Research - Methodological - Research Project - Assessment Answer

Research Assignment

Assignment Task

Introduction

The main aim of the paper is to analyze the role of customer satisfaction in order to improve the customer loyalty in hotel industry. Customer loyalty has become an important issue in the researches and the importance of customer satisfaction in the hotel industry cannot be ignored. The researchers have identified the factors of the customer satisfaction and brand image which are positively related to the business performance of the hotels. This paper critically analyzes three empirical researches that have been published into peer-reviewed academic journals.

“The Role of Customer Satisfaction and Image in Gaining Customer Loyalty in the Hotel Industry” by Jay Kandampully and Dwi Suhartanto.

The main aim of the research is find out the importance of the customer satisfaction and brand image in order to gain customer loyalty in hotel industry. The researchers have identified that customer satisfaction and brand image are the two most important factors in order to achieve customer loyalty. The researchers have also given a thorough understanding of the elements that can improve the customer loyalty of the hotels in the literature review section before conducting the research.

Critique of methodological approach:

The research is based on hypotheses testing and the researchers have developed two hypotheses for conducting the research. The researchers have mentioned in the research that there are different departments present in a hotel such as food and beverage, front office, housekeeping etc and all the departments should always try to fulfil the demands of the customers which will improve the customer loyalty (Kurtz, & Clow, 2010). The performance of the hotel is entirely dependent on the three major departments of the hotels. The authors also mentioned in the research that the importance of customer loyalty is very high in the hotel chains compared to the other types of hotels, such as the independent hotels. If the reputation or the image of a particular hotel of a hotel chain is poor then the brand image of the entire hotel chain will suffer (Hartline & Jones Keith, 2006). Considering the objectives of the research, the analysis of the issue is based on the individual level, which means, the data has been collected from the guest of the hotel chains.

Critique of data collection methods:

The researcher has collected cross sectional data from the customers of the hotel chains. The researcher has used survey as the data collection instrument which has certain benefits. As the research is based on hypotheses testing, survey is the best method for the data collection (Lee, & Cunningham, 2001). Apart from that the time taken to conduct the survey is much lesser than conducting interviews. As the researcher aims to collect the data from a large set of population, survey is the best method for data collection. The researcher developed a survey questionnaire consisting of some closed ended questions and the answers were given in a Likert scale. Likert scale is highly beneficial for the researchers conducting market research (Heskett et al. (2010). Another advantage of the research is that the researcher has collected the hotel guests from five different hotel chains which provided a thorough understanding of the customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in different hotel chains. The total number of samples taken for the research is 237 and among them 106 surveys has been proven usable. This is also another benefit of the research. If the researcher distributed the questionnaire to lesser no of participants then the result of the research might not been accurate.

So, it can be concluded that the researcher has conducted the research in the perfect way and the data has also been collected from the participants in the most ethical ways. The number of samples chosen for the research is also quite appropriate for the research. But, the result of the research would have been more accurate if the researcher collected the data from the guests of hotel chains outside New Zealand (Heung, Mok, &, Anthea, 2012). The main strength of the research is that the research is based on hypotheses testing which is a great way to conduct the researches. A major weakness of the research is that the researchers have focused on the three main determinants of the customer satisfaction in hotel industry but there are other attributes present as well which have not been considered by the researchers (Hartline, & Jones, 2006).

Relevance of the selected study to the own research area:

The research aim is analyzing customer satisfaction in the Shangri La Hotel in Sydney. So, similar to the above research, the researcher can conduct survey with the visitors staying in the Shangri La Hotel in Sydney. The hypotheses can be developed by the research and the analysis of the survey can be done through the statistical analysis as done by the researchers of the above research. Similar to the research, Likert scale can be used to collect the data from the visitors of Shangri la Hotel as it will help to save a huge amount of time of the participants as well as the researcher.

“Customer satisfaction, customer retention and market share” by Roland T. Rust and Anthony J. Zahorik:

The main aim of the research is to assess the value of customer satisfaction. The objectives of the research are to determine the elements present in any business for the customer satisfaction, particularly in the hotel industry. Another objective of the research is to analyze the impact of customer satisfaction on the customer retention. The researchers stated that customer retention is one of the most important elements of the present business environment (Hartline, & Jones, 2006). The competition is increasing day by day in any industry and the customers have multiple options present in their hand while they purchase something. Secondly, the cost of marketing is also increasing every day. In such cases, customer retention is very important for the organizations instead of attracting new customers (Holmund & Kock, 2008). The researchers have also provided the details of the theoretical framework of the customer satisfaction and customer retention. Various research papers, journals etc have been critically reviewed by the authors and they have been presented in the literature review section of the research which can help the readers to gain an understanding of the importance of customer satisfaction in customer retention (Kandampully & Duddy, 2001).

Critique of methodological approach:

In order to find out the result of the research, the researcher has used hypotheses testing as this is the most effective way of getting the result of the research. In this research, the researcher has conducted primary research of the customers of different banks in order to identify their satisfaction levels. The cross sectional approach of retail banking has been chosen by the researchers.

Critique of the data collection method:

Random sampling has been chosen as the preferred sampling method and 100 retail banking customers have been chosen. The researcher has interviewed the customers of the retail banks through telephone. There are some advantages present of conducting interview with the customers in order to understand customer satisfaction but there are some disadvantages as well (Hartline, & Jones, 2006). The researcher has conducted interview so that they can get detailed answer from the customers but the process took a long time. In this type of research, survey is the best method for collection of data from the participants because in case of survey, the time taken to complete the research is less compared to interview and the analysis can also be done through statistical tools such as SPSS (Kirwin, 2009). In case of interview, the researcher needs to wait for a long time to get the preferred time from the participants to complete the interview process. The simple random sampling method is justified for this type of research because it helps the researcher to determine the elements of the customer satisfaction of all types of customers. The analysis in this research has been done in a quite difficult way which is not understandable of common people. The research has provided a mathematical framework for the customer satisfaction which is also quite complex in terms of understanding.

Relevance of the selected study to the own research area:

Similar to the research, the researcher can also use interview with the customers staying at the Shangri La Hotel in Sydney in order to collect their perceptions about the quality of various factors of the hotel but the main disadvantage in this case is that the researcher as well as the visitors need to spend a huge amount of time to complete the process and the overall duration of the research will be long. But, conducting interview with the visitors of the Shangri La Hotel in Sydney will help the researcher to understand the detailed answer of the guests which will help to analyze the customer satisfaction factors for the hotels clearly.

“Determinants of hotel guests’ satisfaction and repeat patronage in the Hong Kong hotel industry” by Tat Y. Choi and Raymond Chu:

In this research, the researchers have focused on the elements which are considered by the guests coming to the hotel chains for their satisfaction. The researchers identified that there are a number of factors present which determine the customer satisfaction in hotels in Hong Kong and they are qualities of the hotel rooms, staff service quality, general amenities, security of the guests, business services etc. The researchers have considered Hong Kong hotel industry as the case study and the main purpose of conducting the research is to identify and explore the determinants which can be translated into the customer satisfaction and repeat staying in the hotels (Hartline & Jones, 2006). The researchers mentioned in the first chapter of the research that customer satisfaction with the hotel properties is one of leading factors for the success of any tourist location and they have also given a number of evidences as well to support the claims in the literature review section of the research. The authors have described the perceptions of the hotel facilities and services and the impact of customer satisfaction on the repeat patronage in the hotel industry. The authors critically reviewed the journals, books, articles etc in the literature review section on the area of customer satisfaction in hotel industry.

Critique of methodological approach:

The research methodology chapter of the research starts with the description of research instrument. The researchers have developed a survey questionnaire comprising of 33 hotel attributes which are typically determined by the customers and which are used by the hotels to determine the perceptions of the customers regarding the hotel and the satisfaction towards the facilities and services provided by the hotels in Hong Kong. The questionnaire was divided in three sections. In the first section, the researchers extracted the demographic and travelling characteristics of the tourists. In the second section, the researcher measured the perceptions of the travellers regarding the hotel attributes during their stay in the hotel. In the third section, the researchers measured the overall satisfaction levels of the customers.

The strength of the research is that the researchers used Likert scale in order to get the result of the research. It helped the researcher to save a huge amount of time and money to conduct the study (Lee & Cunningham, 2001). The researcher also translated the English questionnaire into Chinese and Japanese language which helped the researcher to collect the data from the people of Chinese and Japanese origin easily.

The sampling of the participants has also been done in the most appropriate manner. The target population for the survey is the international travellers departing from Hong Kong. The total sample size of the research is 540. The researcher has conducted the survey with large number of populations because it helped the researcher to find out the result of the research easily. The main drawback of the research conducted by the authors is that the researchers failed to consider the ethical issues that might come in course of the research. The researcher has also not stated the limitations of the research. These are the main weaknesses of the research.

Relevance of the selected study to the own research:

The research is relevant to the present study which is being conducted on identifying the customer satisfaction factors of Shangri La Hotel in Sydney because the aim of both the researches is to identify the factors that influence the customer satisfaction of the people staying in hotels. The main advantage of the research is, which can be done in this research is, that, the research can be conducted with as many participants as possible through survey using Likert scale. It will help the researcher to collect appropriate data for the research and the factors that influence the customer satisfactions can be easily analyzed.

Conclusion:

From the research, it can be concluded that customer satisfaction and brand image are the two most important factors in order to achieve customer loyalty. The researches, analyzed in the paper, are highly relevant to the present study. The three articles reviewed are aimed at identifying the factors that influence customer satisfaction in hotels. The research which is presently being conducted by the researcher is also aimed at analyzing the influencing factors of customer loyalty in Shangri La Hotel in Sydney. The researcher can use the methodological approaches used by the researchers of the three researches. The paper identified that Likert scale is a great tool of collecting data which can be used by the researcher. Secondly, collecting data from a large number of participants and analyzing them through statistical tools such as SPSS can bring ease of analysis and it can also be considered by the researcher while conducting the research. The sampling methods used by the researchers of the three researches are also quite effective to be used in the current research which is aimed to find out the factors that influence customer satisfaction in Shangri La Hotel in Sydney.