfaction to restaurateurs. Restaurateurs can make use of these findings to improve their existing customer feedback systems and complaint handling strategies.

Despite the growing importance of the Internet as an information source for international travellers, as a marketing tool and as a way of doing business, there is a general lack of information on how these travellers use the Internet for information, booking and purchase of travel products and services. Understanding how travellers behave is of critical importance to travel marketers in formulating appropriate marketing strategies so as to fully exploit the developing potential of this new channel. This study attempts to identify the levels of usage of the Internet as an information source and product‐purchasing tool by international travellers across seven countries. A survey of 1,114 international travellers shows that approximately 30 percent of travellers use the Internet for reservation or purchase of any travel products or services. Findings also indicate that those travellers, predominantly from Western countries with higher education levels and higher annual household income, are more likely to use the Internet for online purchase of travel products.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the appearances of Chinese restaurant employees, including gender and the style and color of dress, influence the appetites and additional order intentions of customers.

This research implemented questionnaire survey. Consumers in Chinese restaurants of international tourist hotels located in Taipei, Taiwan, were targeted as research objects. After deleting questionnaires with incomplete answers, the researchers obtained 818 valid questionnaires for data analysis.

The analysis results indicate that the gender, style of dress and degree of color coordination of a waitperson’s clothing can significantly influence consumer perceptions and feelings.

The analysis of this study implies that restaurant management should stress professional attendant training. By strengthening training and regulating attendant style, a management team can effectively improve upon their customers’ recognition of a business. This research addresses the influence of different dress style and dress color combinations on consumer appetites and additional order intentions.

The purpose of the study is to establish the mediating role of Perceived Service Quality on the relationship between Retail Atmospherics and Retail Store Patronage of Supermarkets in Emerging Economies using empirical evidence from Uganda.

The study used a cross-sectional research design and quantitative approach to understand stand the structured reality of Retail Store Patronage of supermarkets in context of emerging economies. In the context of this study, the data were drawn from Uganda's supermarkets. A sample of 1,504 customers were selected from 136,270 customers. Data was collected from supermarket customers using closed ended questionnaire. Descriptive and inferential statistics were derived to describe the behavior of customers and draw conclusions on population using sample statistics. Correlation analysis was used to establish the degree of association between the variables. Hierarchical regression was applied to assess the unique contribution of each variable; control variables-income and age, predictor variables – Retail Atmospherics and Perceived Service Quality on dependent variable – Retail Store Patronage. Mediation was done following the four-step procedures of mediation of Baron and Kenny (1986).

The results revealed significant positive relationship between Retail Atmospherics, Perceived Service Quality and Retail Store Patronage, confirming the direct hypotheses. Perceived Service Quality partially mediated the relationship between Retail Atmospherics and Retail Store Patronage. The findings depict that Retail Store Patronage is influenced directly by Retail Atmospherics and indirectly through Perceived Service Quality as a mediating variable. However, in situations where the atmospherics is good but perceived service quality is poor, Retail Store Patronage may not be fully realized.

The study provides information that is relevant for filling the practical and theoretical gap in the Retail Store Patronage in Ugandan supermarkets. Previous research studies investigated patronage behavior of shoppers in single retail units yet there is paucity of research on patronage behavior across different retail formats in the world. This study can be generalized and have strategic implications to developing economies that seek to grow and sustain their businesses. It points to the gaps that are normally overlooked and could lead business failure. The focus of most previous studies were on developed economies more especially Europe and America. This study in particular focused on the role of perceived service quality in the relationship between retail atmospherics and customer retail store patronage in emerging economies like Uganda as a testing ground.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the service literature by investigating post-consumption evaluation in the context of unwanted services. In particular, it intends to delineate the main characteristics of funeral services.

Given the lack of substantive literature on funeral services, a qualitative exploratory design was used from in-depth interviews with ten managers of funeral services companies in Quebec (Canada).

The study shows that compared to other traditional services, funeral services are characterized by their strong emotiveness, non-recurrence, irreversibility, uncommonness, high level of symbolism and personalization and emotion control of the service provider. The study also argues that funeral services quality is strongly dependent on funeral houses’ integrated logistics, proximity and integrity.

Because of consumers’ lack of competency, funeral companies need to guide and educate consumers about the criteria they should use to evaluate the service quality. Because funeral consumers are strongly emotion-driven at the purchase time, funeral services providers should find the right balance of emotions to express. Thus, more staff training is needed.

Because funeral services are emotionally challenging and deal with grief and distressed clients, the present study contributes in shedding light on service quality assessment in the funeral industry. Although they have some characteristics of traditional services (intangibility, perishability and variability), funeral services are also different in many ways.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the link between history (heritage) and tourism marketing (destination branding). More specifically, the paper focusses on how heritage is used by private- and public-sector tourism organisations of post-colonial, post-conflict and post-disaster (PCCD) destinations in their branding strategy. In particular, the paper investigates how these organisations use heritage in their branding and logo design.

Within the paradigm of theory building and exploratory approach, this conceptual study is based on a narrative literature review and analysis of research and secondary data on Haiti. The study uses visual research methods to examine and reveal the basis and composition of logos of both private- and public-sector organisations in Haiti.

The findings of this paper suggest that capturing the essence of the destination is critical for any visual identification (i.e. logos), and that the visual identification can either adjust representation of past events to the time being (heritage) or move away from the past with clear expectations for the future. Such findings are reflected within the new marketing strategies adopted by the Haitian destination marketing organisation (DMO) and a private resort that we used as examples. Both moved from an idiosyncratic identity-based logo to a universal “sea-and-sun” stereotyped one that goes against heritage for which authenticity is the most important criterion.

The findings of this research may help destination managers in general, and DMOs in PCCD destinations in particular, to design logos aligned with their marketing and branding strategies. The findings of the paper may also assist industry experts in designing logos that communicate with potential tourists, by leveraging heritage to influence their emotion and decision making.

This paper represents one of the first papers in tourism research that examines branding strategies of both public and private sectors in the context of Haiti. The research contributes to the body of knowledge on heritage and destination marketing by exploring the role of heritage in the Caribbean area’s branding and marketing strategies.