Expectations of Customers of the Hotel Sector - Research Proposal Example

Assessment 1: The marketing research process, scope etc for the chosen scenario Expectations of Customers of the Hotel Sector Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Executive Summary 2 Scope of the Research 2 Questions Raised in the Research 3 Research Methodology 4 Primary Research 4 Secondary Research 5 Research Methodology 5 Reason for choosing a combination of primary and secondary research 6 Nice to Know and Need to Know Information 7 Cost, Ethical and Time Issues in conducting the Research 8 Conclusion 9 References 9 Executive Summary Although the initial reasons for a first visit by a person to a particular are not in the management’s control directly. Yet, the hotel management has got the power to induce a customer to visit again and again. This can be done by providing the guest with a comfortable and satisfactory stay. This will also encourage the visitor to provide good mouth publicity for the hotel, which in turn will lead to more customers. To provide these excellent services, it is important for hoteliers to have a clear picture of the expectations of the guests. It is worthy to note that different visitors have different purposes and different expectations. The expectations of a business traveler will be significantly different from tourist on personal holiday. This market research attempts to find out the expectations of the various customers from various hotels in terms of services provided. The data collected will be used to form a conclusion that can be used by various hoteliers to improve the services provided by them to meet the customer’s expectations. The purpose of this report is to analyze the market research process, and various aspects of the research process relevant to the hotel industry. Scope of the Research The broad purpose of this research is to identify the main expectations of a guest from the customers, and rate them in order of their importance. The study will be used to make an overall assessment of the customer satisfaction of the various tourists that have stayed in the hotels. The study will attempt to reach to certain conclusions for the various categories of the tourists that had visited a hotel. The data collected will be segregated according to the purpose of visit and analyzed appropriately. The research will analyze the importance of five dimensions of service quality as proposed by Parsuraman (1998). The various expectations that will be analyzed in terms of importance include, but are not limited to are: cleanliness, courtesy and friendly nature of the staff, safety, room rates, credibility, access and competence of the staff, and some tangibles like appearance of the staff etc.. The research does face certain cost limitations. The study however, does not measure the actual perceptions of the customers about the service quality provided by the hotel. The study is confined to hotels that exist within a reasonable distance from the researcher. The analysis done in the research will be used to give a clear picture of the expectations of the customer from them. The findings from the research can also be used by their marketing team to increase visitors. Questions Raised in the Research The market research attempts to find answer to the following questions: What is the relative importance of various factors that customer expect from their hotel stay? What is the level of customer satisfaction towards their hotel stay in the chosen hotels? Based on the literature analysis of similar studies in the past, the researcher has identified some of the factors that seem to be important as expectations from the customer. These are: Consistency of performance Willingness of the hotel staff to provide service Good level of competence in the staff Courtesy, polite and friendly nature of the staff Security and safety Name and Rating Reasonable Room Rates Individual Attention Quality of other tangible aspects like beds, sofas etc. Research Methodology Deciding the appropriate method for conducting the research is perhaps the most important step in getting useful results from the research. The research methodology chosen should match with the research objectives and scope. It should also be made sure to take care of cost and time considerations. There are 2 techniques of doing a research: Primary Research or Secondary Research. Below is a short description of both the types of research which is followed by the research methodology for the proposed study. Primary Research Primary Research which is also known as field research attempts to unearth original data. It endeavors to collect data that does not exist previously. The process has an original plan for data collection and data validation and data analysis. Because of this reason, the results obtained through a primary research re more relevant to the specific needs of the researcher. However this method has cost and time limitations. Primary Research can be done to collect two types of data: Qualitative and Quantitative (DJS Research, 2009). There are various ways of conducting a primary research which include: Face-to-face interviews: Customers are interviewed either at home or certain location. Telephonic Interviews: They are similar to face-to face interviews but are generally shorter. Online Surveys: This is a cost-efficient way of collecting large amount of appropriate data. Various techniques include e-mail or uploading the questionnaire on some website. Mail: The questionnaire is sent to the customer through post. Focus Groups: This is generally used during the launch of a new product. An expert panel is asked to conduct an in-depth analysis of the product (tutor2u, Market research-primary research). Secondary Research Secondary Research makes use of already published information to arrive at particular decision. It is a very cheap form of data acquisition. Secondary research can be done in two ways: Internal or Externally. Secondary research is useful when a project just aims to present an analysis of already existing data. There are many sources of secondary data: Journals, Government Statistics, Newspapers, Magazines, web and Books. Although secondary research is advantageous with regards to its cost, but the analysis from secondary data is not always as applicable and useful as from primary source. This makes it necessary to design the research methodology based on the research objectives. Research Methodology The research is descriptive in nature. The first step in actual research will be conducting a review of the available literature. Deductive approach will be used to complete the research. The literature review will provide a basis for the primary research. The analysis from the primary research will be helpful in identifying the various constructs that are important to customers in hotels. Based on this information, a survey questionnaire will be designed. This questionnaire will be administered to a limited sample. The purpose of this task is to identify any mistakes, make the questionnaire easily understandable, and incorporate some other relevant factors that might have been missed in the first instance. The author also intends to interview certain managers at hotels to get their point of view. This will ensure that the survey accidentally has not asked for confidential information or missed a certain variable. A questionnaire will then be prepared incorporating the suggestions from the previous steps. The researcher intends to use a 7 point Likert Scale questionnaire, where the respondents will be asked to respond with the importance of a particular variable on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being the least important and 7 being the most important. A Likert scale will make the questions easier to understand and will lead to consistent answers (Changing Minds, Likert Scale). The survey would be administered to some of the tourists that enter or leave hotels in the neighborhood. This will be followed by collecting the data for a sufficient sample size and conducting the data analysis. The findings from the data will then be compared to past research and reasons for the same will be analyzed and discussed. Reason for choosing a combination of primary and secondary research The researcher intends to use a combination of both primary as well as secondary research. The author hopes to get the maximum with minimum effort through this combination. The secondary data will be useful in understanding the overall picture of the hotel sector. The secondary data analysis will also help the author in finding the important construct. Besides, a detailed literature review will help the author to understand the quantitative techniques that can be applied to the data obtained after the primary research. The author then can design the questionnaire based on the research requirements and the data analysis technique that he intends to use. Doing a secondary research first will also help the research save on time and cost as it reduces the effort by a lot. At the same time, it should be understood that a mere literature review will not be of much use in drawing out conclusions for the general population now. Most of the studies that have been done are outdated and have certain gaps in the models used. The author expects that based on the complete literature analysis, he will be able to present a comprehensive model for the customer expectations. The model thus developed will cover the gaps that have existed in the previous study. Thus, the appropriate way of conducting this research will be a combination of primary and secondary analysis. The research will start with a secondary analysis. With the start of primary research, the level of effort in secondary research will go down. Nice to Know and Need to Know Information While conducting the survey, the author expects to get certain information. This information can be classified into 2 types: Nice to Know Information and Need to know information. Need to know information is that, which is absolutely necessary for the researcher to find. Some of the need to know information that the researcher would definitely want, to fulfill his research objectives are: What is the purpose of his/her visit to the hotel? This can be asked directly to the visitor. What is the relative importance of the various factors contributing to good service quality according to him? This will be asked in the form of the questionnaire containing the various factors and the visitor would have to rate their importance from 1 to 7. What was his overall satisfaction level with the hotel service? This can be directly as well as indirectly. The customer can be asked to give the probability that he will recommend this hotel to some other person in order to know his satisfaction levels. Besides this, the researcher also wishes that he can get certain demographic details about the customer, so as to get a clear picture of the data. This information even if not available with the researcher will not affect the achievement of the research objectives. Some example of nice to know information includes: visitor’s name, age, gender etc. An overall assessment of the above need to know information will enable the researcher to reach to firm conclusions and achieve the research objectives set up earlier. Cost, Ethical and Time Issues in conducting the Research Every researcher has to face a lot of issues that may arise over the period of time. The first among these is costs. The majority of the cost that may arise in a research is primarily because of the survey that the researcher might undertake. The researcher in this research has attempted to lower the costs by as much as possible. For this, the hotels that have been chosen are in near proximity to the researcher. The costs are also minimized through a thorough literature analysis and a trial run. These steps have enabled the researcher to get optimum cost-benefit value from the research. The researcher will ensure that the research process is completed with utmost ethics. The researcher will have access to journals through public libraries. It will be made sure that any study that is quoted is cited properly in the reference section. It will also be made sure to confirm to it that none of the questions invade the visitor’s privacy. The data collected will be used purely for academic purpose and not to serve any commercial interests. The researcher has made sufficient arrangements to ensure that the research is completed within the given time frame. The researcher will make use of a project management tool (MS Project) to actively manage the various stages of research. Conclusion The above analysis has given the researcher a good base to progress towards completing the market research. The researcher hopes to get some useful information after the completion of the research. References Changing Minds. “Likert Scale”. 24th August 2009. [online]. Available at: http://changingminds.org/explanations/research/measurement/likert_scale.htm DJS Research. “What is Primary Research?” 24th August 2009. [online]. Available at: http://www.marketresearchworld.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=802 Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A., & Berry, L. L. (1988). Servqual: a Multiple Item Scale for Measuring Customer Perceptions of Service Quality. Journal of Retailing, 64(1), 12-43 Tutor2u. “Market Research-Primary Research”. 24th August 2009. [Online]. Available at: http://tutor2u.net/business/gcse/marketing_research_primary.htm Zikmund, W.G. 2007. Business Research Methods, 7th ed.US: Thomson Learning Inc. Read More