an assessment between budget hotels in China: service quality, customer satisfaction and loyal: a consumer perspective
Paper details:
The methodology part need to be revised according to my professor’s comments (i will upload that later)
Working title: an assessment between budget hotels in China: service quality, customer satisfaction and loyal: a consumer perspective.
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Module Code: TL 4010
Submission Date: 04/03/2016
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Abstract
Purpose- the aim of this research is to studies the level of service quality, and degree of consumer satisfaction and loyalty of budget hotels in China. Besides, the entire study will explore from a consumer view, in order to better understand the customer’s expectations in current situation in China market, also identify the main factors that influence consumer satisfaction and loyalty, so that to stimulate the development and expansion of budget hotel industry in China.
Literature review – the literature review will include theories of budget hotel and the development of budget hotel in China. Besides, it will also include theories of Service quality, customer Satisfaction, and loyalty.
Research methodology- to achieve the research objectives, this study will use qualitative method, quantitative method, online questionnaire survey, interviews and secondary data.
Data analysis – SPSS software will be adopt to analysis the primary d
Key words: budget hotel, service quality, consumer satisfaction, and loyalty.
Content page
Abstract
Introduction
Overall aims
Literature Review
Chapter 1: Definition of budget hotel
What is budget hotel?
Chapter 2:The development of budget hotel in China
Budget hotel in China
Chapter 3:Service quality and customer Satisfaction and loyalty
What is service quality?
Customer satisfaction
Customer loyalty
Research Methodology
Data Analysis
References
Introduction
During the year of 2000- 2010 due to the Olympic competition held in 2008 in Beijing and World exposition in Shanghai in 2010, hotel industry entered a booming period. Without doubt that the budget hotels play a critical role in lodging market in supporting the success of the tourism industry, as a result of increasingly mass demanding (BOC international social service team depth report—China’s economy hotel industry,2015).
However, there was a stagnant occurred during year of 2010 to 2014, from the China Hotel Business Survey (2015) can be concluded that the year of 2013 was an significant watershed year in hotel industry. There were lots of homogeneous products and has been in the cycle of oversupply, that problem also appear in the budget hotel market and directly lead to development of budget hotel slow down after 2010.
Additionally, according to the current report the percentage of budget hotel is less than 30% in China’s hotel industry, meanwhile the proportion of budget hotel in United Stated has over 70%.The fact implied that there are lots of chances to develop for budget hotel in China (Research and Development Forecast of China’s Budget Hotel, 2013).
Without any doubt that the economy hotel industry in China is experiencing bottleneck period and dramatic changes and budget hotelier must possess keen insight to break the precedent to deal with new challenges in the market and expand it continually. Therefore, it’s time to implement an assessment in service quality and consumer satisfaction and loyalty at economy hotels in China to better meet their needs and expectation so that promote industry development and growth of profit.
Overall aims:
Aims
To assess the level of service quality, and degree of consumer satisfaction and loyalty of budget hotels in China. The entire study will explore from a consumer view, in order to better understand the customer’s expectations in current situation in China market, also identify the main factors that influence consumer satisfaction and loyalty, so that to stimulate the development and expansion of budget hotel industry in China.
Research objectives
? To conduct a literature review of all relative published source.
? To identify the nature and characteristics of budget hotels in China.
? To assess the importance of service quality and its component to customer.
? To evaluate aspect of customer satisfaction and how it may be achieved.
? To consider the role of customer loyalty and how budget hotel might benefit.
? To produce a list of recommendation for industry and consumer alike
Literature Review
It is essential to do literature review before the carry out research or doing dissertation, it is a efficient way of gain more knowledge and relative information that may concern to our research topic, also literature review is beneficial to researcher to acquire enough evidence to progress and develop the research subjects (0liver, 2012).
Chapter 1: Definition of budget hotel
Broadly speaking budget hotel means economy or “limited service”(Davidson, 1993). Specifically, the feature of budget hotel can be described as: Strong branding; Coverage widely; accessible; standard room layout; limited service; high return (Brotherton, 2004). In that case the budget hotel in China can be concluded have following traits: a cost-effective modern, set the mass traveler and business man as target consumer, with reasonable and attractive price (normally below RMB300) and provided standard service, quality hardware and comfortable environment (Junfei, 2012).
Chapter 2: The development of budget hotel in China
Budget hotel came late in China market, the first budget hotel brand is created by JinJiang International Holdings Co., Ltd. in 1996, called JINJIANG INN. Although budget hotel history in China is not long but the speed of development is remarkable (The Analysis of Budget Hotel). According to the BOC international social service team depth report: budget hotels has gradually formed a pattern of oligopoly after 2010: home inns, 7 days hotels, Htinns hotels and Jinjiang Inn became the leading enterprises with the higher market share than others in China. Specifically based on the Research and Development Forecast of China’s Budget Hotel (2013-2017), the number of budget hotel brand is 419 in 2013; the market share of Home Inns Group, Htinns and JingjJiang Inns and 7 Days Group Holdings has reached more than 47%.
Chapter 3: Service quality, customer Satisfaction, and loyalty
Gerson(1993) insisted that service quality is all about customer perceives, which means all service standards must be made in order to meet expectation of consumers and also high-level service quality could indirectly and directly lead to high customer satisfaction and high repeat as well(Gerson, 1993). As a result of once consumer were satisfied they would do more frequent business with you and became loyalty, this is also important element in same industry competition. Based on the report carried out by Barsky & Nash (2006) demonstrated that the percentage of customer loyalty impact on consumer decision of hotel options has increased to 34% in 2006. More importantly Service quality and consumer Satisfaction and loyalty are the significant factors that impact on the profit and success of business (Gronoos, 1990).
All the factors mentioned above is critical to continue expand the budget hotel market in China , the reason why conduct this assessment or measurement study is due to Gerson(1993) suggested that measurement technique play a key role in service quality improvement also the most direct way that identify overall service performance. Therefore the inevitability of conduct this study to assess service quality and measure degree of consumer satisfaction and loyalty is obvious
Research Methodology
The researcher will adopt both qualitative (interview questions) and quantitative (questionnaires instrument) research methods. Due to the different nature of two data collection approaches, apply both methods can achieve a more comprehensive and accurate data collection. Assessment of service quality and consumer satisfaction has significant effect on the prosperity of the industry. In this research, the target hotel will be the 4 leading enterprises (Jingjiang Inn; Home Inn; 7-Days hotel and Htinns Hotel), which located in Chongqing. The reason researcher choose Chongqing city in China is because due to latest report conducted by BOC (2015): a budget hotel chains are mainly distributed in the first and second-tier cities, Chongqing as a developing first-tier city has various accessibility and advantages, also the prospect of development.
Qualitative method is to interpret or make sense of certain social phenomena and apply relative theories to dig out the profound and underlying reasons of phenomena (Jha, 2008). So that researcher can use it to learn what’s the expectation of consumer indeed and how budget hotelier can achieve it in a cost-efficient way. In order to increase the validity and reliability of this study interview approach also will be applied in this study. In the view of Gillham (2005), interview method is also a widely measurement approach, but it is different from questionnaire, data collected is more compelling and enlightening, due to the data is not just numbers but also words and profound explanations. Moreover, unstructured interview will be taken in this study, because the interviewee will selected from questionnaire respondents (10 people) who rank the service as “very good” or “extremely bad”, the view of consumer will unexpected and vary from individuals. Researcher will also implement the unstructured interview through mobile phone, by reason of Gillham (2005) mentioned distance interview is more low-cost and efficient.
Muijs (2004) believed that the quantitative method is using the number to talk, based on the numeric data to analyze and explain the research topic and questions. In this study will make use of paperless work, the on-line questionnaire, aiming to measure the perceive of service quality and degree of satisfaction and repeat rates. Respondents will be selected randomly from the 4 target budget hotels in Chongqing, China (7-Days hotels; Jinjiang Inn; Home Inn; and Htinns). Respondents can only use 2-3mins to scan the QR code of “Wechat” application, from the Wechat account sending online questionnaire link to consumer and they can answer questions on their phone and leave contact number for subsequent interview resources. Researcher will cooperate with the manager to issue certain voucher or other benefits to consumer who would like to spend time to do questionnaire to cancel the bias and induce the risk of inaccuracy answers. All data that collected will also share with the hotel operator for their further improvement evidences.
Data Analysis
In this paper, SPSS software will be adopt to analysis the primary data that collected from the questionnaires. As a result of multifunction and user-friendly data analysis of SPSS software, which become the most frequently statistical data analysis software and it is popular in most institutions of higher education (Muijs, 2004). And the interview notes and scripts will manually organized and concluded by researcher.
The questionnaire method is aim to understand the level of service quality and what consumer perceived, on the other hand, interview scripts is the more deep discovery of inner reasons of satisfaction or dissatisfaction and the interviewees will be chosen from those respondents of survey before.
References
1. Anon., 2015. BOC international social service team depth report—China’s economy hotel industry. <http://www.199it.com/archives/375701.html> [Accessed 28 February 2016].
2. Anon.,2015. China Hotel Business Survey. China Tourism Press <http://www.chinabookshop.net/china-hotel-business-survey-2015-p-22145.html?osCsid=dg6run4isalr43hiarl4u94hb2> [Accessed 28 February 2016].
3. Anon., 2012. Research and Development Forecast of China’s Budget Hotel,2013-2017 HuiDian Research <www.hdcmr.com> [Accessed 29 February 2016].
4. Atkinson, A., 1998. Answering the eternal question: what does customer want? The Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly,29(2), pp.12-14.
5. Barsky,J. and Nash,L., 2006. Companies update loyalty programs, increase effective. Hotel and Motel Management,22(11) pp.28-29.
Junfei, Z., 2012. The Analysis of Current Situation of Budget Hotel and Innovative development. <http://www.gotran.com/translate/show.php?itemid=6924> [Accessed 29 February 2016].
6. Brotherton, B. 2004. Critical Success Factor in UK Budget hotel Operations. International Journal of Operations &Production Management, 24(9/10), 944-969.
7. Davidson, R. 1993. Budget hotel in Europe. Insights, 4, A141-144.
8. Gerson, R.F. 1993. Measuring Customer Satisfaction : A Guide to Managing Quality Service. Course Technology / Cengage Learning, Menlo Park, CA, USA. Available from: ProQuest ebrary. [3 March 2016].
9. Gillham, B 2005. Research Interviewing : The Range of Techniques, McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing, Berkshire, GBR. Available from: ProQuest ebrary. [3 March 2016].
10. Gronoos, C. 1990. Service Management and Marketing: Managing the moments of truth in service competition. Lexington Books, USA.
11. Jha, N.K., 2008. “Research Methodology” Abhisek Publications pp.42-45.
12. Muijs, Daniel.,2004. Doing Quantitative Research in Education with SPSS. London, GBR: SAGE Publications Inc. pp.2-3.
13.Oliver, P., 2012. Succeeding with your literature review: A Handbook for Students. Berkshire: Open University Press.pp.5-6