How Japanese Traditional "Omonpakari" Services are Delivered - A Multidisciplinary Approach

Abstract

In high-quality Japanese services, providers are often said to sense what their customers want from subtle cues and deliver a customized service without explicitly advertising the effort. To understand this subtle service, often called "Omonpakari," we studied a high-end Sushi restaurant using multidisciplinary approach--using neuroscience to analyze the cognitive characteristic, ethno methodology to analyze the interactive structure, and computer science to analyze the social evaluations. The study based on neuroscience showed that the service brain model could explain the cognition of "Omonpakari" service regardless of customers' gender, knowledge and the social context. The ethno methodological analysis revealed that customers performed a role, complying with cultural norms and behaving like a culturally appropriate customer even if they might not be. The analysis using computer science techniques showed that expertise was the key factor of evaluation of the services. These findings suggest an alternative model of service in which there is a productive tension, or dialectic, between the provider and the customer.