Jonas Holmqvist

How Does Language Matter for Services? Challenges and Propositions for Service Research

The service encounter depends on the interaction between consumer and company, with an active role for the consumer as a participant. Building on existing literature, this article argues that language influences how consumers perceive the service encounter in several important ways. In turn, service providers and service researchers must understand the impact of the language used before, during, and after the service encounter. Across these three phases, 11 propositions pertaining to language use help clarify the service encounter, the role of the consumer in services, and how consumers are influenced by language. These propositions also offer ways forward for service research to study the influence of language use on the service encounter. From a managerial perspective, this article highlights language as an increasingly important challenge and suggests ways for companies to meet this challenge.

Consumer language preferences in service encounters: a cross‐cultural perspective

Purpose – The importance of the mutual interaction between consumers and the company in service encounters is widely recognised, but researchers have usually presumed that both parties are able to interact with each other. That is not always the case. If they do not share a common language, it may have consequences for the service encounter. This paper aims to analyze consumer language preferences across four language groups.Design/methodology/approach – Quantitative and qualitative studies are conducted among bilingual speakers of four languages (English/French and Finnish/Swedish) in two countries (Canada and Finland). Study 1 is a quantitative analysis of the degree of importance that respondents in the various language groups attach to the use of their first language in a variety of service encounters. Study 2 is a qualitative examination of the factors that determine the preferences expressed in Study 1.Findings – Use of first language in service encounters is preferred by consumers in all four langu...

Speak my language if you want my money: Service language ' s influence on consumer tipping behavior

OBJECTIVES The impact of language in services has mainly been studied from a perspective of perceived importance of language use. To date, research has not investigated the impact of language differences on behavioral outcomes. In this paper, we focus on one specific outcome variable; and examine how the service provider’s language use may influence consumer tipping behaviour. Investigating tipping behavior is an interesting outcome variable as consumers rarely wish to pay more when being served (Lynn and McCall, 2000). In this paper, we present three studies investigating the impact of language differences between bilingual customers and service personnel on tipping behavior. We further test the mediating effect of speech accommodation, a process in which the service provider accommodates the customer by doing or showing efforts to use the customer’s language. METHODS The three studies on tipping behaviour include two experiments and one survey with adult bilingual customers from two different countries (Belgium, Finland). The effect of language use on tipping behaviour, and the mediating effects of speech accommodation, is established through the three studies, confirming the hypotheses. RESULTS The results show that the service provider’s language use has a large and significant effect on the consumer tipping behaviour. This effect can consistently be observed in all three studies across both countries, confirming the generalizability of the results. We further establish that the impact of language differences on tipping behaviour is fully mediated by speech accommodation employed by the service provider. CONCLUSIONS Consistent across different countries and different methodologies, we find that customers who are served in their second language are less willing to tip than customers who are served in their native language. Given that tipping behavior can be considered as a proxy for service quality perceptions (Lynn, 2001; Lynn and Sturman, 2010), our findings thus suggest that restaurant visitors who are served in their second language perceive the quality of the service as low. This is an important finding as prior research focused on whether customers find it important to be served in their native language (Holmqvist, 2011), but did not focus on behavioral outcomes of these language differences. Our research has important implications for waiters and waitresses active on bilingual markets. It appears that they are able to increase their income with tips if they accommodate to the restaurant visitor’s native language. This would require waiters and waitresses to learn or enhance the second language of the market. Restaurant owners might also offer language courses to waiters and waitresses in order to make them more fluent in the different languages of the market. Doing so might be beneficial, as waiters and waitresses who receive more tips have a higher job satisfaction, and are more committed to deliver good service.

Perceived importance of native language use in service encounters

Despite the importance of interactions in services, the role language plays in services is an under-researched field. This paper outlines for which services language is especially important. Consistent across studies in three countries (Belgium, Canada and Finland), the findings suggest that bilingual consumers find it particularly important to be served in their native language in high-involvement services. Moreover, for high-involvement services, all consumers find it important to be served in their native language. For low-involvement services, elderly consumers are less willing to switch language than young consumers. The importance of native language use did not differ between males and females.

Consumer willingness to communicate in a second language: Communication in service settings

Purpose – The service management literature emphasizes the importance of communication, but language difficulties can make communicating in business settings more difficult. The purpose of this paper is to address consumer willingness to communicate in a second language to identity the antecedents that drive consumer language preferences. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents the findings from two empirical studies in two multilingual countries with a total of 361 adult respondents. Findings – The findings show perceived control to be the strongest antecedent of consumer willingness to communicate in a second language, and identifies second language skills as an antecedent in countries with little political tensions related to language, while political considerations is a strong antecedent in countries where language use is political. Research limitations/implications – The studies are limited to countries with more than one official language. While multilingual countries make up around two-thi...

Consumer willingness to communicate in a second language

Purpose – The service management literature emphasizes the importance of communication, but language difficulties can make communicating in business settings more difficult. The purpose of this paper is to address consumer willingness to communicate in a second language to identity the antecedents that drive consumer language preferences. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents the findings from two empirical studies in two multilingual countries with a total of 361 adult respondents. Findings – The findings show perceived control to be the strongest antecedent of consumer willingness to communicate in a second language, and identifies second language skills as an antecedent in countries with little political tensions related to language, while political considerations is a strong antecedent in countries where language use is political. Research limitations/implications – The studies are limited to countries with more than one official language. While multilingual countries make up around two-thi...

The role of psychological distance in value creation

Purpose – The field of service research has devoted considerable attention to the customer’s role as value creator, but there is a lack of research on understanding customers’ psychological processes in value creation. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of psychological distance in value-creation processes. Psychological distance is the customer’s perceived distance from service interactions in terms of spatial distance, temporal distance, social distance and hypothetical distance. Critically, psychological distance influences cognitive processes and can influence how customers think and feel about the service interaction. An appreciation of psychological distance within service contexts can help managers to tailor the interaction in order to facilitate value creation. Design/methodology/approach – In this conceptual paper, the authors build on psychology research and service research to develop seven propositions that explore how psychological distance can operate within service int...

Service ecosystems, markets and business networks: What is the difference? A horizontal literature review

Purpose Recent research demonstrates how firms strive to shape their business environment and level the playing field in their favor. To explain this phenomenon, business scholars use competing notions: markets, business networks and service ecosystems. The purpose of this paper is to identify and address a potential problem, in that these notions overlap to a considerable extent, as scholars tend to draw from and contribute to academic silos. Design/methodology/approach The authors approach the issue of potential overlaps in the current literature on markets, business networks and service ecosystems through a literature review of each of these three concepts, with special attention to both their overlaps and differences. Findings The authors’ review of the extant literature allows the authors to concur with Ballantyne et al. (2011) that contemporary service research shows a tendency to create, adopt and overuse labels. This situation has given rise to what the authors term “academic silos” in which even closely related research stream tend to become isolated, and the authors posit that a more holistic view would be beneficial. Originality/value The authors offer two main contributions to the existing literature. The first contribution is mainly theoretical, aimed at business research, and consists of providing a review and understanding of the partly competing, partly complimentary concepts of markets, business networks and service ecosystems, in which the authors’ further address service ecosystems based on both a service-dominant logic and a service logic understanding. The second contribution is more managerial, arguing for the need of the successful business research to consider the desired end result of contributing to successful business practices.

Brand Contamination in Social Media: Consumers’ Negative Influence on Luxury Brand Perceptions—A Structured Abstract

The development of social media on the Internet poses a challenge for luxury brands, as managers need to walk a fine line to keep the balance between ubiquity and exclusivity in social media (Hennigs et al. 2012). Luxury brands are increasingly using social media to raise brand awareness and build relationships with their customer base and try to enhance brand experiences online (Kim and Ko 2010; Phan et al. 2011). The emergence of Web 2.0 (the development of interactive web pages) and social media thus challenges luxury brands’ marketing strategies on the Internet, if these brands need to embrace mass marketing media and try to highlight the exclusivity dimension of their products at the same time (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010; Okonkwo 2009).

Communication in Service Contexts

This paper analyzes how the influence of native language use in service encounters varies among speakers of different languages. Studying speakers of four different languages for perceived importance of native language use in services, the results confirm that native language use influences consumers, but that its reasons differ between countries