اثرات خدمات هتل بر رضایت کلی مشتری
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Symmetric and asymmetric impacts of product/service attributes on overall customer satisfaction
3. The three-factor theory of customer satisfaction
4. Method
5. Results
6. Discussion and conclusion
Appendix A. Descriptive Statistics for the hotel services
References
Abstract
This study aims to examine how performance of hotel services symmetrically and asymmetrically affects overall customer satisfaction. For this purpose, data were collected from Turkish, German and Russian hotel customers staying at a five-star golf hotel in the Belek area in Antalya-Turkey. Data were first analyzed by multi-variable regression analysis for clarifying the symmetric impacts of eight service dimensions on overall customer satisfaction. Results showed that Entertainment Services, Restaurant Services, Cleaning of General Areas and Foreign Language Knowledge of Staff had the highest influences on customer satisfaction. Penalty-reward-contrast analysis was performed for the same service dimensions to understand their asymmetric influences on customer satisfaction. Significantly different categorizations (i.e. satisfiers; dissatisfiers if absent; hybrids) were obtained for three major market segments. Entertainment Services had been the only dimension which was categorized as a ‘dissatisfier if absent’ for all markets. Additional comparisons were made among the first-time and repeat customers, whereas Housekeeping Services were identified as the ‘dissatisfiers if absent’ for both groups.
Introduction
Contemporary hospitality companies offer many services to customers beyond their ‘core business’, which is to ‘shelter’ the travellers. Nowadays, the capability, survival and financial performance of hospitality companies are directly dependent on achieving higher customer satisfaction than their competitors (Deng et al., 2008), since service variety and competition have significantly increased in the global marketplace. In hotel management, managers attempt to offer services meeting the needs and expectations of the customers which are presumed to linearly affect overall customer satisfaction. However, ‘symmetric’ relationships between product/service attributes and customer satisfaction should not be seen as guaranteed, since it was shown by researchers that product/service attributes may also have ‘asymmetric’ influences on customer satisfaction. The perspective of asymmetric impacts is firstly proposed by Kano et al. (1984) in the quality management literature (Füller and Matzler, 2008). The five quality element categories (one-dimensional, must-be, attractive, indifferent, and reverse) in the Kano model are determined by the customers’ objective performance perceptions about a product or service attribute’s expected benefits/values, both in the cases of its fulfillment (function) and non-fulfillment (dysfunction) (Mikulić and Prebežac, 2011b). Each classified attribute is expected to have a different effect on customer satisfaction depending on its characteristic, and be used for analysing the multi-factor structure of satisfaction with regard to examined attributes (Alegre and Garau, 2011). This approach is widely used by the researchers in various study settings (Lai and Hitchcock, 2017; Kocabulut and Albayrak, 2017; Bodet et al., 2016; Albayrak and Caber, 2014; Albayrak, 2015; Marković and Janković, ۲۰۱۳; Slevitch and Oh, 2010; Kuo et al., 2010; Matzler et al., 2006; Fuchs and Weiermair, 2003).