As for the case in question, in my personal experience, oriental asians in general arent as good as customer service, whether it be greetings, a smile, willingness to help, thinking ahead, problem solving etc. etc. as white people. I think culture has a lot to do with it. so it may be more of a uphill battle for this guy.
My experience with Asians and business in general (again, my experience and opinion) is that they tend more towards quantity rather than quality, more often than not.
They seem drop prices hoping to achieve more profit by getting more customers from lower prices and trying to do more turnover.
This is often where customer service falls short, because they are so busy working hard for small margins.
Rarely have I seen Asian businesses concentrate more on quality and keeping prices high, and working on becoming better at selling/marketing.
This comes down to culture again.
Of course this depends on the product being sold, but I'm referring more to the restaurant, consumables, etc markets here.
Asians love bargains and almost always shop on price alone.
This in turn affects the way Asian businesses have to structure their pricing.
They just cut each others throats in business if they are targetting the same type of customer.
My wife is Chinese, I'm half Chinese, my daughter is 3/4 Chinese....
I have no reason to put them down, but this is all from personal experience.
Of course, all other races are not perfect either and comes down to interpretation.
However, there are clear distinctions between how some races carry out business, and it mostly comes down to culture.