Main Topic: Finishing a Research Thread on Restaurant Service Failure Recovery

Hosts: James Stanworth, Clyde Warden

In this follow up to Show 57 and Show 58, where we looked at choosing a research topic, how to implement CIT, and service failures across cultural settings. This series of shows have emphasized how to get your research project moving forward and then to publishing. This episode wraps that up with the third paper published from this research thread. Once again, James and Clyde are live at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan Taiwan, in front of an IMBA class of graduate students.

Main Topic: Extending Your Research, an Example of Service Research

Hosts: James Stanworth, Clyde Warden

In this follow up to Show 57, where we looked at choosing a research topic and how to implement CIT, James and Clyde cover a specific research example. This research was published in The International Journal of Service Industries Management, an SSCI ranked marketing journal. The topic deals with perceptions about restaurant service but rather than across cultures, this work looks at one culture across national settings. Once again, James and Clyde are live at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan Taiwan, in front of an IMBA class of graduate students.

Main Topic: Starting Your Research, an Example Using CIT

Hosts: James Stanworth, Clyde Warden

This show begins a trilogy of research talks. These shows are of special interest to anyone working on service research, especially using CIT methodology, and those trying to choose a research topic. The CIT method is used throughout all three examples of three research projects, all ending in published papers.

For beginning researchers, the biggest problem is choosing a research topic is, well, choosing a research topic. The first show emphasizes how to narrow your research topic until you can get a doable project, extending existing work. The following shows extend that initial work and show how that small, specific replication can lead to a thread of research over a number of years.

Main Topic: De Lai Scooter Store

Hosts: James Stanworth, Clyde Warden

Case studies come in different forms.  There are two basic directions: teaching or research cases.  Teaching cases are descriptive, based on sound facts and written in a style that is light and easy to read.  Research cases are often more exploratory and explanatory and draw on more rigorous data collection methods.  They aim to make a theoretical point.

The De Lai Scooter store is very much a teaching case.  In this show James and Clyde talk about the details of creating this type of case study.  We cover issues from sampling through to analysis.

Main Topic: Using Online Sampling Details

Hosts: James Stanworth, Clyde Warden

This show started out as the last in our Chinese medicine series, but James and Clyde got off track and into the details of online survey design. Rather than stick it in with TCM, we put it out as its own show and plan to do more in the future on this very complicated topic.

Main Topic: Choice Factors of TCM vs Western Medical Treatment

Hosts: Clyde Warden

When Clyde and James got together to record this show, they got talking about online sampling methodology, something Clyde has lots of experience in. A bit off the TCM topic, that show turned into research show 40, while this research show finishes up our TCM emphasis. Clyde goes over the a quantitative study of the factors that influence medical clinic choice among Chinese consumers. More importantly, he looks at the influence the question frame has on the expectations. If you are interested in quantitative studies of consumer attitudes, this is the show for you.

Main Topic: Psychological Metaphors of English Meaning in Taiwan

Hosts: Nickola Pazderic, Clyde Warden

Anthropologist, and long-time Taiwan resident, Nickola Pazderic joins this research supplement to follow up with details on English as a product in the Chinese market discussed in show 20.

Dr. Pazderic has lived in Taiwan for nearly two decades. During that time, he performed anthropological research that was published in numerous journals, including the top ranked Journal of Cultural Anthropology. Currently, he is teaching at the University of Washington and raising his daughter, along with his wife who works for the Seattle school district.

Nick has been looking at English as a commodity within the larger trend of university education being treated like a consumable good. This fits in well with Clyde's research on the deep psychological motivators for studying English. Following up on the statistical work published in TESOL Q., this research uses a qualitative approach that includes grounded theory and interviews involving laddering and photo elicitation, where photographs taken by respondents are probed for meaning. 

Hosts: Robert Reynolds, Clyde Warden

Professor Reynolds joins TAM again to complete the product naming topic. In this show, we get much deeper into the whole issue and include a few research paper. We have more photos, a few commercials, and toilet bowl cleaner (WHAT?). You will have to listen to the show get figure that one out, but the point is, if you don't know how complex naming products is in Chinese, you could make some serious errors. 

The major approaches for naming products in Chinese are Phonographic vs. Logographic writing and the somewhat larger system of Phonetic vs. Semantic vs. Phonosemantic translations.

In the paper Creating Local Brands. . . the experiment is a bit weak, but it shows what Warden's research has been reflecting for many years now, mainly, the strength of English is high, and local Chinese use is simply understood and accepted better (see Figure 2 in that paper).

I love this little bit of explanation: "Another more conceptual explanation in line with our framework may be that Chinese native speakers, habitually attuned to the Chinese language and its visual/semantic encoding preference, prefer a meaningful semantic translation no matter whether the Chinese name or English name is emphasized." That is simply saying people understand things they already understand, and Chinese characters that already have some related meaning work best.

The wide use of English as a pointer, rather than real content, leads to such things as Skypeeee (Skype) and U To Be (YouTube). Also can be used in reverse phonetics, as in George and Mary cash card advertising campaign. George-借錢(jie qien)[台語] Mary-免蕊(main rui)[台語]. Here is a little local discussion about this specific meaning. For brand managers, the most important point is to avoid being fooled by those around you using English or English commonly in use in the part of town you are living in. English is more like an abstract symbol in Chinese settings. It conveys some general ideas, but nothing specific.

Hosts: Stephen Huang, James Stanworth, Clyde Warden

This research was a student master thesis that allowed Professor Warden to expand on his observations that wet markets were not distinct retail channels serving different market segments. An investigation into attitudes, however, would be dangerous as pressures from modernity assumptions would encourage respondents to report wet markets were not important to them. Additionally, the responses of people too young to cook or be responsible for family ceremonies could be very misleading (often stated as, "this generation does not care about religion"). 

Hosts: James Stanworth and Clyde Warden

Our observations showed that the market was dominated by three large hypermarket retailers: Carrefour, RT-Mart and Tesco.  When we shopped in store the differences between the formats was also clear.  Carrefour, in partnership with local conglomerate President Enterprises, focused on aggressive promotions with a scattering of foreign products.  RT-Mart, originally locally developed had a disorganized feeling, with heavy price promotion, a focus on fresh and a service staff promoting products.  Tesco, had modern, Western feel with friendly staff to guide customers around the store.  

This all begged the question as to Chinese customers' reactions to these visibly different approaches. We used an existing measure of retail service quality (From Prof. Dabholkar ) and looked at the impact of service quality on referral intention (see Reicheld's work on this ). Referral intention is often considered by be an observable behavioral intention that reflects positive/negatively on service quality provided.  Since services are often selected through word-of-mouth this factor can be considered critical for retention and loyalty.

Our results showed that whilst customers rated the quality of service high in Tesco referral intention was suprisingly lower than the other stores.  It was markedly so in the case of RT-Mart i.e., comparatively low perceptions of quality but referral intention was higher than the other stores.  We believed that RT-Mart was better able to tune into customers' local preferences than the other stores.