Impact of intercultural competence on service quality and satisfaction in the grocery retailing: a conceptual framework

Abstract

The article presents a comprehensive and conceptual framework on key factors of intercultural competence influencing policy, which is one of the most important dimensions of perceived service quality and customer satisfaction in the grocery retail industry of Malaysia. The theory-based path model of constructs and their possible interrelationships will be proposed such that the future analysis would be based on structural equation modelling approach or related statistical methods. In other words, this study anticipates to propose an applicable technique to empirically examine the inter relationships of latent intercultural competence, policy and satisfaction through a new propose theory-based Intercultural Satisfaction model. It is basically a literature reviews on the related constructs and how the relationships' assessment of those constructs should be carried out. Based on the proposed framework, a number of propositions were developed to facilitate conceptual research on intercultural competences in the selected retail outlets. Although numerous researchers have studied the extensive topics of perceived service quality and customer satisfaction, none of those studies explored on the critical role of intercultural competence and incorporated the construct in their perceived service quality and customer satisfaction model.