Impact of National Cultures on Automotive Sector After Sales Services Perception

Abstract

[EN] This article clarifies the impact of national culture in the after sales service in the automotive sector.. Introduction and objectives: After-sales services have become paramount in the automobile industry. How-ever, they are not sufficiently researched, particularly in emerging markets. Here an academic gap exists be-cause, within the automotive research literature, culture is a widely neglected issue. Thus no explicit knowledge can be applied regarding emerging markets service demand behaviour, which might be a crucial point, as some of these countries culture is different to the western culture. Methods: The research is based in a survey carried out among Chinese premium brand automotive customers. Results: It shows which individual level values are causal and positively contribute to the perception of service quality and loyalty behaviour by customers. Con-clusion: The article providing a guideline how the entire process chain of after-sales services could be re-searched and applies successfully the individual level value theory by Schwartz. Implications and research limitation: Brand loyalty is well explained by perceived service quality significantly leads to after-sales service satisfaction, which itself is a strong predictor of workshop loyalty. Moreover, workshop loyal customers are likewise significantly brand loyal, Finally, the influence of culture is empirically verified with the one exception of after-sales service satisfaction.