Relationship Between Service Delivery And Customer Satsfaction In The Hospitality Industry (Research Paper Sample)

MACHAKOS UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM MANAGEMENT
DEPARTMENT OF HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT
PROJECT PROPOSAL FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE IN ECOTOURISM, HOTEL AND INSITUTION MANAGEMENT WITH IT
PROJECT TITLE: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SERVICE DELIVERY AND CUSTOMER SATSFACTION IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY
NAME: MUGENDI OMARIBA FRED
REG N.O:T12/5626/2015
LECTURER’S NAME:STELLA
DATE SUBMITTED:
ABSRACT
It is obvious that customers are important stakeholders in organizations and their satisfaction is a priority to management. Customer satisfaction has been a subject of great interest to organizations and researchers alike. In recent years, organizations are obliged to render more services in addition to their offers. The quality of service has become an aspect of customer satisfaction. It has been proven by some researchers that service quality is related to customer satisfaction. Others used service quality dimensions to evaluate service quality. What about the relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality?
The main purpose of this sturdy is to investigate the relationship between service delivery and customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry.
SERVQUAL model developed by Parasuraman,Zeithaml and Berry(1988) was used to develop a questionnaire which was then consequently distributed to various respondents from Hotels in Kisumu County. Descriptive statistics and Regression analysis were used to establish the factors influencing customer satisfaction and bringing out the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction.
This study will contribute to the existing studies examining service quality and customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry. The results from the study could be helpful to the management of hotels in their policy formulation in the context of improving customer satisfaction and service loyalty. I would however recommended that since this study focused only on hotels within Kisumu, future studies could look into more areas such as Nairobi and Nakuru which are also key tourist attraction sites.
1.1 CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STURDY
Customer satisfaction has been a subject of great interest to most Hospitality businesses as well as researchers. With increased globalization of markets and competition among market players, customers are becoming the absolute entity for corporations as final decision makers for business deals and purchase of products. Every hospitality or tourism business aims at maximizing profits and to minimize the cost. However, one of the factors that can help to increase sales is customer satisfaction; because satisfaction leads to customer loyalty{Wilson atel;2008,pg.79}recommendation and repeat purchase.
In order to achieve customer satisfaction in Today’s Hospitality business as well as tourism activities, service delivery is paramount, since for customers to continue to patronize a hotel, they must be satisfied with the services offered. The focus on customers has increased more as the organization era also shifts to post consumption, where most organizations are obliged to render more services in additional to what they provide as offer to the customer{David Armano,2009}.
Hospitality businesses offers services which unlike tangible products, are produced and consumed at the same time in presence of customer and service remainder. The presence of the human element during the service delivery process greatly increases the probability of an error on the part of employees and customers. The error is due to intangible process that cannot be monitored {Bowen, 1986}.
The human error has forced organizations and especially the hotels to adopt Quality Management Programs which aims at improving the quality of their products and services and marketing process since it has been proven that “Quality has a direct impact on product performance and thus on customer satisfaction {Kotler et al; 2002,pg 8}.The aim of this is to satisfy the customers.
Satisfaction is the most important tool that can help increase sales and generate profits in a business environment. The importance of customer satisfaction and service delivery has been proven relevant to help improve the overall performance of organizations. Successful organizations of the future will be those that provide goods and services to customers who want it, where they want it and in the quantity and the price they want it thereby, delighting rather than merely satisfying customers{Parker and Mathews,2001}
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Previous studies by different researchers have tried to sturdy service delivery and customer satisfaction using various measurements and indicators. A key driver of achieving customer satisfaction is considered to be employee job satisfaction, as satisfied employees are more motivated, empowered, caring and engaged to firms’ goals and customer desires. Along the same line with the above thoughts, many researches have examined one by one the links between service quality and customer satisfaction ,employee job satisfaction and customer satisfaction as well as job satisfaction and service quality (Snipes et al., 2005). A sturdy by Kattara,et al9(2008) concluded that employees’ behavior greatly affect overall customer satisfaction regardless of the customers’ gender,nationality,and purpose of visit, number of visits and length of stay. The Hotel industry is faced with employee related challenges including low motivation, lack of reliability, empathy and assurance and low responsiveness to customer requests (Hanzaee and Mirvaisi, 2011). However, many hotels may not be able to achieve quality due to competition in the industry and failure to address all employee related issues like job satisfaction, skills/ training, employee‘s behavior and attitudes and low motivation of employees affecting proper customer communication and hence satisfaction (Kimungu & Maringa, 2010). Service quality and customer satisfaction have been proven from past researches to be positively related (Baker-Prewitt, 2000; Kuo, 2003; Gera, 2011) but no study had tested the factors that influence customer satsisfaction in the Hospitality industry. Therefore this research duly investigates customer satisfaction and service delivery in the Kenyan hospitality industry and then provides possible scientific solutions to improve service quality.
1.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STURDY
Upon its completion, this study will benefit hotel managers, employees and customers, through providing clear information concerning customers’ expectation and perception with regard to service quality dimension which has significant effect on service quality and customer satisfaction in hospitality establishments in Kenya.
The results from the study could also be helpful to the management of hotels in their policy formulation in the context of improving customer satisfaction and service loyalty.
This study also provides valuable insight to managers regarding the customer service skills to equip their employees within their ongoing effort to improve customer communication, satisfaction and hence retention. Hence, the result of this research can be utilized as a foundation to build service strategy.
1.4 OBJECTIVES OF THE STURDY
1.4.1 GENERAL OBJECTIVES
The overall objective of the sturdy is to investigate the relationship between service delivery and customer satisfaction in the Kenyan hospitality industry.
1.4.2 SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
1 To determine factors influencing customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry
2 To identify the expectation of customers towards the service delivery in the Hospitality industry
3 To examine the correlation between service quality and customer satisfaction
1.5 RESEARCH QUESTION
1 Is there a linkage between customer satisfaction and service delivery?
2 Does the level of service quality affect customer satisfaction?
3 What are the key indicators to measure the quality of service and customer satisfaction?
4 What recommendations can be made to enhance service quality in hospitality business?
1.6 HYPOTHESIS
H1 Reliability has significant effect in customer satisfaction
H2 Responsiveness has a significant effect in customer satisfaction
H3 Communication has a significant effect on customer satisfaction.
H4 Tangibility has significant effect on customer satisfaction.
1.7 ASSSUMPTION OF THE STURDY
The sturdy assumed that hotel managers and hotel customers gave correct information during primary data collecting.
1.8 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
The aim of this section is to summarize the idea I got from past literature and to bring out the contributions I have for this study area. Thus this part starts with the idea generated and the contribution follows. The general idea from the past literature is that there is a relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality; also that service quality could be evaluated with the use of five service quality dimensions. Following the two clarifications about the different views of customer satisfaction of a customer of either being transaction-specific or cumulative (Boulding et al., 1993; Andreassen, 2000). My theoretical frame work treats customer satisfaction as transaction-specific. Thus, customers in this paper are those who consume the services, satisfaction denotes customer’s desire to maintain a business relationship with the organization and it is also the feelings of the customers towards the services provided to them by the organizations; while customer satisfaction in this study is the pleasures obtained by customers for the services provided to them by the employees of the organizations. It has been proven that “perceived service quality is a component of customer satisfaction” (Ziethaml et al....