Deploying Self-Service Technology in Luxury Hotel Brands: Perceptions of Business Travelers

Traditional brick-and-mortar companies are embracing the use of self-service technology (SST) to enhance the services they offer and to gain customer loyalty. The objectives of doing so are to stay at the forefront of today’s marketplace and improve service, efficiency, and profitability. However, SST directly eliminates the traditional service encounter from which luxury hotels benefit. With the rising popularity of SST and benefits it brings to both hoteliers and customers contradicting the importance of the personal service encounter to luxury hotel brands, it is critical for hoteliers to learn about the importance of SST and luxury brand identity in order to bring the greatest satisfaction to both parties. This article examines business travelers’ perceptions of SST adoption by luxury hotel brands in Hong Kong. The results emphasize the importance of both personal service and SST in satisfying customer needs and in increasing profitability.     

群体服务失误下顾客间“关系”互动对抱怨的影响机制--群体极化和去个体化的中介作用

顾客抱怨研究由来已久,但以往研究更多停留在个体层面,缺乏群体层面的关注。文章基于中国人际“关系”视角,将群体服务失误下顾客间互动分为工具性关系互动和情绪性关系互动,通过设计旅游团遭遇群体服务失误的情景模拟实验,探讨群体服务失误下顾客间“关系”互动对抱怨的影响机制。研究结果表明,群体服务失误下,工具性关系互动通过影响群体极化和去个体化进而影响顾客直接抱怨,且群体极化的中介作用更明显;顾客间情绪性关系互动越强,去个体化和群体极化程度越大,进而诱发更强的直接抱怨倾向,且去个体化在其影响过程中作用更强。研究有助于丰富顾客间互动对抱怨影响的研究视角,完善顾客群体性抱怨理论框架,也对顾客群体抱怨处理提供决策依据。     

Linking AI quality performance and customer engagement: The moderating effect of AI preference

Drawing upon affordance theory, this study positions artificial intelligence (AI) as a commercial service in examining its influence on customer engagement in the hotel context. In particular, we seek to understand linkages between customer perceptions of AI service quality, AI customer satisfaction and engagement. Given the multiplicity of services offered by service organisations, customers’ preference for AI service is modelled as a moderator of customer perceptions and attitudes towards AI. Data was collected from a sample of hotel customers in Australia who had previously used AI tools or services. Our results reveal a significant chain effect between AI service indicators, service quality perceptions, AI satisfaction and customer engagement. AI preference has a significant moderation effect on information quality and satisfaction. These findings provide new insights into the consumer services literature and have important implications for marketing practitioners.     

Applying Service Profit Chain model to the Korean restaurant industry

The purpose of this study is to empirically determine the relationship between employees’ constructs such as internal service quality, service ability, employee satisfaction, and organizational commitment, and customers’ constructs such as perceived value, customer satisfaction, customer trust, and loyalty. This relationship was studied by applying the Service Profit Chain model to the Korean restaurant industry. Results show that internal service quality has a significant effect on service ability, and teamwork/communication has a significant effect on employee satisfaction. Employees’ organizational commitment has a significant direct effect on the value perceived by customers. Ultimately, there is an indirect influential relationship between employees’ and customers’ constructs. Implications of these results are discussed, and possible limitations of the study are addressed.     

Does employee satisfaction influence customer satisfaction? Assessing coffee shops through the service profit chain model

This study examines the interrelations between service climate, organizational identification, employee job satisfaction, and customer perceived value and satisfaction. To achieve this, we apply the service profit chain model to South Korea’s coffee shop industry. Data were collected from 263 employees and 973 customers in Daegu. The hypotheses were tested by conducting a path analysis to investigate the relationship between the variables. Organizational identification and job satisfaction were found to be positively correlated with each other. Additionally, job satisfaction was correlated with customer perceived value, which, in turn, was correlated with customer satisfaction. The findings suggest that a good work environment and service-related training can create a positive service climate for employees, which can subsequently improve customer satisfaction. This study is unique in its application of the service profit chain model on the coffee shop industry in Korea.     

The influence of customer brand identification on hotel brand evaluation and loyalty development

Hotel firms have increasingly recognized that branding strategies constitute a strategic weapon to secure a competitive edge in the global hotel industry. To extend current understanding of hotel brand management, this study investigates the role of customer brand identification in the formation of hotel brand loyalty. This study contributes to the literature by establishing that customer brand identification is an indirect predictor of hotel brand loyalty through its three known antecedents. Results suggest that while the customer may identify with a particular hotel brand, hotel loyalty still depends on the customer's positive evaluation of factors relating to service experiences. However, as consumers’ identification with a hotel brand affects their evaluation of these factors, hoteliers should leverage customers’ brand identification to engender positive consumer evaluation of the hotel brand and, ultimately, increase brand loyalty.     

Voicing out or switching away? A psychological climate perspective on customers’ intentional responses to service failure

This research explores why customers who experience service failure are willing to complain directly to service providers but unlikely to switch to other service providers. We bring in the concept of psychological climate for communication safety (PCCS) to the service failure context and explore how customers’ perception of the social environment as open and supportive for communication affects their complaint and service switching intentions and behaviors. We further identify customer harmony enhancement as an important personality trait predictor of PCCS. Based on two field studies and one scenario-based experimental study, our findings consistently show that PCCS mediates the positive effect of customer harmony enhancement on customer complaint intentions. Customer harmony enhancement exerts a positive indirect effect on customer complaint behavior serially through PCCS and customer complaint intentions. However, our findings relating to customer service switching intentions are inconsistent across the three studies. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Investigating the importance of positive hotel design

Despite customers’ attention to well-being, scant research has examined the role of positive hotel design to enhance customers’ well-being and brand evaluations. Derived from the positive design framework and Stimulus-Organism-Response model, this study investigated effects of positive design factors on customers’ responses in the context of the hotel industry. Findings from this study identified that corporate social responsibility to environment, escapism, and compatibility positively influenced customers’ well-being; whereas, only escapism and compatibility influenced self-brand connection. Both well-being and self-brand connection led to customers’ brand loyalty. Results provided suggestions to hotel managers in developing meaningful customer experiences through the lens of positive design.     

Do customers exhibit engagement behaviors in AI environments? The role of psychological benefits and technology readiness

Although service environments have become increasingly smart due to the infusion of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, little research has examined AI environments and their influence on customer behaviors. This research investigated this issue in the context of services. We explored the direct effects of AI environments (compared with the traditional environment) on customer engagement, the role of customer technology readiness (TR) as a moderator, and ideal self-congruity and trust as mediators. Three studies were designed, and data from situational experiments were analyzed. The moderated mediation analysis suggested that customer engagement behaviors (CEBs) occur when customers with higher TR-optimism perceive ideal self-congruity in a conspicuous AI environment (vs. a conspicuous traditional environment). Additionally, customers with higher TR-optimism are more likely to have trust and perform CEBs for lower anthropomorphism in a conspicuous AI environment. The research findings make theoretical and practical contributions to technology applications, service environments, and customer relationship management.     

Recipe for perceived personalization in hotels

Personalization is commonly practiced in hotels as a means of addressing criticism of hospitality products and services as imitable. However, personalization attempts are not always successful, as customers may not perceive a service as personalized. Limited knowledge exists regarding how to craft personalized service successfully. This study explores how perceived personalization is formed in a hotel context by examining the causal relationship between actual personalization and perceived personalization. Mixed research design was adopted and three studies were executed sequentially. Study 1 comprises qualitative inquiries where two key factors (effort and surprise) of actual personalization attempts were identified. Their effects on perceived personalization were then tested through online experiments in Study 2. Finally, the relationships between actual personalization, perceived personalization and customer behavioral intention were confirmed based on survey data in Study 3. The findings can be conducive for hoteliers to implement successful personalization strategies.     

Online Reputation Monitoring: An Exploratory Study on Italian Hotel Managers’ Practices

This study aims to understand current Italian hotel managers’ practices in monitoring online reviews included on travel websites and online travel agencies. Results obtained by a web survey indicate what hotel managers monitor (rating, rankings, guest comments regarding different service elements) and managers’ orientation in replying to customer reviews. Findings may support online reputation management tools providers and consulting firms by highlighting the degree of hoteliers’ interest in UGC monitoring and providing insights on possible factors that differentiate current management practices and should be considered in order to offer technical solutions coherent with the distinctiveness of Italian context.     

How to fuel employees’ prosocial behavior in the hotel service encounter

With mounting customer expectation for excellent service, frontline service employees’ prosocial service behavior is of great importance since it helps enhance customers’ perceived service quality, which is critical for maintaining a hotel’s competitive advantage relative to its comp set. Regardless of the importance of prosocial service behavior, role clarity, perceived organizational support, and psychological empowerment in encouraging employees’ prosocial service behavior has not received much attention. This study examines the effects of the above three predictors on the prosocial service behavior of customer-contact employees. The authors developed a conceptual model of prosocial service behavior and empirically tested it using structural equation modeling. The findings suggest that role clarity and psychological empowerment have a direct influence on prosocial service behavior. Psychological empowerment partially mediates the relationship between role clarity and prosocial service behavior and fully mediates the relationship between perceived organizational support and prosocial service behavior.     

Understanding Motivations and Acceptance of Location-Based Services

Location-based services (LBS) provide new opportunities for consumer convenience, just-in-time access to information, and services based upon the context of one’s location. Using a hotel/resort industry context, this study examines the impacts of LBS usage motivations on customers’ intentions and the moderating effects of age, gender, and experience on the relationships between motivations and intentions. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to analyze data collected from 398 hotel/resort customers owning smartphones. The results reveal the importance of utilitarian and social values in a customer’s adoption of LBS. This study provides practical significance to hospitality operators looking to deploy this type of technology to enhance the guest experience and revenue generating opportunities.     

酒店组织公平性氛围和服务氛围与旅客的投诉次数

文章对57家酒店的167个服务团队进行了一次实证研究,探讨酒店的组织公平性氛围和服务氛围与旅客的投诉次数之间的关系。数据分析结果表明,酒店的组织公平性氛围与服务氛围存在显著的正相关关系,酒店的服务氛围与团队的服务质量存在显著的正相关关系,团队的服务质量与旅客的投诉次数存在显著的负相关关系,酒店的服务氛围中介了组织公平性氛围与团队服务质量之间的正相关关系;团队的服务质量是酒店的服务氛围与旅客投诉次数之间的中介变量。     

Customer co-creation of travel services: The role of company support and customer satisfaction with the co-creation performance

The tourism industry is characterized by high-contact services in which co-creation of customers plays a major role. This paper develops a conceptual model of customer co-creation of tourism services and empirically tests this model in a travel agency context. Applying a SEM-approach, company support for customers is found to significantly affect the degree of customer co-creation. The degree of co-creation further positively affects customer satisfaction with the service company, customer loyalty, and service expenditures. A test of the moderating effect of the customers' satisfaction with their own co-creation performance on satisfaction with the service company and on service expenditures suggests that those customers who are satisfied with their co-creation activities spend more on their travel arrangements, but that they are less satisfied with the company. Important implications for co-creation theory and practice in high-contact service industries can be derived.     

A New Tune from an Old Instrument

SUMMARY

The ability to provide high quality customer service and to deliver customer value is critical to attracting customers in the competitive tourism service environment. This research seeks to explore whether the instrument developed by Zeithaml et al. (1990), referred to as SERVQUAL, can be applied to a tourism service business to provide a quantifiable method of measuring service quality. An adaptation of SERVQUAL was applied to a business operating tours through a brewery in Tasmania, Australia. The instrument proved to be adequately internally reliable and provided apparently useful and easily interpretable diagnostic data to the management of the business. It was concluded that SERVQUAL has the potential to be a useful management tool provided care is taken to adapt the instrument to the individual needs of the user while remaining within the underlying theoretical framework. Adaptation and simplification of the complicated instrument provides small tourism businesses with a new way of gaining theory-based diagnostic data that can be self-administered by management on an ongoing basis and is not a burden to the customers.     

Coopetition strategies for competitive intelligence practices-evidence from full-service hotels

Our study investigates how coopetition strategies can influence hotels’ competitive intelligence (CI) practices to achieve a stronger competitive advantage. In-depth interviews were conducted with 39 hoteliers from 22 hotel groups in Hong Kong. Participating hotels employed different kinds of CI activities, though they were unaware of this concept. In particular, internal customer intelligence was added to integrated intelligence to better describe CI in the service sector. Still, investing in CI can be expensive and time-consuming since it requires hoteliers to align all insights from their respective intelligence pools toward building a holistic understanding of the results. We propose coopetition as a strategic approach allowing hotels to construct collective actions around CI without losing individual competitiveness. Actual coopetition in CI was only found between sister properties. Hence, we propose a coopetition model in which hotels can collaborate and compete in CI at an inter-organizational level via focusing on sharing open-source information and knowledge.     

The Relationships Between Casino Quality,Image, Value,and Loyalty

This research builds on the idea that casino customers’ subjective, global judgments of service quality are shaped by experience of its specific attributes, and examines how casino customers form their evaluative attitudes toward the casino experience in the Macau context. Using the data collected from 525 Macau casino customers, we first identify four casino quality dimensions; namely, supporting facilities, staff service, diversity, and equitableness. We then test and validate a proposed model for the structural relationships between casino image (as a consequence of the four quality dimensions), value, and loyalty. In particular, value is shown to be a mediator of the relationship between image and loyalty from the perspective of casino customers. The results of our study can show Macau casino operators what constitutes customers’ casino experiences and aid them in enhancing their image, perceived value, and customer loyalty toward casinos.     

Perceived corporate social responsibility and customers’ behaviors in the ridesharing service industry

This study aimed to investigate how a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices affect customers’ attitudes, their self-brand connection, and, in turn, brand preference with ridesharing services (e.g., Uber). Adopting a second-order construct of perceived corporate social responsibility (PCSR) reflected from three CSR dimensions—environment, economy, and ethics—this study posited PCSR influences customers’ brand attitudes, self-brand connection, and brand preference. A total of 300 valid responses was collected from a convenience sample. Results revealed PCSR showed significant impacts on customers’ brand attitudes and self-brand connection. However, no direct impact of PCSR on customers’ brand preference was identified, while mediation effects were detected between PCSR and brand preference by brand attitudes and self-brand connection. This study also discussed the managerial and theoretical implications of PCSR practices for a ridesharing service industry.     

社会化视角下接待业服务机器人对顾客体验的影响研究

随着人工智能和自动化技术日渐普及,服务机器人被越来越多地引入旅游接待业,但其应用尚处于探索阶段。在已有文献和理论基础上,本文依据互联网、社交媒体中接待业顾客对服务机器人的评价信息,以及对接待业顾客和员工进行深度访谈的数据,分析顾客对机器人服务的感知及体验。研究发现:(1)对机器人服务的感知涉及工具、社会化两个属性,社会化属性对顾客的愉悦体验产生重要影响;(2)服务机器人通过提升服务和营造愉悦氛围两条路径改善顾客体验。在此基础上,本文构建了服务机器人影响顾客体验的概念模型。本文从社会化视角探讨服务机器人的顾客体验感知,对服务机器人设计、服务场景管理和体验设计具有启示意义。