Socio-cultural factors influencing face manifestation and communicative behaviour in Thai service encounters
Main Article Content
Abstract
This paper aims at providing the literature review regarding Thai society and values and service encounters which are likely to affect face manifestation and communicative behaviour of participants in the contexts of Thai service encounter by examining socio-cultural and socio-economic factors influencing communicative behaviour of participants. This examination of those influential variables was conducted in order to draw a diagram which demonstrates the relationship between those factors which engender appropriate communicative behaviour of participants in Thai service encounters. Furthermore, this paper also illustrates faces or a basic conceptualized thought that societal members expect agents and customers to perform. Results revealed that the difference in the socio-economic roles (occupation) between agents and customers, power of money which customers occupy and which dominates agents to provide customers with good services, and the Thai value เกรงใจ /kreng cay/ have played a vital role in determining communicative behaviour of participants in Thai service encounters. In addition, faces that agents need to take to meet customers’ expectation in service encounters may contradict those expected by their professional organization.
Article Details
Section
Research Articles
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References
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Arrington, L. (1990). The customer is God. Managing Service Quality, 23-26.
Arundale, R. B. (1999). An alternative model and ideology of communication for an alternative to politeness theory. Pragmatics, 9(1), 119-153.
Arundale, R. B. (2006). Face as relational and interactional: A communication framework for research on face, facework, and politeness. Journal of Politeness Research, 2, 193-216.
Arundale, R. B. (2008). Against (Gricean) intentions at the heart of human interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics, 5(2), 229-258.
Arundale, R. B. (2009). Face as emergent in interpersonal communication: An alternative to Goffman. In Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Haugh, M. (eds.) (2009) Face, Communication and Social Interaction. London: Equinox, 33-54.
Arundale, R. B. (2010). Constituting face in conversation: Face, facework, and interactional achievement. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 2078-2105.
Bargiela-Chiappini, F. (2003). Face and Politeness: New (insights) for Old (concepts). Journal of Pragmatic, 35(10-11), 1453-1469.
Bitner, M. J., Booms, B. H. & Tetreault, M. S. (1990). The service encounter: Diagnosing favourable and unfavourable incidents. Journal of Marketing, 54(1), 71-84.
Blum-Kulka, S. (1997). The dynamics of family dinner-talk: Cultural contexts for the children’s passages to adult discourse. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 27, 1-15.
Brown, P. & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burgers, A., de Ruyter, K., Keen, C. & Streukens, S. (2000). Customer expectation dimensions of voice-to-voice service encounters; a scale-development study. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 11(2), 142-161.
Cedar, P. (2006). Thai and American responses to compliments in English. The Linguistic Journal, 1(2), 6-28.
Chakorn, O. (2006). Persuasive and politeness strategies in cross-cultural letters of request in the Thai business context. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 16(1), 103-146.
Chiravate, B. (2011). Perception of politeness in English requests by Thai EFL learners. 3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 17(2), 59-71.
Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Pantheon Books.
Hendon, D. W. (1999). How to negotiate with Thai executives. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 41-62.
Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviours, institutions, and organisation across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Holmes, H. & Tangtongtavy, S. (1997). Working with the Thais: A guide to managing in Thailand. Bangkok: White Lotus Co.Ltd.
Hongladarom, K. & Hongladarom, S. (2005). Politeness in Thai computermediated communication. In Lakoff, R. T. and Ide, S. (Eds.) Broadening the horizon of linguistic politeness, (pp.157-174), Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing.
Hwang, A., Francesco, A. M. & Kessler, E. (2003). The relationship between individualism-collectivism, face, and feedback and learning processes in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, 34, 72-91.
Intachakra, S. (2012). Politeness motivated by the “heart” and “binary rationality” in Thai culture. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(5), 619-635.
(PAGE120)
Leelaharattanarak, N. (2015). Face manifestations in Thai hospitality settings: An investigation of interpersonally-sensitive activities. PhD thesis, University of Surrey, Guildford.
Massad, N. & Crowston, K. (2003). Using the service encounter model to enhance our understanding of business-to-consumer transactions in an environment. In Proceedings of the 16th Bled eCommerce Conference: eTransformation, 9-11 June, 2003. Bled, Slovenia, 183-193.
Mattila, A. S. & Patterson, P. G. (2004). Service recovery and fairness perception in collectivist and individualist contexts. Journal of Service Research, 6(4), 336-346.
Merritt, M. (1976). On questions following questions in service encounters. Language in Society, 5(3), 315-357.
Morand, D. A. & Ocker, J. O. (2003). Politeness theory and computer-mediated communication: A sociolinguistic approach to analyzing relational messages. In Proceedings of the 36th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-36), 28th January, 2006. Los Alamitos: IEEE Press, 1-10.
O’Driscoll, J. (1996). About face: A defense and elaboration of universal dualism. Journal of Pragmatics 25(1), 1-32.
Panpothong, N. (2001). Thai ways of saying “NO” to a request. Manusya: Journal of Humanities, 4(2), 63-76.
Phanphae, P. (2011). Thai style of management. Srinakharinwirot Business Journal, 2(2), 133-146. [In Thai]
Piromrat, R. (2012) Satisfaction of the foreigner businessmen toward service of Grande Centre Point Hotel and Residence Rajdamri. MBA thesis, Srinakharinwirot University, Bangkok. [In Thai]
Pornpitakpan, C. (2000). Trade in Thailand: A three-way cultural comparison. Business Horizons, 43(2), 61-70.
Price, L. L., Arnould, E. J. & Deibler, S. L. (1995a). Consumers’ emotional responses to service encounters: The influence of the service provider. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 6(3), 34-63.
Price, L. L., Arnould, E. J. & Tierney, P. (1995b). Going to extreme: Managing service encounters and assessing provider performance. Journal of Marketing, 59(2), 83-97.
Promsrimas, W. (2000). Refusal strategies in responding to favor: Expressing speech acts in Thai. Master’s thesis, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. [In Thai]
Pugh, S. D. (2001). Service with a smile: Emotional contagion in the service encounter. The Academy of Management Journal, 44(5), 1018-1027.
Rhurakvit, M. (2011). Complaints in Thailand and English: An interlanguage pragmatic study. PhD thesis, Queen Mary University of London, London.
Rittichainuwat, B. N., Qu, H. & Mongknonvanit, C. (2002). A study of the impact of travel satisfaction on the likelihood of travelers to revisit Thailand. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, 12(2-3), 19-23.
Shostack, L. (1985). Planning the service encounter. In Czepiel, J.A., Solomon, M.R. & Suprenant, C.F. (Eds.), The Service Encounter, (pp.112-126), Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Solon, M. (2013). Cross-cultural negotiation: Touristic service encounters in Yucatán, Mexico. In Chad Howe et al. (Eds.). Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 15th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, Somerville, MA, (pp. 252-268). Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Solomon, M. R., Surprenant, C., Czepiel, J. A. & Gutman, E. G. (1985). A role theory perspective on dyadic interactions: The service encounter. Journal of Marketing, 49(1), 99-111.
Somwang, C. (2008). An assessment of passengers’ views of service quality in Thai low cost carriers. RU International Journal, 2(1), 71-81.
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2000). Report management: A framework for analysis. In Spencer-Oatey (ed.) (2000) Culturally speaking: managing rapport through talk across culture. London: Continuum, 11-46.
Sriussadaporn-Charoenngam, N. & Jablin, F. M. (1999). An exploratory study of communication competence in Thai organizations. Journal of Business Communication, 36, 382-418.
Tao, L. (2014). Evaluating the concept of ‘face’ (mentsu) in Japanese verbal communication. Intercultural Communication Studies, XXIII(1), 112-124.
Tannen, D. & Kakava, C. (1992). Power and solidarity in modern Greek conversation: disagreeing to agree. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 10(1), 11-34.
Taylor, S.C.R. (1997). Patron-Client relationships and the challenge for the Thai church. MA thesis, Discipleship Training Center, Singapore.
Thijittang, S. (2010). A Study of pragmatic strategies of English of Thai university students: Apology speech acts. PhD thesis, University of Tasmania, Hobart.
Thitthongkam, T. (2013). Roles of language and culture towards customer satisfaction in the competitiveness of the Thai tourism industry. International Journal of Economics, Finance and Management, 2(1), 102-113.
Triwittayapoom, C. (2011). Social class and status. Project of Knowledge management i: Definition of business: marketing (2nd Time). [online]. Retrieved from
http://www.ismed.or.th/SME/src/upload/knowledge/1181553076466d11b402c49.pdf
Tsiotsou, R. H. & Wirtz, J. (2011). Customer behaviour in a service context. [online]. Retrieved from http://bschool.nus.edu.sg/Marketing/Jochen%20papers/
TsiotsouWirtz-CBService%20Context-2012.pdf
Ukosakul, M. (2009). The significance of ‘face’ and politeness in social interaction as revealed through Thai ‘face’ idioms. In Bargiela-Chiappini, F. & Haugh, M. (Eds.), Face, Communication and Social Interaction, (pp.289-305), London: Equinox Publishing.
Wannaruk, A. (2008). Pragmatic transfer in Thai EFL refusals. RELC Journal, 39(3), 318-337.
Watts, R. J. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wichato, K. W. (2011). Satisfaction of people towards service applying the Four Sangahavatthus of Nakhon Sawan Monastery. MA thesis, Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University, Bangkok. [In Thai]
Wiriyaseabpong, P. (2015). To develop cultural belief of self-suffiency by using Delphi technique. RMUTT Global Business and Economics Review, 10(1), 93-106.
Witkowski, T. H. & Wolfinbarger, M. F. (2001). The formality dimension of service quality in Thailand and Japan. In Gilly, M. C. & Meyers-Levy, J. (Eds.), NA-Advances in Consumer Research 28, (pp.153-160), Valdosta, GA: Association for Consumer Research.
Wong, N. Y. (2004). The role of culture in the perception of service recovery. Journal of Business Research, 57(9), 957-963.
Wongswangpanich, K. (2010). Problematic Thai hierarchy and eco-political speech acts and Thai political crisis. [online]. Retrieved from http://kritdikornwongswangpanich.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/class-conflict-andeconomic-discourse-in-thai-political-crisis/
Wu, J. (2015) Internal audit and review of the negative customer behavior. Journal of Service Science and Management, 8, 578-587. Also in online [online]. Retrieved from http://file.scirp.org/pdf/JSSM_2015081414255129.pdf.
Arrington, L. (1990). The customer is God. Managing Service Quality, 23-26.
Arundale, R. B. (1999). An alternative model and ideology of communication for an alternative to politeness theory. Pragmatics, 9(1), 119-153.
Arundale, R. B. (2006). Face as relational and interactional: A communication framework for research on face, facework, and politeness. Journal of Politeness Research, 2, 193-216.
Arundale, R. B. (2008). Against (Gricean) intentions at the heart of human interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics, 5(2), 229-258.
Arundale, R. B. (2009). Face as emergent in interpersonal communication: An alternative to Goffman. In Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Haugh, M. (eds.) (2009) Face, Communication and Social Interaction. London: Equinox, 33-54.
Arundale, R. B. (2010). Constituting face in conversation: Face, facework, and interactional achievement. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 2078-2105.
Bargiela-Chiappini, F. (2003). Face and Politeness: New (insights) for Old (concepts). Journal of Pragmatic, 35(10-11), 1453-1469.
Bitner, M. J., Booms, B. H. & Tetreault, M. S. (1990). The service encounter: Diagnosing favourable and unfavourable incidents. Journal of Marketing, 54(1), 71-84.
Blum-Kulka, S. (1997). The dynamics of family dinner-talk: Cultural contexts for the children’s passages to adult discourse. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 27, 1-15.
Brown, P. & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burgers, A., de Ruyter, K., Keen, C. & Streukens, S. (2000). Customer expectation dimensions of voice-to-voice service encounters; a scale-development study. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 11(2), 142-161.
Cedar, P. (2006). Thai and American responses to compliments in English. The Linguistic Journal, 1(2), 6-28.
Chakorn, O. (2006). Persuasive and politeness strategies in cross-cultural letters of request in the Thai business context. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 16(1), 103-146.
Chiravate, B. (2011). Perception of politeness in English requests by Thai EFL learners. 3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 17(2), 59-71.
Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Pantheon Books.
Hendon, D. W. (1999). How to negotiate with Thai executives. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 41-62.
Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviours, institutions, and organisation across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Holmes, H. & Tangtongtavy, S. (1997). Working with the Thais: A guide to managing in Thailand. Bangkok: White Lotus Co.Ltd.
Hongladarom, K. & Hongladarom, S. (2005). Politeness in Thai computermediated communication. In Lakoff, R. T. and Ide, S. (Eds.) Broadening the horizon of linguistic politeness, (pp.157-174), Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing.
Hwang, A., Francesco, A. M. & Kessler, E. (2003). The relationship between individualism-collectivism, face, and feedback and learning processes in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, 34, 72-91.
Intachakra, S. (2012). Politeness motivated by the “heart” and “binary rationality” in Thai culture. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(5), 619-635.
(PAGE120)
Leelaharattanarak, N. (2015). Face manifestations in Thai hospitality settings: An investigation of interpersonally-sensitive activities. PhD thesis, University of Surrey, Guildford.
Massad, N. & Crowston, K. (2003). Using the service encounter model to enhance our understanding of business-to-consumer transactions in an environment. In Proceedings of the 16th Bled eCommerce Conference: eTransformation, 9-11 June, 2003. Bled, Slovenia, 183-193.
Mattila, A. S. & Patterson, P. G. (2004). Service recovery and fairness perception in collectivist and individualist contexts. Journal of Service Research, 6(4), 336-346.
Merritt, M. (1976). On questions following questions in service encounters. Language in Society, 5(3), 315-357.
Morand, D. A. & Ocker, J. O. (2003). Politeness theory and computer-mediated communication: A sociolinguistic approach to analyzing relational messages. In Proceedings of the 36th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-36), 28th January, 2006. Los Alamitos: IEEE Press, 1-10.
O’Driscoll, J. (1996). About face: A defense and elaboration of universal dualism. Journal of Pragmatics 25(1), 1-32.
Panpothong, N. (2001). Thai ways of saying “NO” to a request. Manusya: Journal of Humanities, 4(2), 63-76.
Phanphae, P. (2011). Thai style of management. Srinakharinwirot Business Journal, 2(2), 133-146. [In Thai]
Piromrat, R. (2012) Satisfaction of the foreigner businessmen toward service of Grande Centre Point Hotel and Residence Rajdamri. MBA thesis, Srinakharinwirot University, Bangkok. [In Thai]
Pornpitakpan, C. (2000). Trade in Thailand: A three-way cultural comparison. Business Horizons, 43(2), 61-70.
Price, L. L., Arnould, E. J. & Deibler, S. L. (1995a). Consumers’ emotional responses to service encounters: The influence of the service provider. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 6(3), 34-63.
Price, L. L., Arnould, E. J. & Tierney, P. (1995b). Going to extreme: Managing service encounters and assessing provider performance. Journal of Marketing, 59(2), 83-97.
Promsrimas, W. (2000). Refusal strategies in responding to favor: Expressing speech acts in Thai. Master’s thesis, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. [In Thai]
Pugh, S. D. (2001). Service with a smile: Emotional contagion in the service encounter. The Academy of Management Journal, 44(5), 1018-1027.
Rhurakvit, M. (2011). Complaints in Thailand and English: An interlanguage pragmatic study. PhD thesis, Queen Mary University of London, London.
Rittichainuwat, B. N., Qu, H. & Mongknonvanit, C. (2002). A study of the impact of travel satisfaction on the likelihood of travelers to revisit Thailand. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, 12(2-3), 19-23.
Shostack, L. (1985). Planning the service encounter. In Czepiel, J.A., Solomon, M.R. & Suprenant, C.F. (Eds.), The Service Encounter, (pp.112-126), Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Solon, M. (2013). Cross-cultural negotiation: Touristic service encounters in Yucatán, Mexico. In Chad Howe et al. (Eds.). Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 15th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, Somerville, MA, (pp. 252-268). Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Solomon, M. R., Surprenant, C., Czepiel, J. A. & Gutman, E. G. (1985). A role theory perspective on dyadic interactions: The service encounter. Journal of Marketing, 49(1), 99-111.
Somwang, C. (2008). An assessment of passengers’ views of service quality in Thai low cost carriers. RU International Journal, 2(1), 71-81.
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2000). Report management: A framework for analysis. In Spencer-Oatey (ed.) (2000) Culturally speaking: managing rapport through talk across culture. London: Continuum, 11-46.
Sriussadaporn-Charoenngam, N. & Jablin, F. M. (1999). An exploratory study of communication competence in Thai organizations. Journal of Business Communication, 36, 382-418.
Tao, L. (2014). Evaluating the concept of ‘face’ (mentsu) in Japanese verbal communication. Intercultural Communication Studies, XXIII(1), 112-124.
Tannen, D. & Kakava, C. (1992). Power and solidarity in modern Greek conversation: disagreeing to agree. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 10(1), 11-34.
Taylor, S.C.R. (1997). Patron-Client relationships and the challenge for the Thai church. MA thesis, Discipleship Training Center, Singapore.
Thijittang, S. (2010). A Study of pragmatic strategies of English of Thai university students: Apology speech acts. PhD thesis, University of Tasmania, Hobart.
Thitthongkam, T. (2013). Roles of language and culture towards customer satisfaction in the competitiveness of the Thai tourism industry. International Journal of Economics, Finance and Management, 2(1), 102-113.
Triwittayapoom, C. (2011). Social class and status. Project of Knowledge management i: Definition of business: marketing (2nd Time). [online]. Retrieved from
http://www.ismed.or.th/SME/src/upload/knowledge/1181553076466d11b402c49.pdf
Tsiotsou, R. H. & Wirtz, J. (2011). Customer behaviour in a service context. [online]. Retrieved from http://bschool.nus.edu.sg/Marketing/Jochen%20papers/
TsiotsouWirtz-CBService%20Context-2012.pdf
Ukosakul, M. (2009). The significance of ‘face’ and politeness in social interaction as revealed through Thai ‘face’ idioms. In Bargiela-Chiappini, F. & Haugh, M. (Eds.), Face, Communication and Social Interaction, (pp.289-305), London: Equinox Publishing.
Wannaruk, A. (2008). Pragmatic transfer in Thai EFL refusals. RELC Journal, 39(3), 318-337.
Watts, R. J. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wichato, K. W. (2011). Satisfaction of people towards service applying the Four Sangahavatthus of Nakhon Sawan Monastery. MA thesis, Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University, Bangkok. [In Thai]
Wiriyaseabpong, P. (2015). To develop cultural belief of self-suffiency by using Delphi technique. RMUTT Global Business and Economics Review, 10(1), 93-106.
Witkowski, T. H. & Wolfinbarger, M. F. (2001). The formality dimension of service quality in Thailand and Japan. In Gilly, M. C. & Meyers-Levy, J. (Eds.), NA-Advances in Consumer Research 28, (pp.153-160), Valdosta, GA: Association for Consumer Research.
Wong, N. Y. (2004). The role of culture in the perception of service recovery. Journal of Business Research, 57(9), 957-963.
Wongswangpanich, K. (2010). Problematic Thai hierarchy and eco-political speech acts and Thai political crisis. [online]. Retrieved from http://kritdikornwongswangpanich.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/class-conflict-andeconomic-discourse-in-thai-political-crisis/
Wu, J. (2015) Internal audit and review of the negative customer behavior. Journal of Service Science and Management, 8, 578-587. Also in online [online]. Retrieved from http://file.scirp.org/pdf/JSSM_2015081414255129.pdf.