May 27, 2023 09:00:00

A research result is reported that `` people of color are too accustomed to discrimination and it is difficult to notice even if the service of the store is bad ''

Racial and ethnic discrimination is rooted in many aspects of everyday life, and companies' customer service can also change depending on the race of the other party. In recent years, companies have also tried to eliminate discrimination based on race. It turns out that people are accustomed to discriminatory treatment on a regular basis, so it may be difficult to notice that customer service is bad.

Moving beyond Perceptions: Examining Service Disparities among Consumers | Journal of the Association for Consumer Research: Vol 8, No 1

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/722689

People of color get so used to discrimination in stores they don't always notice bad customer service
https://theconversation.com/people-of-color-get-so-used-to-discrimination-in-stores-they-dont-always-notice-bad-customer-service-201766

Many large companies with service sectors, such as banks and airlines, use satisfaction surveys to collect customer feedback and find ways to improve their services. This system is based on the assumption that all customers will perceive 'bad service' when receiving poor quality service and 'good service' when receiving high quality service. .

Therefore, a research team led by Mr. Sterling Vaughn, a marketing professor at Utah State University in the United States, sent a top-secret investigator to the bank to find out if the customer really recognized the service they received. We conducted an experiment to analyze the quality and evaluation of customer service.

The research team recruited nine men living in Los Angeles as investigators for the experiment. All nine people had the same age, height, physique, and education level, but three of them were white, three were black, and three were Hispanic. The researchers then sent nine men wearing the same shirt and trousers to a total of 69 banks to request loans based on the same customer profile.

All nine men had a small camera embedded in their shirt, secretly recording conversations and responses with bankers, and men responded to questionnaires that evaluated their satisfaction with each bank. In addition, this investigation method was approved by the state attorney general's office, and it is said that there were no legal problems.

When the research team analyzed the satisfaction questionnaire answered by nine men, they found that the level of satisfaction with the bank's response was the same regardless of race. However, past studies have shown that black and Hispanic people are objectively treated badly, so he decided to analyze the data more deeply.

Analysis of the videos taken by the men showed that black and Hispanic men had shorter meetings than white men and waited longer to see bankers. It turns out that it has received In other words, although black and Hispanic men were discriminated against objectively, subjective surveys showed no difference in satisfaction with white men.

In addition, the research team recruited 300 subjects, including diverse races, in an additional experiment to watch a video of a meeting between nine men and bankers. When asked to rate the bank staff's response, all races rated positive responses similarly highly, while blacks and Hispanics rated negative responses much lower than whites. I know you don't appreciate it.

“Unfortunately, customers who are ethnically or racially discriminated against may become indifferent or desensitized to, and accept, repeated discriminatory services over time,” Bourne et al. In such one-on-one interactions, customers may not be able to directly compare the service they receive with other customers, so discriminatory service may be less noticeable.'

Therefore, even if

microaggressions , which are subtle and inconspicuous forms of discrimination, exist in customer service settings, people of color, who are the targets of discrimination, may not be able to notice microaggressions, and as a result, there is a possibility that they will not be reflected in customer satisfaction surveys. There is.

The researchers found that discrimination, especially in financial services such as the banks selected for this study, could make it harder for people of color to take out loans and save, causing widespread harm. pointed out. “To avoid these problems, managers need to find and improve more objective methods for evaluating the discriminatory treatment of underrepresented customers,” Bourne and others said. .