Cunningham, Lawrence F., Clifford E. Young, Wolfgag Ulaga, and Moonkyu Lee
Journal of Services Marketing Vol. 18, Issue 6, p. 421-432

In the services marketing literature, few service classifications are based on how customers view services, and fewer of these have been validated cross-culturally. To fill this gap, this research presents the results of a study that examined how U.S. and French customers perceived and classified a set of thirteen services based on multidimensional scaling (MDS). Service classifications were developed on a perceptual space where the actual services were mapped for two countries, U.S. and France. The results of the study suggest that there are two underlying dimensions that explain approximately 80% of the total variance in service perceptions and classifications. The dimensions and correlations for the classifications and services displayed many consistencies and some differences among American and French consumers. Directions for future academic research and managerial implications are cited and discussed.