M. L. Wong
identified into four diverse meanings of value: (1) value is low price, (2) value is whatever one wants in a prod-
uct, (3) value is the quality that the consumer receives for the price paid, and (4) value is what the consumer gets
for what they give.
While repurchase intentions and consumer loyalty are often predicted solely by measures of consumer satis-
faction, and/or service quality [4] [5], Imrie et al. [6] argued that the fundamental role that culture and/or per-
sonal values perform through informing consumer evaluation and choice behavior was not considered in the
SERVQUAL model [7] when they conducted a field research within Taiwan to ascertain whether the dominant
service quality model holds in the “foreign” environment [6]. In their findings, three major themes of sincerity;
generosity; and courtesy/politeness were grouped under an umbrella dimension to reflect the supposed impact of
Confusion values upon the choice of evaluative criteria, and a richer conceptualization was required to capture
issues relating to the central role of personal relationships within the service encounter. The results of their re-
search indicated that not only do cultural values influence the hierarchy of service quality dimensions, but also
that the SERVQUAL conceptual model does not capture the breadth of criteria utilized by Taiwan consumers.
Chinese culture provides a tightly knitted social framework in which individuals are protected by one another.
It projects a preference for cooperation, group decision-making, and relationships. Thus, the importance of so-
cial network lies in their emphasis on collectivism and group harmony [8]. The Chinese strive to keep relation-
ships among guanxi members stab le and harmonious since guanxi is the basis on which they exchange a lifetime
of favors, resources, and business leverage [9]. And for each specific relationship, people in China reconcile
through interpersonal accommodation and negotiation [6] [10]. Therefore doing business in China is literally an
art of dealing with the interpersonal relationships [11]-[15].
2. Guanxi and SERVQUAL
Chinese are born with guanxi and socially linked to his guanxi network. Guanxi defines one’s place in the social
structure and provides security, trust and a prescribed role reciprocally with others. Harmonious guanxi (inter-
personal relationship) for the Chinese is ‘expected’ as well as required not only by individuals but also by the
whole society, either for strong or weak ties of guanxi w h ich is mostly predetermined by the ‘role’ accordingly.
Maintaining good guanxi thus refers to the delicate art of building and nurturing such ties that is a hybrid of af-
fection and benefit in business. Business with the Chinese thus is considered basically the issue in dealing with
guanxi.
Parasuraman et al., [1] [7] attempted to define the dimensions of service quality. A ten dimensional model
was later simplified into five major dimensions, namely reliability, responsiveness, assurance, tangibles and
empathy. Reliability refers to the ability to perform the service promised. Responsiveness concerns the readiness
and willingness in providing the services. Assurance involves the politeness and courtesy in delivering the ser-
vices and the believability and trustworthiness conveyed to customers. Empathy is defined as the understanding
of customers’ individual needs and specific requirements. Finally, tangibles include the physical evidence of the
service such as facilities equipments and personnel. While customers can judge the quality of manufacturing
goods in terms of functions and standards they find it difficult to measure service quality because they have to
assess not only the outcome of the service, but more importantly the process of the delivery of that service [16].
It was proposed E-Service Quality (E-SQ) to evaluate the online service quality by the means-end method
with the eleven dimensions: access, ease of navigation, efficiency, flexibility, reliability, personalization, secu-
rity privacy, responsiveness, assurance/trust, site aesthetics, and price knowledge [17]. And then by defining the
service quality as “the level of efficiency and effectiveness of online shopping for goods or services” revised it
into seven dimensions as efficiency, reliability, fulfillment, privacy, responsiveness and compensation. In last
couple of decades online purchase and travel itinerary customization have been the main trend of marketing in
leisure/tourism. Although two way interaction online programs are provided to collect and fulfill customer’s re-
quests, it seems virtual transaction is making it harder to concretize and further evaluate the service quality in
international business considering the cultural difference. The traditional Information System (IS) was not quite
adequate for online tourism since it is lack of in time Q & A with close two-way interaction which can provide
information of customers’ requests for better service prepared and preplanned ahead of time. Magal [18] thus is
designed with three dimensions of Quality of Information Center Service, Degree of User Self-Sufficiency, and
Quality of User-Developed Applications that evaluates the Service Quality with the forecasting function. It is
believed with Magal [19], the in-time information is provided by the two-way interaction between service pro-
viders and receivers for Q & A and therefore upgrades the service quality.