International Journal of Hospitality Management 41 (2014) 67–76 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Hospitality Management jo u r n al homep age: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhosman Cross-cultural comparison of Chinese and Arab consumer complaint behavior in the hotel context Behrouz Jahandideh a,1 , Alireza Golmohammadi b , Fang Meng c,∗ , Kevin D. O‘Gorman d , Babak Taheri d a University College of Nabi Akram, Tabriz, Iran b Department of Marketing, Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, United States c Department of Management, School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, United States d School of Management and Languages, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, United Kingdom a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Consumer complaint behavior Schwartz Hofstede Cross-cultural differences Nationality a b s t r a c t There is no universal pattern of consumer complaint behavior as individual consumers from different cultures have diverse needs and expectations when they complain. This study combines the cultural dimensions of Hofstede (1980, 2001) and Schwartz (2006) to form a new theoretical model for exam- ining cross-cultural consumer complaint behavior. The model is applied empirically in comparing the complaint behavior of consumers from two different Asian cultures (Arab and Chinese) in the context of the Iranian hospitality industry. The results address the implicit assumption contained in previous cross- cultural studies that Asian consumers are homogeneous in their behavior, revealing significant difference in Arab and Chinese consumer complaint behavior. The findings provide new insights into cross-cultural consumer complaint behavior. Managerial implications for the hospitality industry are offered. © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 1. Introduction In the hospitality industry, promoting and maintaining high lev- els of service quality, satisfaction and loyalty is integral to the consumer experience (Alegre and Cladera, 2006; Petrick, 2004; Sánchez-García and Currás-Pérez, 2011). When service failure occurs, inevitably followed by consumer dissatisfaction, the effec- tive handling of complaints becomes central to the recovery of service satisfaction (Maxham and Netemeyer, 2002; Namkung et al., 2011; Smith et al., 1999). It is important for hotels to under- stand consumer complaint behavior (CCB) and to use complaints as a useful information source to improve service quality. In the hospitality marketing literature, cross-cultural studies show that consumers from varying cultural groups behave dif- ferently (Wong and Lau, 2001) and with varied intentions (Ngai et al., 2007; Liu and McClure, 2001; Yuksel et al., 2006). In the limited extant cross-cultural consumer complaint research, Asian ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 803 777 0631. E-mail addresses: Behrouzjahandideh@gmail.com (B. Jahandideh), AGolmohammadi@walton.uark.edu (A. Golmohammadi), fmeng@hrsm.sc.edu (F. Meng), K.OGorman@hw.ac.uk (K.D. O‘Gorman), b.taheri@hw.ac.uk (B. Taheri). 1 Except for the first author, all other authors contributed equally and are pre- sented in alphabetical order. consumers are identified as less likely to complain relative to non- Asian or western consumers (Ng et al., 2007; Patterson et al., 2006). Asia is one of the world’s major source markets for international travel. China, as by far the fastest growing country with regard to international travel expenditure in the last decade, is a new driv- ing force of global hospitality and tourism development (UNWTO, 2011). Therefore, it is important to understand Asian guests’ com- plaint behavior in the hospitality industry. However, the majority of the extant CCB research is from the Western orientation, with only a few cross-cultural studies exploring alternative perspec- tives (Yuksel et al., 2006; Becker, 2000; Mueller et al., 2003). The majority of extant research implicitly assumes that Asian (eastern) consumers are homogeneous in their behavior (Ngai et al., 2007; Patterson et al., 2006). This assumption is rooted in Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions in which Asians are considered homo- geneous to some extent in the three dimensions of consumer culture, namely power distance, individualism versus collective- ness, and the avoidance of uncertainty. However, in a more recent framework, Schwartz (1999a,b, 2006) explicitly indicates consid- erable cultural differences among Asian sub-cultures, suggesting homogeneous behavior of Asians may not be the case. Despite the strong theoretical foundations of Schwartz’s dimensions of national culture (Ng et al., 2007; Steenkamp, 2001; Zhang et al., 2008), there is a lack of empirical support for this suggestion, and further testing of this framework is required for validation purposes. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2014.04.011 0278-4319/© 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.