Cultural Impact On Consumer Trust-Building Towards Service Providers: From The Perspectives Of Process And Influential Factors

China is obliged to gradually open its service market after entering World Trade Organization (WTO), and many western service companies have seized the chance to enlarge their business in China. Insurance industry and private healthcare industry, in particular, have attracted great investments from foreign companies. These industries are almost saturated in the international market, but possess great potentials in China.Due to its intangibility and perishablity, services must be bought before experienced. Repetitive buying is possible after a satisfactory first experience, but to obtain consumer attention and trust at the beginning is hard. Insurance and private healthcare are typical services which are impossible to give consumers a chance to try. Thus, service marketing in these two sectors concentrates more on cultivating consumer trust. What's more, culture will also influence consumer trust-building towards service providers in similar ways as it influence consumer psychology and behavior. For American service companies in China, establishing trust with consumers will be more complicated due to cultural differences.Doney and Cannon proposed five types of trust-building processes in their research, namely, Calculative, Prediction, Capability, Intentionality and Transference Processes. Factors that can attract consumer attention and result in consumer trust also differ, like size and investment of the company, competence and benevolence of front-line personnel, advertising, approval of authorities, recommendation of friends, reputation and so on.The purposes of this study are (1) to identify the trust-building processes towards service providers adopted by Chinese and American consumers;(2) to find out the most influential factors in cultivating trust for Chinese and American consumers;and (3) to explore cultural explanations behind these differences. Based on comparison of the two cultures in terms of cultural theories proposed by Hofstede and Hall, as well as Confucianism, hypothesis is generated about cultural influence on consumer trust-building processes and influential factors. Questionnaire-based research method is adopted, with Chinese and American individual consumers as target samples. Data analysis are presented from aspects of peoples' perception of others' trustworthiness, duration of trust, trust-building processes, and the most influential factors in cultivating trust. Implications of the findings in business practice are presented, helping American insurance companies, private healthcare institutions and all the other foreign service providers in China to work out more effective marketing strategies.