Cultural Differences in Results Evaluation of Service Co-production in Eastern and Western Cultures

The purpose of this study is to provide insight into the process of co-production performance and evaluation of results by analyzing the influence of the participating customers’ cultural and psychological characteristics. We examined the impact of self-serving bias (SSB) on the evaluation of the co-production results for the Korean (collectivistic culture) and the American (individualistic culture) groups of customers. In the case of the Korean sample, SSB affected the evaluation of co-production results only when results were worse than expected, but in the case of the American sample, it influenced the evaluation of co-production results also when results were better than expected. Besides, the comparison showed that the extent to which SSB influenced the evaluation of the results when results were worse than expected for Americans was much more significant than for Koreans. In further research, the Korean sample was divided into allocentrics and idiocentrics based on customers’ personal cultural orientations, and the same analysis was conducted. The sample of allocentrics did not show the effects of SSB on the evaluation of the results at all, while the sample of the idiocentrics showed it in both cases.