Hotel Service Recovery and Service Quality: Influences of Corporate Image and Generational Differences in the Relationship between Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

ABSTRACT

As the number of tourists continues to grow globally, the hospitality industry players inevitably face more challenges. High competition among the competitors and the emergence of new technologies such as online booking platforms make the competition more intense among players in the hospitality sector. The quality of services provided is undoubtedly crucial to the success of the hotel. Hence, any service failure has to be addressed appropriately in order to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction and to keep the image of the hotel intact. It is therefore vital that service recovery programs are carefully planned to meet various types of service failures which may inevitably occur. In this study, questionnaires were distributed to customers who had experienced service failures. The aim was to investigate the influence of service quality and service recovery on satisfaction and, ultimately, the effect on customer loyalty. The research also tested the mediating effect of corporate image between the relationship of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The findings showed that both service recovery and service quality had a significant impact on customer satisfaction. Similarly, it was found that customer satisfaction induced customer loyalty towards the hotel operator. The result also showed that corporate image mediated partially between the relationship of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.     

酒店员工忠诚度培养探讨

酒店员工流动问题的核心在于员工对酒店忠诚度低下,加强对员工忠诚度的培养是减少员工流动的关键。员工忠诚度的影响因素有个人因素、酒店内部环境和外部环境等。应树立以人为本的管理理念,建立合理的薪酬体系和有效的激励体制;推行公平的竞争机制,给予员工更多的参与机会,以提高员工对酒店的忠诚度。     

The role of accounting information in revenue management

Revenue management (RM) uses differential pricing and other techniques to manage customer demand for a company's products and services. It judiciously trades off yield and spoilage, and brings rational approaches to pricing for goods and services with a limited shelf life. Because many types of businesses find that growing revenue has a disproportionate impact on operating profits, firms that know and manage their customer base often achieve better bottom-line results by growing revenue rather than by cost-cutting. Initially developed as a marketing tool for pricing airline tickets, today's numerous RM applications can benefit from accounting tools that help assess whether applications will enhance operating profit and monitor their success in doing so. Knowledge of a firm's cost structure, operating leverage in particular, and when to treat RM adjustments as special orders, are the principal accounting lynchpins. Opportunity cost variances and insights from the theory of constraints contribute to effective revenue management/profit enhancement programs. Use of proper accounting information and analytic techniques can help a tolerated union of necessity between RM programs and firm strategy become a desirable marriage of mutual choice.     

基于入住经历的高星级酒店吸引力要素研究——以扬州为例

通过对扬州市高星级酒店的住客进行的问卷调查及对酒店相关人员的访谈,反映出初次入住酒店的顾客和入住经历两次或两次以上的顾客对酒店的吸引力要素存在感知差异。这些要素包括清洁度、位置、房价、安全、服务质量、酒店声誉、个性化(卓越)服务或设计、酒店文化氛围等方面。再结合IPA的分析方法得出结论:高星级酒店可以将顾客入住经历作为市场细分的一个依据。对于初次入住酒店的顾客可以在环境、服务质量和酒店声誉上下功夫;另外要留住顾客,提高其忠诚度,酒店就必须对酒店产品科学定价,酒店整体的设计上融入地域性的文化因素,在规范化服务的基础上追求个性化的卓越服务。     

The Role of Private Label Brands in Enhancing Service Satisfaction in the Hotel Industry: Comparing Luxury and Boutique Hotels

ABSTRACT

This research proposes private label branding as a strategy that can have a positive effect on guest satisfaction and loyalty in hotels that cater to travelers seeking a special hotel experience. We test this using a sample of guests in two hotels: a five-star luxury hotel (N = 225) and a boutique hotel (N = 101). Findings show that in the luxury hotel but not the boutique hotel, perception of a private label had a direct impact on loyalty, and an indirect impact on loyalty through its effect on guest satisfaction. The theoretical implications and recommendations for hoteliers based on the findings are discussed.     

Loyalty program structure and consumers' perceptions of status: Feeling special in a grocery store?

Loyalty programs are business practices increasingly pursued by companies in order to achieve customer loyalty. Recent studies have focused on the relationship between loyalty program structures (i.e., number and size of hierarchical tiers) and status levels (i.e., exclusivity) perceived by members. The current study examines two potential moderators of this relationship between program structure and perceived status. Specifically, the aim of our research was to test whether loyalty program structure affects status perceptions in more and less exclusive industries, and among consumers with more and less positive attitudes toward loyalty programs.An experimental design based on different scenarios was used. Two industries and three loyalty program structures were examined. In the airline industry, which is higher in perceived exclusivity, perceived status in the top tier of the loyalty program increased as the number of customers in the top tier decreased and as the number of tiers increased. Notably, however, loyalty program structure had no effect on perceived status in the supermarket industry, which is lower in perceived exclusivity. Moreover, even in the airline industry, status effects were only observed among respondents with a positive attitude toward loyalty programs. Those with neutral or negative attitudes toward loyalty programs were unaffected by the structure of the loyalty program. Thus, the effect of loyalty program structure on consumers' perceived status varied systematically across industries and across individuals.     

Technology revenue management system for customer groups in hotels

This paper discusses revenue management; a technique that focuses on decision making that will maximize profit from the sale of perishable inventory units. New technologies management plays an important role in the development of revenue management techniques. Each new advancement in technology management leads to more sophisticated revenue business capabilities. Today decision support revenue management systems and technologies management are crucial factors for the success of businesses in service industries. This paper addresses the specific case of customer groups in hotels. This paper introduces a new decision support system that sets the revenue maximization criteria for a hotel. The aforementioned system includes a set of demand forecasting methods for customers and addresses a general case considering individual guests and customer groups. The system also incorporates deterministic and stochastic mathematical programming models that help to make the best decisions. The actual revenue depends upon which reservation system the hotel uses. A simulation engine makes a comparison between different heuristics of room inventory control: the results include performance indexes such as occupancy rate, efficiency rate, and yield; it compares results and chooses one of them. The system proves its suitability for actual cases by testing against actual data and thus becoming an innovative and efficient tool in the management of hotels' reservation systems.     

Exploring manager’s perspective of service quality strategies in Malaysian Banking Industry

In service industry, the subject of service quality remains crucial as business strive to maintain a comparative advantage in the marketplace. In aftermath of globalization, the operating environment for banking industry has become more dynamic and competitive. Banks have evolved to become diversified financial providers instead of traditional banking-only service providers. With bank placing emphasis on a mutually beneficial bank–customer relationship, customer loyalty must be pursued through repeat purchases. Central to achieving this is often the quality of services offered by the bank should satisfy the customer’s needs. This article attempts to identify any service gaps in Malaysian banking industry and to recommend effective strategies to close these service gaps from bank mangers’ and executives perspectives based on GAPs Model of Service Quality (GAPs Model). Using qualitative data collected from interviews with 30 bank managers and executives, this article provides effectives strategies to close each of the gaps in GAPs Model. It is hoped that the empirical evidences and recommendations provided in this article shed some light to management of banks to improve upon their customer service quality in order to benefit from customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and other behavioural outcomes which will lead to greater competitive advantage and profitability to the banks concerned.     

Reverse logistics: Understanding end-of-life product management

As firms respond to stricter regulations and increasing consumer expectations, reverse logistics programs to support end-of-life product management strategies have become more prevalent. Despite a growing body of theoretical literature on this topic, many firms struggle to implement efficient and effective reverse logistics systems. In this article, we identify common strategic, tactical, and operational considerations needed to design reverse logistics programs and offer industry examples to show how organizations have excelled in these areas. Through a synthesis of literature and examples, we provide key takeaways across a range of reverse logistics activities. We present ways in which managers can implement best practices in reverse logistics that not only benefit the environment but also generate societal and stakeholder value, augment and improve customer service and loyalty, and increase market share and revenue capabilities.     

Reductions in Real versus Tariff Barriers: The Impact on Industry Concentration

Economic integration has had ambiguous effects on industry concentration. The literature on the topic proposes various explanations for these empirical findings. This paper provides an additional theoretical argument. It shows that in a world of monopolistic competition, integration alone (modeled as a reduction of trade barriers) may exert opposing forces on industry concentration, depending on whether the barrier consists of real (frictional) or tariff costs. In particular, the Herfindahl index of industry concentration falls for a reduction in real costs, but rises for a reduction in tariff costs. The reason is that real barriers burn up resources, such that industry profitability is reduced, reducing entry, and resulting in fewer firms and a correspondingly higher concentration. Under a tariff barrier, the redistributed tariff revenue stabilizes industry profitability, resulting in more firms and a lower concentration.     

From sustainability to customer loyalty: A case of full service hotels’ guests

More hotels adopt ecofriendly practices and implement innovative technologies to reduce carbon footprints and increase a viable green image. Many hotel guests value hotels that offer up-to-date technology and demonstrate sustainability efforts through various sustainable programs. Previous studies investigated how ecofriendly practices would induce higher customer loyalty and increase the image of a hotel brand in the past decade and reported the benefits of implementing green efforts in hotels. This study, which included distributing surveys to over 1200 existing hotel guests in 2013–2014 in the southeastern United States, examined how technologies, innovations, and sustainable-effort-related factors have an impact on customer perceptions, selection decisions, experience, and post-experience.     

The Impact of Frequent Shopper Programs in Grocery Retailing

Frequent shopper programs are becoming ubiquitous in retailing. Retailers seem unsure however about whether these programs are leading to higher loyalty, or to higher profits. In this paper we analyze data from a U.S. supermarket chain that has used a number of frequent shopper rewards to improve sales and profitability. We find that while these programs are profitable, this is only because substantial incremental sales to casual shoppers (cherry pickers) offset subsidies to already loyal customers. In this way our findings are inconsistent with existing theories about how frequent shopper programs are supposed to work. We construct our own Hotelling-like model that explicitly models cherry picking behavior and show that its predictions match the data quite closely. We further test the predictions of our model by characterizing the impact of such programs on trip frequency and basket size. We then use the model to examine more complex scenarios. For example, our analysis suggests that frequent shopper programs may be unprofitable if they eliminate all cherry picking. This may explain why some retailers seem dissatisfied with their programs. We end by proposing a solution that retains the benefits of the frequent shopper programs and yet continues to let supermarkets benefit from price discrimination.     

Building Customer-Brand Relationships through Customer Brand Engagement

Abstract

Engagement has surfaced as a vital tool in marketing to enhance the customer’s relationships and loyalty with brands. Despite this, there is dearth of empirical studies focusing on the role of customer engagement within the context of brands. Thus, the main objective of this study is to investigate the role of customer brand engagement in building customer-brand relationships and brand loyalty within the context of hotel industry. Using convenience sampling technique, a sample of 418 respondents has been collected through self-administered questionnaire method from the users of hotel services in India. The study findings suggest that different dimensions of customer brand engagement vary in terms of their influence on customer-brand relationships and brand loyalty. In addition, customer-brand relationships exhibit positive and significant influence on brand loyalty. This present study enhances the understanding of customer brand engagement construct by empirically verifying its relevance in determining the long-term success of firms/brands.     

Assessing the relationship between loyalty program attributes, store satisfaction and store loyalty

After a decade of research there is still much to understand about the relationship between loyalty programs and whether they deliver on their promise of building customer loyalty towards a store and understanding the mediating role of store satisfaction. Our results suggest that loyalty program as a summary construct, explains a significant proportion of the variance in store satisfaction and store loyalty. However, disaggregation of the construct into hard versus soft attributes, promotes greater specificity, precision and accuracy in uncovering the differential impact on store satisfaction and store loyalty.     

我国信息技术投资对企业盈利性的影响

本文通过分析影响利润的主营业务收入与费用支出,研究了我国上市公司IT投资对企业净利润的影响及其滞后效果,发现IT投资对主营业务收入的增长有显著且持续的作用,但IT投资也带来了企业费用的增加;IT对净利润的贡献逐年递增,在投资后第三年呈现显著效果;与此同时,IT投资对这几项经营指标的影响远远大于非IT投资。另外,在行业差异的分析中发现非制造业企业的IT投资绩效明显好于制造业企业,可带来持续显著的主营业务收入与净利润的增长。     

Building and sustaining profitable customer loyalty for the 21st century

The concept of customer loyalty is conspicuous by it's ubiquity. Therefore, there is no surprise that it is one of the most widely studied areas by researchers and one of the most widely implemented marketing initiatives by practitioners. This article draws upon past research to review important findings related to customer behavior and attitude in the context of customer loyalty. Further, research related to linking loyalty to profitability and forward looking metric such as the customer lifetime value is reviewed to propose a conceptual framework for building and sustaining loyalty and profitability simultaneously at individual customer level. A two-tiered rewards structure is presented as a means for marketers to operationalize the framework. The conceptual framework hopes to serve as a platform to understand the evolving dominant logic of loyalty programs for building and sustaining loyalty in the twenty first century as well as induce further research in that direction.     

Exploring the influence of three types of grocery retailer loyalty programs on customer affective loyalty

Loyalty programs have become a key tool in retailer marketing strategies. In order to manage client heterogeneity adequately, companies have implemented different types of programs: reward programs (RP), loyalty cards (LC) and VIP programs. This paper explores the effects of these three types of programs and provides a comparative analysis of the influence that these three types of programs have on the affective loyalty towards the retailer of customers participating in them. Results show that VIP programs are the most effective in achieving customer affective loyalty, whilst people taking part in reward programs and loyalty card schemes evidence no differences in their affective loyalty towards the store. It can thus be concluded that clients who are loyalty card holders do not value the intangible rewards (preferential treatment) they receive from the store.     

An Analysis of Factors Influencing Membership Retention at a Children’s Museum

Membership fees are an important source of sustained revenue for not-for-profit organizations. Moreover, these membership programs facilitate loyalty to the organization and provide certainty to a percentage of revenue intake. In this study, we examine how frequency of visits, satisfaction with membership programs, length of membership, age, average household income, and driving time affect membership retention in a children’s museum. Findings indicate that all of the factors above influence membership renewal intention. We summarize this study with recommendations for both member recruitment and retention for not-for-profit organizations that utilize membership programs.     

Gift card program incrementality and cannibalization: The effect on revenue and profit

Many retailers have not measured the magnitude of cannibalization or its impact on revenue and profit when existing customers use a gift card for purchases they would have made without it, particularly when the card was purchased through a 3rd party at a discount up to 15%. We conducted a survey among gift card redeemers of a national casual dining restaurant chain to determine how the gift card affected their purchase behavior. We used this information, combined with operating margin, to model the impact of three different gift card discount scenarios on firm revenue and profit. Although the revenue effect was positive under all scenarios, the same was not true for profit. The profit was much lower than anticipated, even in the best case scenario, and was negative in the worst case scenario.