Comparative service quality:
German and American ratings across service settings
Terrence H. Witkowski*, Mary F. Wolfinbarger
Department of Marketing, California State University, Long Beach, CA 90840, USA
Abstract
Marketing services internationally requires that companies become familiar with consumer attitudes in different service settings across
different cultures. Using items from established measures of service quality, this study compared ratings of banks, medical care, retail
clothing stores, postal facilities, and restaurants in Germany and the United States. The German respondents had lower service expectations,
and generally lower perceived service outcomes, than did the American subjects. Five dimensions of service -- reliability, empathy,
responsiveness, assurance, and tangibles -- explained 56% of overall service quality in the German sample and 69% in the American sample.
Other important differences and some similarities between the samples appeared when service factors were examined across settings.
D 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Services marketing; International marketing; Cross-cultural consumer research
1. Introduction
Service providers, as well as companies selling tangibles
with a substantial service component, are increasingly cross-
ing national boundaries, not just to reach business markets,
but also for retail customers. Examples of the latter include
bank credit cards (America's Citicorp), telecommunications
(British Telecoms, Sweden's Ericsson), delivery companies
(America's UPS and Federal Express), fast food franchises
(America's McDonald's and Pizza Hut), department and
home furnishing stores (Britain's Marks & Spencer, Swe-
den's IKEA), and catalog marketers (America's Land's End,
Germany's Otto Versand). In addition, original equipment
manufactures, such as Whirlpool Europe, are taking steps to
establish customer assistance centers in various markets
(Jancsurak, 1995). Such companies need to be informed
about prevailing consumer service attitudes across service
settings in different cultures.
Because services marketing often requires direct cus-
tomer participation, which itself may entail providers and
receivers learning new roles and scripts (Solomon et al.,
1985), cultural factors should be an especially strong
influence on the success of a service encounter (Fugate
and Zimmerman, 1996). Customer involvement in the
creation and delivery of a service is a Western tradition that
some cultures, such as the Middle East, do not necessarily
accept (Kassem, 1989). Similarly, the perishability of serv-
ices sometimes requires the shifting of demand, but not all
cultures may have the same waiting line behavior or will-
ingness to defer consumption.
This research compares German and American consumer
ratings of service quality experiences in five service settings
-- banks, medical care, retail clothing stores, postal facil-
ities, and restaurants. This project utilizes the SERVQUAL
scale, a measure of service quality well documented in
multiple settings in the United States (Berry et al., 1993;
Parasuraman et al., 1986, 1990) and additional items from
SERVPERF (Cronin and Taylor, 1992). It is not clear how
well either of these scales, and especially the items
developed to measure five-service dimensions -- reliability,
empathy, responsiveness, assurance, and tangibles -- will
apply in different countries. In summarizing their research,
SERVQUAL's authors reported that American customers
consistently rated reliability to be the most important factor
in service quality, followed in order by responsiveness,
assurance, empathy, and tangibles (Berry et al., 1993). For
both practical and theoretical reasons, the international
generalizability of these findings should be investigated.
This article proposes a method whereby SERVQUAL
can be used to measure service quality in different coun-
0148-2963/02/$ ­ see front matter D 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
PII: S0148-2963(01)00206-5
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-562-985-4766; fax: +1-562-985-
5543.
E-mail address: witko@csulb.edu (T.H. Witkowski).
Journal of Business Research 55 (2002) 875­881
tries. The research compares expectations and outcomes for
each of five service settings and service quality dimensions,
as well as relationships between ratings on the five dimen-
sions and overall ratings of service quality in Germany and
the U.S. Despite many institutional similarities, as well as
increasing convergence in some areas such as television
programming and advertising (Witkowski and Kellner,
1998), the two countries differ markedly in their service
delivery systems and in the underlying cultural values and
social practices that guide them. Specifically, the research
seeks to (1) establish an interpretive context by comparing
German and American service expectations and perceived
outcomes, (2) determine how well the items and constructs
in SERVQUAL predict German consumers' judgments of
overall service quality, and (3) see how each of the five
service attributes contributes to satisfaction among German
as compared to American consumers. The information
provided by using SERVQUAL can be used as a strategic
starting point in adjusting a service offering for export,
for licensing and franchising, and when establishing a
foreign subsidiary.
2. Service quality in Germany and the United States
According to Hans-Joerg Bullinger, director of the
Fraunhofer Institute for Labor Economics and Organization,
Germany has fallen behind its major economic competitors
and, in comparison, is an ``outright service desert'' (TWIG,
1997, p. 4). Economic data support this assertion. Only 58%
of all Germans work in the service sector compared to
nearly 72% of all Americans (Walsh, 1996) and Germany
has lagged far behind the U.S. in the creation of service jobs
(Judis, 1999). In 1998, Germany imported US$46.1 billion
more services than it exported, whereas the U.S. exported
US$74.2 billion more than it imported (World Trade Organ-
ization, 2000).
German retailing is notoriously unfriendly to consum-
ers. The 1956 Shop Closure Law that forced stores to close
at 6:30 p.m. on most weekdays and at 2:00 p.m. on most
Saturdays (Ardagh, 1995) has been relaxed only grudg-
ingly, most recently in November 1996, when hours were
extended to 8:00 p.m. weekdays and 4:00 p.m. on Satur-
days. Other restrictions include the circa 1900 Law Against
Unfair Competition, which prohibits putting goods on sale
for all but 4 weeks of the year, the Discount Law of 1933,
which limits the percentage by which stores may mark
down items for sale, and the Bonus Regulation of 1932,
which bans businesses from offering American-style pre-
miums such as the bottomless cup of coffee or linkages
between credit cards and frequent-flier miles (Economist,
1995; Walsh, 1996). In the name of ``consumer protec-
tion,'' cash or in kind rebates are limited to only 3% of the
cost of a good and retailers are forbidden from making
direct price comparisons with competitors (Economist,
1996). Typically, the interests of unions, shopkeepers,
and environmentalists take precedence over those of con-
sumers.
German service workers are relatively rule-bound, often
dodge customer complaints by blaming higher authority,
and generally find service jobs demeaning, while German
consumers are less likely than Americans to insist upon their
rights (Walsh, 1996). Instead of receiving the friendliness
and courtesy that abound in many countries, new customers
in numerous German stores, banks, or service desks encoun-
ter glares or, more commonly, a bored look of compulsory
compliance (Lord, 1996). In restaurants, guests usually must
find their own seats and, because a service charge is
included by law in all prices and tipping is more or less
optional, German staffs have less incentive to humor diners
than do their American counterparts. ``Service with a
Frown'' is how one guidebook wryly titles its section
discussing this topic (Stern, 1994). Interestingly, a number
of salespeople and even some customers reject company
training programs to reduce hostility and rudeness as an
exercise in nothing more than ``superficial American friend-
liness'' (Lord, 1996, p. 141). Wal-Mart has been very
cautious in introducing chatty American-style greeters in
its newly acquired German stores (Williams, 1999).
Perhaps more than many peoples, Germans compart-
mentalize their private and public selves. With friends,
family, and close colleagues, they can be warm and enga-
ging, but with strangers the common attitude seems to be
one of coldness and suspicion. The German language
distinguishes between Sie, the formal ``you'' invoked to
maintain social distance, and the informal du used to address
family, friends, and children. German customer behavior
also bears some responsibility for difficulties in service
interactions. Unlike the more courteous British or American
practice, Germans often jostle each other and mill about in
front of service counters, rather than form queues, and
typically ignore the norm of first come, first served (Lord,
1996; Stern, 1994). Germans define customer service
``chiefly in terms of providing customers with good, reliable
products and good follow-up service where needed. As far
as making the very act of shopping or dealing a somewhat
pleasant experience in itself, well, this is one area where the
Germans are far behind other peoples'' (Lord, 1996, p. 238).
Needless to say, customer service and the consumer interest
held especially low priority in formerly communist East
Germany, and many ingrained attitudes and behaviors are
likely to persist in these states for quite some time.
As early as the 1960s and 1970s, survey data showed that
a majority of Germans were unhappy with restricted shop-
ping hours (Noelle-Neumann, 1981). There are strong
indications that German consumers today are becoming
increasingly dissatisfied with other aspects of their service
environment. Public opinion polls conducted in 1990 and
1994 showed a dramatic decline in satisfaction with the
German healthcare system (Blendon et al., 1995). The
Emnid Institute, interviewing 33,000 respondents between
May and August 1996, found that customer satisfaction had
T.H. Witkowski, M.F. Wolfinbarger / Journal of Business Research 55 (2002) 875­881876
dropped to its lowest level since 1992. Germany's trains,
post offices, telephone company (Deutsche Telekom), and
department stores received the greatest criticism, and almost
all of the 39 fields surveyed received low ratings for the
quality of technical advice, friendliness, reliability, and
availability. Travel and financial services provided the only
bright spots since respondents were highly satisfied with the
service quality of these industries (TWIG, 1996).
Together, anecdotal and research evidence suggest that,
objectively, much customer service is worse in Germany
than in the United States and that Germans are becoming
less satisfied with the quality of service they receive.
However, comparisons of perceived service quality between
the two nations should take into account both different
service settings and different expectation levels. In a 1994
study, for example, more German than American respond-
ents rated their postal service as fair or poor, but, on the
other hand, the Germans expressed more favorable attitudes
toward their courts, public schools, and healthcare system
(Blendon et al., 1995). In the case of health care, Germans
reported poorer service than Americans on a number of
different items, especially waiting time in doctor's offices
(Donelan et al., 1996), but because they had somewhat
lower expectations about the efficacy of modern medicine in
curing illness (Blendon et al., 1995), their overall satisfac-
tion was higher. Thus, in addition to developing a meth-
odology to utilize SERVQUAL internationally, this research
investigates substantive differences in expectations and out-
comes, as well as ratings of service attributes, across five
different settings in Germany and the United States.
3. Research methods
A five-page, self-administered questionnaire consisting
of SERVQUAL, selected items from SERVPERF, and
demographic variables was developed in English. Altern-
ative versions obtained service quality ratings for banks,
medical care, retail clothing stores, postal facilities, and
restaurants. The wording of some items had to be adjusted
slightly for some settings (e.g., customers were referred to
as ``patients'' in the medical care questionnaire). The first
draft of the translation was made by a marketing professor
in Germany, and was then checked for accuracy by a
German language professor in the U.S. The only noteworthy
problems with conceptual equivalence arose in the response
categories for education and income levels. The German
educational system has both vocational as well as academic
high schools, and Germans tend to think in terms of their net
monthly income after taxes, whereas Americans think in
terms of their yearly gross income.
Students from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University and
California State University, Long Beach collected data in
the greater Frankfurt area and in Southern California.
Questionnaires were distributed to fellow students, friends,
relatives, coworkers, and others on an opportunistic basis.
However, the quota sample of 575 Germans and 455
Americans included age categories roughly proportional to
their incidence in each nation's population. The average age
of the German respondents was 42; that of the Americans
was 41. The German sample was 49% female and 51%
male; the American sample was 50% female and 49% male.
Both groups were well educated. Nearly 30% of the Ger-
mans had a university diploma (a 5-year degree program),
while 25% of the Americans were college graduates and an
additional 18% had some postgraduate work or degree.
Approximately 200 respondents rated each of the five
service settings.
Through factor analysis utilizing Varimax rotation, the
22-item scale in the questionnaire (measured by a 7-point
scale from Strongly disagree to Strongly agree) was pared to
13 items to achieve sufficient comparability across the
German and American samples, and to provide adequate
discriminant validity. The original 22-item, five-factor solu-
tion developed by SERVQUAL's authors yielded poor
discriminant validity, both across and within the two sam-
ples. Other authors have reported problems with the dis-
criminant validity of SERVQUAL (Babakus and Boller,
1992; Carman, 1990; Cronin and Taylor, 1992; Teas,
1993). Parasuraman et al. (1994) suggest oblique rotation
in which correlation between factors is allowed, but the
oblique solutions obtained with the American and German
samples were less comparable than those obtained with
Varimax rotation.
The cross-cultural context of this research raised further
comparability issues. During debriefing, for instance, the
Table 1
SERVQUAL items used in analysis with Cronbach's a and factor loading
scores (in parentheses)
Reliability a=.87
My [service type] performs the service right the first time. (.80)
When my [service type] promises to do something by a certain time,
it does so. (.80)
My [service type] provides its services at the time it promises to do so. (.80)
Responsiveness a=.83
The personnel at my [service type] give you prompt service. (.77)
The personnel at my [service type] are never too busy to respond to
your requests. (.71)
Empathy a=.91
My [service type] has your best interests at heart. (.82)
The personnel of my [service type] understand your specific needs. (.77)
The personnel at my [service type] give you personal attention. (.69)
Assurance a=.86
You feel safe in your visits to my [service type]. (.81)
The personnel at my [service type] have the knowledge to answer your
questions. (.56)
The behavior of personnel at my [service type] instills confidence in
customers. (.54)
Tangibles a=.75
My [service type] has modern-looking equipment. (.91)
My [service type's] physical appearance is visually appealing. (.85)
T.H. Witkowski, M.F. Wolfinbarger / Journal of Business Research 55 (2002) 875­881 877
students who had collected the German data stated that the
SERVQUAL question regarding pamphlets and other mate-
rials (one aspect of tangibles) was not relevant in most of the
German service settings investigated. Another item from
SERVQUAL, concerning the convenience of store hours,
was irrelevant in differentiating service responsiveness in
Germany where store hours are determined by law. Despite
these difficulties, each of SERVQUAL's original five factors
remained in the final analysis. Reliability, empathy, and
assurance were all measured by three items, while respon-
siveness and tangibles were measured by two items each
(see Table 1). The dependent variable, overall service
quality, consisted of two summary items: ``The quality of
my [service setting] is: (Very poor = 1 to Excellent = 7)'' and
``My feelings toward my [service setting's] services can best
be described as: (Very unsatisfied = 1 to Very satisfied = 7).''
While SERVPERF's authors, Cronin and Taylor (1992),
assert that these items represent two different constructs,
service quality and customer satisfaction, Parasuraman et al.
(1994) provide evidence that the two items are both meas-
ures of service quality. Our empirical results support their
contention, as the two items are correlated in the present
study at .87, and Cronbach's a is .93.
4. Findings
4.1. Service expectations and outcomes
Table 2 compares German and American service expect-
ations and outcomes across the five settings. The German
respondents had lower expectations than their American
counterparts for each setting and lower perceived outcomes
in three of the five settings. The two exceptions were
medical care and restaurants where the Germans reported
slightly higher outcome scores. Both groups had their
highest service expectations for banks. The lowest expecta-
tion for the Germans was for medical care followed closely
by restaurants, while the lowest expectation for the Amer-
icans was for restaurants. For both groups, the difference
between expectations and outcomes was greatest for postal
service and smallest for restaurant service. Germans were
particularly dissatisfied with their postal services, which
cost three times as much as in the U.S., and rated them very
low on all five service attributes.
The differences between German and American service
expectations and perceived outcomes by SERVQUAL factor
are shown in Table 3. For reliability and responsiveness, the
negative differences were smaller for the German respond-
ents indicating slightly greater satisfaction with these factors
than for the Americans. For empathy and tangibles, on the
other hand, the Germans were slightly more dissatisfied than
the Americans. In the case of assurance, both groups, and
especially the Germans, expressed satisfaction in that what
they received exceeded their expectations. Overall, the
Americans were most dissatisfied with responsiveness,
while the Germans showed the greatest service disappoint-
ment with the empathy dimension.
Compared to Berry et al.'s (1993) findings, our respond-
ents, both Americans and Germans, were generally less
satisfied with the service they received, except on the
assurance dimension. While the respondents in Berry et al.
(1993) were most disappointed with reliability, the Ameri-
cans in our study were most critical of responsiveness.
However, in the earlier SERVQUAL study, respondents
were almost as dissatisfied with responsiveness and
empathy as they were with reliability. Thus, the differences
between the SERVQUAL findings and those from the U.S.
subsample of our study are minor when considering the
relative level of disappointment with service quality, again
with the exception of the positive findings on the assurance
dimension. Differences between the SERVQUAL authors'
findings and those in our U.S. sample might be due to the
paring down of the scale from the original 22 items to 13.
Table 2
German and American service expectations and outcomes by service setting
Setting Expectations N Outcomes N
Germans
Banks 76.9 132 66.4 130
Medical 70.7 105 66.0 100
Retail 74.1 114 66.3 113
Postal 74.1 119 52.5 118
Restaurant 70.9 101 68.2 97
Total 76.1 571 63.7 558
Americans
Banks 80.9 105 70.0 107
Medical 80.2 103 65.4 102
Retail 79.5 75 66.8 71
Postal 80.1 86 64.1 82
Restaurant 75.4 81 67.9 80
Total 79.4 450 67.9 442
Expectation and outcome scores are the sum of the 13 SERVQUAL
items (Strongly agree = 7). For both expectations and outcomes, difference
by nation and by service setting are significant, P < .01.
Table 3
German and American expectations and outcomes by SERVQUAL factor
Factor Expectation Outcomes Difference (%)
Germans
Reliability 18.0 15.5  14
Empathy 17.6 14.2  19
Responsiveness 10.8 9.5  12
Assurance 17.8 20.9 + 17
Tangibles 9.4 9.0  4
Americans
Reliability 19.1 15.7  18
Empathy 18.3 14.9  19
Responsiveness 12.8 10.1  21
Assurance 18.9 20.9 + 10
Tangibles 10.6 10.2  4
Differences are expressed as percentages because reliability, empathy,
and assurance were measured by three items, while responsiveness and
tangibles were measured by two items.
T.H. Witkowski, M.F. Wolfinbarger / Journal of Business Research 55 (2002) 875­881878
An additional source of discrepancy between the two studies
may be because our respondents reported on their own,
particular service provider, which allowed for a greater
diversity of companies to be included in the sample com-
pared to the five ``well-known'' service providers studied by
the SERVQUAL authors. Moreover, those five large pro-
viders may provide better service on average than do other
service companies.
4.2. Predicting respondents' ratings of the importance of
each of five service dimensions
Following earlier SERVQUAL research, respondents
were asked to allocate 100 points among the five service
dimensions to reflect their degree of perceived importance.
Table 4 displays the German and U.S. findings alongside the
SERVQUAL results. As in the SERVQUAL studies, both
Germans and Americans believed that reliability was the
most important dimension of their service. The American
findings closely mirrored those of the SERVQUAL authors,
except for the fact that reliability appears to be somewhat
less important, and tangibles somewhat more. Further
investigation of the data suggests that this difference is
largely because of the inclusion of retail clothing stores,
postal facilities, and restaurants in the sample, all services
for which American respondents preferred somewhat less
reliability and somewhat more in the way of tangibles
compared to banking and medical services. German and
American scores in our study are quite comparable, except
that the German respondents traded off some reliability and
responsiveness points for empathy.
4.3. Relationship between ratings of service dimensions and
overall ratings of service quality
Table 4 only shows what consumers say they want. To
determine underlying preferences and beliefs, overall level
of satisfaction must be related to ratings of the actual
performance level of service on the five dimensions. While
Parasuraman et al. (1994) argue that the performance­
expectations model may prove to be better than the per-
formance alone model in predicting service quality, they
concede that research to date generally suggests that per-
formance is the best predictor of service quality. In order to
investigate these relationships, regressions were run util-
izing each of the five-factor scores (for the perceived
performance outcomes only) as predictors of overall service
quality. Measures of multicollinearity, including variance
inflation factors and conditioning indices, were well within
acceptable ranges for all regression equations submitted for
analysis. Large sample size and paring items down to those
that allowed for discrimination mitigated the potential
difficulties that could have been caused by multicollinearity.
Utilizing the 13-item, five-factor solution, the percentage of
variance in overall service quality explained in the German
sample was 56%, while in the American sample it was 69%.
Given that SERVQUAL was developed in the U.S., it is not
surprising that the scale does a somewhat better job predict-
ing overall satisfaction in the American sample. Neverthe-
less, the five factors do explain over half of the variance in
service quality ratings in the German sample, suggesting
that the scale can be useful in German service contexts.
Moreover, each of the five attributes was significantly
related to overall service quality across all five settings in
the German sample ( P < .05).
The percentage of variance of overall service quality for
the Germans was best explained in restaurants (64%) and
least well explained in banking (33%). The percentage of
variance explained for the other three German settings was
57% for medical care, 59% for retail clothing, and 51% for
postal services. Perhaps in the banking area, specific attrib-
utes of the service offering, such as interest rates and
account fees are more important to Germans in their rating
of overall service quality than are ancillary services. Also,
German banking is undergoing more rapid changes than the
other sectors, including the introduction of telephone, elec-
tronic, and personal advisory services. This turbulence may
be affecting respondent judgments in a way not measured by
Table 4
Respondents' percentage importance ratings of SERVQUAL dimensions
Dimension
Germans and Americans
(%)
Germans
(%)
Americans
(%)
SERVQUAL findings
(%)
Reliability 27 25 29 32
Empathy 21 23 18 16
Responsiveness 19 17 20 22
Assurance 18 18 17 19
Tangibles 16 16 17 11
Total 101a
99a
101a
100
a
Differences from 100 due to rounding.
Table 5
Explained variance in overall service quality *
Overall Germans Americans
Reliability .35 .33 .37
Empathy .42 .42 .42
Responsiveness .41 .42 .40
Assurance .28 .26 .32
Tangibles .24 .23 .27
* All partial b's are significant at P < .01.
T.H. Witkowski, M.F. Wolfinbarger / Journal of Business Research 55 (2002) 875­881 879
SERVQUAL's five attributes. The comparable percentages
of variance explained for the Americans were 59% for
banks, 74% for medical care, 74% for retail clothing, 43%
for postal service, and 74% for restaurants. American
perceptions of postal service may be colored by the wide-
spread disdain for government institutions, an attitude
cluster that is not measured by the SERVQUAL items.
Table 5 reveals how well respondents' ratings of each of
the five SERVQUAL factors -- reliability, empathy, respon-
siveness, assurance, and tangibles -- explains their judg-
ments of overall service quality. In contrast to the
importance ratings American respondents gave the dimen-
sions in Table 4, which suggest that reliability is their most
important factor in judging services, empathy is the factor
most strongly related to overall satisfaction, with respon-
siveness a close second. The American result is mirrored in
the German subsample, with empathy and responsiveness
equally related to judgments of overall quality, and reliabil-
ity a more distant third than in the U.S. subsample.
The amount of variance in overall quality explained in
each of the five settings by each of the five factors is
illustrated in Table 6. There were several noteworthy differ-
ences between the two countries in terms of how the five
factors contributed to perceptions of overall service quality.
ÁAssurance more strongly predicted American ratings of
overall bank service quality, whereas tangibles had more
explanatory power for the Germans.
Á Responsiveness more strongly predicted German than
American ratings of medical services, while empathy and
reliability more strongly predicted American than German
ratings. Other research has shown that, compared to Amer-
icans, Germans feel they wait too long for routine physician
care (Donelan et al., 1996). Thus, Germans value more
responsive medical service.
Á Responsiveness and tangibles were more strongly
related to the overall quality ratings of postal service for
Americans than for Germans.
Á While both Americans and Germans strongly related
empathy to overall quality in restaurants, for Germans this
factor was especially important.
ÁIn retail clothing, the American respondents' ratings of
responsiveness and assurance were more strongly correlated
to overall service quality ratings than were the ratings of
Germans. Most strikingly, Americans' ratings of tangibles in
retail clothing were 2.5 times more strongly related to
overall quality than were those of Germans.
5. Research significance and limitations
Comparative research makes at least two contributions
to services marketing. First, it allows service concepts to be
tested internationally. SERVQUAL and SERVPERF were
developed within a strictly U.S. context that is not neces-
sarily generalizable. While the present findings suggest that
SERVQUAL/SERVPERF offer useful information in a
German context, they also suggest that some factor or
factors important to German consumers may not be mea-
sured by SERVQUAL. In other countries, services
researchers may need to conduct exploratory research in
order to determine services items that may need to be
added to the SERVQUAL/SERVPERF format. However,
SERVQUAL, when pared down to the attributes, which
made the samples comparable and the factors discrimin-
able, did an excellent job predicting service quality assess-
ments in the German settings investigated, suggesting that
the items may be a good place to start in assessing service
quality internationally.
Second, by comparing the strength of the relationship
between each of the five factors and overall service quality,
research can determine the relative importance of reliability,
empathy, responsiveness, assurance, and tangibles across
cultures and perhaps even for different target markets within
a culture. Managers seeking to transplant a service should be
able to determine, through surveys of target customers for a
particular business setting, where and how they are likely to
misunderstand the foreign culture by comparing the
response of their American customers with those in the
country they would like to enter.
Our findings suggest some specific cautions for U.S.
firms seeking to enter the German market. Clothing retailers
should realize that tangibles like facility appearance and
personnel are not nearly as important to German consumers
as they are to Americans, while restaurant franchisers
should not underestimate the degree to which Germans
value service employee empathy like caring and individu-
alized attention. On the other hand, service niches may exist
for improving performance attributes on which Germans
feel under served. For instance, Germans appear to value
and desire more empathy and responsiveness than they are
presently receiving from many of their service providers.
Because this study employed nonprobability sampling,
the differences uncovered need to be validated by other
Table 6
Percentage of variance in overall service quality explained by different
factors across five settings *
Banks Medical Retail Postal Restaurant
Germans
Reliability .28 .30 .41 .48 .29
Empathy .39 .28 .35 .39 .58
Responsiveness .37 .66 .34 .28 .39
Assurance .21 .31 .28 .21 .40
Tangibles .22 .15 .15 .27 .32
Americans
Reliability .34 .41 .33 .45 .29
Empathy .41 .50 .34 .43 .48
Responsiveness .42 .37 .44 .44 .36
Assurance .31 .22 .37 .26 .37
Tangibles .14 .23 .41 .38 .24
* All partial b's are significant at P < .05.
T.H. Witkowski, M.F. Wolfinbarger / Journal of Business Research 55 (2002) 875­881880
studies. In addition, a German tendency to be more critical
than Americans has been detected in other research (Wit-
kowski and Kellner, 1998), suggesting the possibility of
either a negative/pessimistic response bias on the part of
the Germans, or a positive/optimistic one on the part of the
Americans. Nevertheless, the findings are largely consist-
ent with much other evidence indicating that Americans
expect and receive more service than do Germans. More-
over, the findings are roughly consistent with those of
SERVQUAL's authors, with the small differences that did
arise between this data and prior SERVQUAL findings
being traceable in part to the particular service settings
investigated. Proprietary studies should include measures
of price and product quality, which together with service
quality may predict overall consumer satisfaction (Para-
suraman et al., 1994). Establishing linkages between ser-
vice quality, behavioral intentions, and profit is also
necessary (Zeithaml et al., 1996).
Further research must tie the differences between Amer-
icans and Germans observed in responses to SERVQUAL to
wider cultural features. Developing a broader theoretical
basis for the differential responses to services characteristics
will lead to more generalizable results. Moreover, additional
possible service attributes should be developed and tested
internationally, especially in settings where SERVQUAL's
factors explain relatively little variance in customers' overall
ratings of service quality. These dimensions, in turn, may
help U.S. service providers more thoroughly understand
customers' ratings of service quality in the domestic market.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Professor Joachim Kellner (now at the
University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg) and his students
at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, for their
assistance in data collection.
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