ABSTRACT

Research shows that customers’ service experiences are context specific. To develop service marketing theory, prior research identifies a research gap to be filled by analysis of, and evidence for the impact of the cultural contexts of service experiences. The interplay of global and local service cultures creates a special cultural context, glocalization. Prior research shows that glocalization inevitably produces cultural heterogeneity. Our empirical context is two coexisting, glocalized services: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western Medicine (WM) as practiced concurrently in China.  The study’s purpose is to analyze the tensions customers experience when navigating between two glocalized service cultures for healthcare. The resource integration construct provides theoretical language to analyze tensions in glocalized cultural schema in service. Each of these glocalized cultural schema prescribe particular resources that align with service performance. However, customers’ expectations for resources (materials, practices, and interactions) that align with TCM may conflict with experiences of differing resources that align with WM.  The expectations and resources form part of integrated cultural schema. Consequently, merely adding, subtracting or measuring discrete elements of glocalized service to improve outcomes is a risky managerial strategy. If improving customer experience in service is a goal globally, our comparative resource integration construct can help managers identify the tensions that occur in customer expectations and experiences in glocalized service contexts.