Service Sector and Customer Expectation and Experience of Service Quality, Branding and Loyalty - Research Proposal Example

An Examination of Service Sector and Expectation and Experience of Service Quality, Branding and Loyalty Supervisor Date of Submission Chapter Three 3.0 Methodology 3.1 Introduction This chapter outlines the arrangement of conditions for data collection and analysis in some way that aims at combining the relevance of the research procedure and its purpose. It, in details, covers the research approaches and philosophy, research questions, research design, justification of the methods and the different forms of analysis that were used to carry out this research. 3.2 Philosophical Approach This research will take a positivist approach where it adopts the philosophical stance of natural scientists (Aram & Salipante, 2003). The research principles followed that of the positivism where observable phenomena were used to generate credible data. The research then used the existing theories in the area of research to develop research hypotheses. Through the hypotheses, research strategy was generated in order to aid in the collection of the credible data required. These hypotheses were tested and confirmed partially, and some refuted, which led to the development of which is suggested to be tested by further research (Kheng, 2010). These hypotheses that were developed as listed at the beginning of these report, were then used to design questionnaires that were administered to the interviewees, and also to choose the right people to interview (Robson, 2012). Through the administration of correct questionnaire to the respondents, plus other data collected from secondary sources, facts were sufficiently gathered to provide the basis for data analysis so as to test the hypotheses. This then made it easy for generalization to be done about the results of the analysis (Denzin, 2001). The main characteristics of the positivism approach include the fact that, the observer must be independent, and not part of what is being observed. This will be necessary in this research in achieving data and results which are free of being bias since, if the researcher would be part of what will be observed, he could manipulate the data to fit the situation he wants. In this kind of research approach also, human interests should be regarded irrelevant and explanation should demonstrate causality. The research progress is done through hypotheses and deductions whereas the major concepts require to be made operational so that they can be measured. The approach should consider reducing the units of analysis to the simplest terms while encouraging generalization through statistical probability. Last but not least, sampling through this approach considers the use of large numbers which are randomly selected. The research also uses the social constructionism, where the perspective of the stakeholders of this sector under research will be incorporated, and the explanations aim to increase the general understanding of the situation (Scholz & Tietje, 2002). On the other hand, the social constructionism approach has been criticized of having the observer being part of what will be observed. However, the approach is still credible as its process gathers rich data from which ideas are induced. The approach also uses the theoretical abstraction in making generalizations. The aspects of customer satisfaction is an indicator of the performance in any the service industry. It will then be very important to measure the level of customer satisfaction which then relates to the quality of service in the industry and makes room for loyal customers to follow a company’s brand due to its high level of quality services offered. To determine this, then it is necessary that we collect data, analyze it, and make a conclusion out of it. 3.3 Research Questions and Objectives 3.3.1 Research Objectives i) General objectives The general objective of this research is: to examine the expectation and the experience of the service sector in relation to service quality, loyalty along with branding in a customer perspective. ii) Specific objectives includes: 1) To recognize the background, strategies and culture of the service sector organizations. 2) To determine the importance of the customer satisfaction and customer relationship in the present market scenario 3) To determine the importance of service quality in relation to the customer satisfaction 4) To analyze the significance of branding in relation to customer satisfaction 5) To define the prominence of customer loyalty in relation to customer satisfaction 6) To ascertain the factors that affect the expectation and the experience of the service sector relating to service quality, branding and loyalty in a customer perspective 3.3.2 Research Questions In the service sector, more so in the hotel and events management, the quality of the service offered the customers play a major role in keeping or sending the customer away. It is believed that, loyal customers, through their past experiences in this sector, cling to specific brands due to the high quality treatment they received the last times they used a particular company’s services. However, this point is not clear to other researchers as some claim that, the fact that customers pay loyalty to particular brands, does not or have little to do with the quality of services in these sectors. This then raises the several research questions that he research aims to unveil, and the questions are as follows: 1) What factors influence the service sector organizations today? 2) How do we know whether a customer is satisfied with an organization’s services or not? Is it through surveys, customer complaints or report through various media? 3) Do the services currently offered by the service industry satisfy the customer’s expectations? 4) Does branding attract customers or not? 5) What elements of keeping customer loyalty should be taken into consideration? Is it providing customers with a membership system, improving service quality, improving customer satisfaction, or establishing a better customer feedback system? 6) Is expectation higher than the experience, or is the experience higher than the expectation in the today’s service industry from a customer’s perspective? 3.4 Research Design This refers to the overall strategy chosen by the researcher to integrate the different components of the research study, in a coherent and logical manner. This then will ensure that you effectively address the research problem. The research design of a study constitutes the blueprint for data collection, measurement and analysis. The research problem normally is the one that determines the type of research design that one takes, and not the other way round (Kinsherblatt-Gimblett, 2006). Research can be of several types including exploratory, case study, experiment, and survey, causal, descriptive, explanatory, and historical, among others. This study will take a descriptive approach which helps to find answers to who, what, when, where and how are associated with the problem of the research. However, this kind of research design does not conclusively provide answers to why (Collins, 2011). Research design provides a framework for the collection and analysis of data. There are two types of research designs commonly used for various studies which are qualitative and quantitative research designs. To be able to provide answers to the research questions, this study uses both quantitative and qualitative research designs in order to collect and analyze data (Crowther & G., 2008). Qualitative research design is one which is concerned with subjective assessment of attitudes, opinions and behaviors of people. On the other hand, quantitative research design is concerned with the generation of data in the quantitative form, which is then subjected to vigorous quantitative analysis in a formal way. Quantitative approach uses certain variations such as inferential, experimental and simulation approaches. The approach is widely known for its advantage of producing a more credible and bias free results that can be used to make tangible decisions (Ramahathan, 2008). Quantitative method will be used to sample 10 hotels and service provision organization. Through random sampling, five hotels will be selected for the study. Then, data will be collected through this approach through administering surveys such as closed-ended questions. These questions will be administered through the use of well structured questionnaires that several employees of the hotels will be required to fill. Likewise, a random sampling will be done on customers who will be on board in those particular hotels and a face-to-face interview with them will be carried out as well as answering short questionnaires that will be designed for them (Kumar, 2011). Through the use of secondary data, the customer database for these hotels will be sorted to find phone contacts of customers who had earlier visited the hotels before and have never come back, and the loyal customers who frequently visit the facility. Through the use of telephone interviews, these customers will be led through structured closed-ended questions in order to find their responses about the quality of service they received at the hotel facilities and why they have kept coming back to the hotels or why they have not come back to the hotels. On the other hand, qualitative research will be used to collect qualitative data through the use of in-depth interviews with the hotel management. This method is used to provide information which is useful to understand processes behind the results that were observed and also to assess the changes in the perception of people’s well being. In this research, both observation and interviews were used to collect data from the administration of these hotels and from the hotels themselves. Whereas the management of these hotels will be engaged with the interviews to provide certain information about how the hotels offer their services to the customers and the customers’ behaviors for the past period about the quality of service being offered, observation will be used to collect observable data which is related to quality of service provision, that can be observed. These elements can include, observing the kevel of cleanliness of the facility, promptness in serving the customers, front door reception of the customers by the hotel management, and others. The qualitative method has the advantage of providing in-depth information that can be analyzed to draw credible results. However this method is time consuming as the researcher requires time to record every little, but vital information that could be helpful to provide generalizations in certain matters. 3.5 Justification of the Methods Quantitative method will be used for this research as it is concerned with testing hypotheses derived from theory and by being able to estimate the size of phenomenon of interest. Given the different research questions that we have in this study, participants will be assigned randomly to different treatments. Through this method, the researcher can be able to statistically control the influence of the participant on the independent variable by collecting data on situational characteristics and participant. This method also employs probability sampling to choose the participants if this generalization is required from the participants to the larger population either of the customers or the employees who will participate in the provision of data for this research. On the other hand, there is information that cannot be obtained through the use of quantitative approach given nature of the data collection methods which are only used in most cases to collect data using this method. The method uses closed-ended questions which restrict the respondents on giving their responses since they are required to only choose one of the choices provided by the researcher, though they may have different opinions about the same. In this case, qualitative approach becomes very fundamental to complement the weaknesses of the quantitative approach. The qualitative method gives the respondents the freedom to express their views and give elaborated explanations about the situations, hence will be very important in this situation to collect certain information from the customers and the administration which gives elaborated explanations on the matter on the ground. Qualitative approach, however, will only be used to provide such information when the semi-structured interview method will be used to collect data from the respondents. Again, through observation, the researcher is able to make collect information about the situation on a first hand basis. The data collected through this method is more credible as the observer was there in person and they collected the information by themselves. It therefore follows that, more credible and trusted inferences can be drawn from the information or data collected though this method. There will be need to contact the customers who have used these hotels before and those who are using the facility currently in order to find out their opinions about the quality of service offered by the hotel facilities. To contact those customers who visited the facilities earlier and had left, the use of telephone interviews will be necessary since it will appear the only feasible way to find such information from such a group of respondents. 3.6 Forms of Data Analysis The data that will be collected will be analyzed using both statistical and thematic methods of analysis. On the statistical analysis method, Statistical Packages for Social Scientist (SPSS), will be used to analyze the quantitative data that will be collected. This will assist in testing the hypotheses that had been postulated by comparing their significance level. To do so, the data has to be run into the SPSS software so that various measures of central tendency and measures of dispersion will be generated to be used in drawing credible inferences. On the other hand, thematic analysis will include identifying, analyzing and reporting patterns within the data. This will use a system of generating charts, graphs and tables using the SPSS software. The charts, tables and graphs produced will be used to draw inferences from the data following the patterns that will be depicted in them. This is a very easy way of drawing generalizations and conclusions from data since it only uses the skills of description of the patterns taken by the data when they are translated into the forms of graphs, tables and charts. Bibliography Aram, J., & Salipante, P. F. (2003). Bridging Scholarship in Management: Epistemological Reflections. British Journal of Management , 14, 189-205. Collins, H. (2011). “Creative Research: The Theory and Practice of Research for the Creative Industries” . AVA Publications , 1-9. Crowther, D., & G., L. (2008). “Research Methods: A Concise Introduction to Research in Management and Business Consultancy” . Butterworth: Heinemann. Denzin, N. K. (2001). Interpretive Interactionism (2nd ed.). London: Sage. 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