Business Research Methods on Customer Satisfaction: Sports & Corporate Group Travel Ltd - Essay Example

?Business Research Methods on Satisfaction -- Sports & Corporate Group Travel Ltd Company Introduction Sports & Corporate Group Travel Ltd is a UK based sports tour organising company having expertise in arranging Sports Tours for a wide range of audiences including all age-groups for institutions such as clubs, schools and universities. Sports events include rugby, cricket, swimming, football, water polo and ice hockey. The Group covers besides UK and Europe other countries such as South Africa, Canada and the Far East. Customer focus has been a trend with Sports & Corporate Group Travel for complete satisfaction of its customers worldwide through the company’s customised offerings through sports tours, camps, tournaments and corporate tours and events. Sports events have become big business generating huge income from sports related entertainment and tourism events. In the UK, sports event management has become a threshold for creating economic rejuvenation of many of the UK cities. It is interesting to observe how Manchester appeared on the global horizon by holding the Commonwealth Games. Sports provide scope for urban renewal by developing commercial infrastructure and conducting of cultural and educational events and celebration (Getz 2007). Now-a-days, each major city has sports tour agencies with a specialised workforce aspiring to compete for organising global sports events. The cross-roads of sport management and sport studies with tourism tackles two main themes: sport events for the benefit of sports people and their fans and another active type of sports that needs travelling like skiing and other adventure sports (Getz 2007). Sports & Corporate Group Travel is also one such UK based tour operator company holding sports events such as rugby, cricket, swimming, football, water polo and ice hockey. It conducts sports tours, camps, tournaments and corporate tours and events. 1. Theoretical Grounding Very little research so far has been made to measure customer satisfaction after failure of services and recovery. Scenario-based experiments show the effect of failures in servicing of customers and doing justice with affected customers. In comparison to error-free service, after service failure and recovery performance level was found lower in customer satisfaction. Normally, customers’ perception is high for such companies that avoid failure than those companies that take recovery measures later (McCollough et al. 2000). Regarding major research questions on event tourism, people state their responses through behavioural, emotional and cognitive means. Possible research methods of knowing their perceptions on the tour event could be analysis of the related texts and self-reporting by them. Researchers can conduct in-depth interviews directly or through participants’ observations. Customers of event tour operator companies can provide sampling of their experiences; it could be diary or time-sampling with a unique set of questions. Routine consumer and market surveys can also help in analysing consumer behaviour and responses (Getz 2007). Velazquez et al. (2011) have researched on the loyalty aspect in tourism for tour operators to construct strategies to help tourism companies focussed on customer relationships. They have researched on attitudinal and behavioural approaches for customer satisfaction, quality of service, value and customer loyalty. Davidow (2003) has summed up the research on customer complaint handling and how organisations’ responses affect customer attitude after registering complaints. Responses of the companies have been divided into 6 dimensions of timeliness, assistance, damage control, regret, credibility, and consideration for the complainants. Andreassen (2001) has used the method of posttest-only design with nonequivalent groups, called ex post facto. Dissatisfaction studies have been made that included dissatisfied but not complaining customers. Less research has been made on analysing recovery functions and their effect on corporate identity or customer reaction. Ex post facto design studies the dissatisfied but non-complaining customers, dissatisfied and complaining customers as well as generally satisfied customers on the assumption that there is no response bias among them. It measures the effect of recovery attempts on the future likings, preferences and attitudes towards the service failures by comparing them with other groups through a sampling frame of interviewing customers of different industries’ representative companies by performing ANOVAs. A pretest and posttest comparison of the respondents’ reactions over the wrongs committed could have been a better experiment otherwise. Patterson (2001) has used the methodology of interviewing high ranking functionaries of four consultancies and eight client companies in the 1st phase to be continued with a longitudinal analysis by employing self-prepared questionnaires so that there remains no scope of respondents’ rationalisation and their outlook on complexity of the services besides measuring performance through stake-holding and experience soon after initiating the research. The research measured lack of support, performance levels and customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction (CS/D). The research indicates presence of contingent relationships among major variables such as disagreement and satisfaction under various experience situations. Sajtos et al. (2010) have researched the impact of service failures on affected constructs. Applying a holistic model, called structural equation modelling (SEM), in two steps they have analysed the role of image and trust in customer service failure. The first step included a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to fine-tune the measurement model to be followed by a structural model for measuring individually and collectively the two groups, “service failure” and no-service failure”. Later, control variables like the reason of failure, intervention, satisfaction with recovery and interaction between intervention and satisfaction were added to measure ESFM. Modelling used Maximum Likelihood Estimation to limit the load of each measure to one pre-set construct Gelbrich & Roschk (2010) have conducted a meta-analysis that substantiates the theoretical model of post-compliant attitudes by following the path model: company-wide reactions (rewards, positive employee behaviour and company procedures) leading to justice outlooks (distributive, interactional, and procedural justice) leading to post-complaint satisfaction (dealing-specific and cumulative satisfaction) leading to customer behavioural trends (loyalty and positive word of mouth (WOM). This model specifies the justice outlooks and post-complaint satisfaction. Interestingly, the general issue of distributive justice leading to service recovery is perfect for transaction-specific satisfaction, which adds to the positive WOM. The end result stresses on the need of distributive justice for student customers and interactional justice when failure is service-related. Pons et al. (2006) have researched on consumer motives behind spending huge money for making tours of sports destinations and participating in sports related consumption of goods and services. Consumer motives identified included sensation, cognition and social intimacy. They have developed a three-dimensional scale of consumer orientation towards a sporting event (OSE), structured to catch the motives behind sports event tourism based on Churchill’s (1979)) paradigm for scale development and matching instructions offered by DeVellis (1991)). Previous researchers have found fan following as a major motive, repeating the cognitive part as a must for leisure experience. They have used the OSE scale by passing it to strict validation criteria to make it a dependable instrument for sports marketers for employing it to relate with motivational segmentation. The scale construction has been durable over different sports and samples. Generally, scale development is an arduous task because of issues related to external authenticity and dependability of the tool. The research has focussed on reducing the problem areas and examination of the tool in many various contexts in a given time period of 3 years. Different segments of consumers motivations were found although belonging to distinctly different socio-demographic characteristics and belonging to various sports. Although a number of research methods stated above have some relevancy with the company profile of organising sports tours but maximum results on the research methods pursued by Pons et al. (2006) suit the marketing needs of the company Sports & Corporate Group Travel because it organizes sports tours for school and university students in a big way. Sampling strategy attempts to measure tourist consumers’ orientation, their consumption behavior pattern, their major motivation behind participating in sports events and tours. Their questionnaire data is based on in-class undergraduate students and undergraduate students besides other participants. Their method of research is based on three dimensional OSE scale. This is not the only reason to make their research methods and questionnaire the base of this research; also for the very reason that the topic of business research methods on customer satisfaction has been based on a travel company, organising sports events and tours, which offers an analysis on similar lines that would help the Sports and Corporate Group Travel to take leverage in planning a marketing strategy from the sensation, cognitive and social intimacy dimensions of the students besides other participants belonging to various cultural backgrounds. Gelbrich & Roschk (2010) have also touched on the aspect of distributive justice for student customers as their research method recommends different types of justices based on consumer types. Sajtos et al. (2010) have selected the method of confirmatory factor analysis first, which under Pons et al. methods comes on the 2nd rank of study preceded by purification stage. Patterson et al. (2001) have covered CS/D in their research. Generally researchers (Velazquez et al. 2011); (Davidow 2003); (Andreassen 2001) and others have taken the customer satisfaction cause of service industry with crucial inputs from Getz (2007) on sport management linking it with tourism themes of sport events for the benefit of sports people and their fans and sports like skiing. Considering the research methods used by different researchers mapping sports consumers’ orientation on the OSE scale has attempted only purification study sample, which could be a limitation of this study. 2. Research Questionnaire Design Consumer orientation shows interest of an individual to follow a behavior pattern during the consumption, which becomes an acquired and stable conduct design. Motivation and values are the two ingredients of orientation. The capability of a product or service motivates an individual to become its motivational aspect while inherent value attracts the consumer and affects behavior. In the context of sports events, motivation part caters to the distinct needs met by that sport event (Pons et al. 2006). Item Development Semiformal interviews were organized with learned people such as visitors, organizers and sports people to create sufficient stock of items that show cognitive, affective, and social sides of OSE. Later, improvements were made on current scales besides from qualitative data gathered from consumers. Start as made with a sample of 6-10 items made of mixed items. Next, 20 specialists from the services fields, sports marketing and consumer attitudes were segregated and divided to add more items. The specialists were offered along with cover letters, the definitions of the three categories of OSE, and sample items. They added more items to each of the OSE categories. In total, 68 items were found relevant with the three categories (Pons et al. 2006). Content Validity Rest of the 10 specialists reviewed the list of items prepared for relevancy of the motivation intention measurement. This process examined the validity of the content for scale development. Specialists also validated the items for clarity and briefness. Opinion of at leas 8 specialists was required out of 10 to validate its relevance and use in the measurement instrument. This procedure further decreased the number of items to 55 to be taken into a questionnaire to be applied at the purification stage (Pons et al. 2006). Study 1: Purification Stage Method. Out of 8 different studies conducted, Pons et al. (2006), performed the purification stage to cleanse the measurement instrument based on its psychometric features. Te purification stage measured the qualities of the items to let only the most suitable items in the scale for the subsequent study (Pons et al. 2006). Each item was made to fit into a 5-point (totally agree to totally disagree) Likert-type response scale. Items showing the three sides were included in a random order without mentioning a distinct type of sport in the questionnaire, using rather the general term sporting event. The survey was answered by 186 out of 200 undergraduate students pursuing marketing courses with a response rate of 93% (Pons et al. 2006). Results. Analyses were made by testing inter-item correlations. A 0.20 criterion was used for retention. Next, employing a main part method, a number of exploratory analyses were made. Items with a below 0.50 and items with high loads on different dimensions were removed from the scale after factor analysis till reasonable psychometric features were attained. Finally, a three-factor solution decreased further the scale items from 15 to 5 items per factor. Total difference in the outcome was 72% after final analysis. Change in the sample questionnaire The sample constitutes students, which is a drawback of the research as sports fans are not equally educated as students; they can’t respond their expressions and feelings to the OSE scale but there are other positive factors of this methodology design to reduce the affect of this drawback. Purification stage being the first of the research analysis, later construction includes non-student samples, showing durability of the scale over various contexts. Although undergraduates are not “real” consumers but they form crucial part of the sports market to validate to some extent their role in the sample study. Populations can not be generalized on the basis of fans typology. Out of 8 different studies, audiences for questionnaire have been replaced from the 1st sample of in-class undergraduate students to undergraduates in the next to studies on confirmatory factor analysis and construct validity. The 4th study on known group validity interviewed hockey fans, selected from hockey chat rooms on the internet. Fans of different games were selected for interview to check the validity of the OSE scale including non-students, mix of undergraduates and non-students, Montreal sample, Beirut sample, samples of baseball and hockey games as well in further studies. This vast range of survey audiences not only helped in getting different orientations towards sporting events scale on socialisation dimension, sensation seeking dimension and cognitive seeking dimension but also added a touch of completeness to the survey by proving the importance and relevance of theory. Conclusion Outcomes indicate to marketers that all sports fans possess the similar motives but assess them distinctly as per the situation they are in. Specifically relevant has been the robust usage of the OSE scale as a motivational segmentation instrument. Such classification adds to the behavioral or socio-demographic categorisation routinely employed by sports marketers. In fact, behavioural and socio-demographic divisions are vast; the motivational method to segmentation finds answer to the main research question, which is: Why do sports fans visit the place of a sport event? What type of experience do they want? For example, a marketer who uses a simple behavioral segmentation can get valuable information on marketing strategy on visitors’ category who spend $20 to view sports channels on the TV. OSE scale thus helps in stating fans belonging to such segment inspired by social value of sports events. Marketers can strategise their communication planning on the social value of the event for effectively exploiting the information. Division of consumers totally based on their behavior patterns cannot differentiate between consumer groups with distinct needs. Simple presence and TV viewing cannot decide between a social fan and experiential fan groups. Social fans motivated by social value carry a rating of 4.45/5 of the sport event while experiential fans carry a sensation score of 4/5. References: Andreasse, T W., 2001. From disgust to delight: do customers hold a grudge? Journal of Service Research, 4. Available from: http://jsr.sagepub.com [Accessed 19 Feb. 2011]. Davidow, Moshe., 2003. Organizational responses to customer complaints: what works and what doesn’t. Journal of Service Research, 5 (3). Available from: http://jsr.sagepub.com [Accessed 19 Feb. 2011]. Gelbrich, Katja., Roschk, Holger., 2010. A meta-analysis of organizational complaint handling and customer responses. Journal of Service Research, 14 (1). Available from: http://jsr.sagepub.com [Accessed 19 Feb. 2011]. Getz, Donald., 2008. Progress in tourism management: event tourism: definition, evolution, and research. Tourism Management, 29. Available from: http://jsr.sagepub.com [Accessed 19 Feb. 2011]. McCollough, Michael A.,Berry, Leonard L. , Yadav, Manjit S., 2000 An empirical investigation of customer satisfaction after service failure and recovery. Journal of Service Research, 3 (2). Available from: http://jsr.sagepub.com [Accessed 19 Feb. 2011]. Patterson, Paul G., 2000. A contingency approach to modeling satisfaction with management consulting services. Journal of Service Research, 3 (2). Available from: http://jsr.sagepub.com [Accessed 19 Feb. 2011]. Pons, Frank., Mourali, Mehdi., Nyeck, Simon., 2006. Consumer orientation toward sporting events: scale development and validation. Journal of Service Research, 8(3). Available from: http://jsr.sagepub.com [Accessed 19 Feb. 2011]. Sajtos, Laszlo., Brodie, Roderick J., Whittome, James., 2010. Impact of service failure: the protective layer of customer relationships. Journal of Service Research, 13(2). Available from: http://jsr.sagepub.com [Accessed 19 Feb. 2011]. Sports & Corporate Group Travel, 2011. Sports & Corporate Group Travel. Available from: http://www.sports-corporate.co.uk/index.php [Accessed 19 Feb. 2011]. Velazquez, Beatriz Moliner., Saura, Irene Gil., Molina, Maria Eugenia Ruiz., 2011. Conceptualizing and measuring loyalty: towards a conceptual model of tourist loyalty antecedents. Journal of Vacation Marketing. Available from: http://jvm.sagepub.com/content/17/1/65.full.pdf+html [Accessed 19 Feb. 2011]. Read More