The major purpose of this study was to identify customer and employee satisfaction levels and the most important satisfaction factors in the lodging industry by the example of two hotel properties of a resort on the East Coast. This study included a sample of 267 customers, while the exact number of employees was unknown. The customer satisfaction survey was prepared by the consulting agency. It was conducted in the form of a 10-minute telephone interview with the customers who stayed at the resort 30 days prior to the survey. The customers indicated their satisfaction levels with six areas of the customer experience at the resort such as dining experience, golfing experience, experience with spa, beach club experience, experience with facilities/activities, and guest problems experience. Top 10 and lowest 10 customer satisfaction factors were found for both hotels of the resort. Four similar factors out of 10 positive ones were found to be in both of the hotel properties. Nine similar factors out of 10 were ranked as least satisfying in both of the hotels. The range score between the highest and the lowest customer satisfaction rating for the Hotel A was found to be 1.44, and for B Hotel 1.6. As for the overall customer satisfaction in two hotels, the overall customer satisfaction for the Hotel A was 4.5 (90%), and for the Hotel B was 4.58 (91.6%). To identify the customer satisfaction factors, four areas were selected for the analysis: staff, room divisions, recreation, and conflict resolution. Satisfaction with Room Divisions received the highest overall mean scores (4.64-for Hotel A, and 4.83- for Hotel B), while Conflict Resolution area received the lowest satisfaction scores for both of the Hotels (4.51- for Hotel A, 4.48- for Hotel B). The employee satisfaction questionnaire was created by the human resources department of the resort. The employee satisfaction survey was represented by 12 areas: the company; vision/mission/values; interact; your job; your department; physical work environment; communications; leadership, supervision and management effectiveness; teamwork; pay, opportunity, and benefits; career development and training; quality; and demographic information. To determine the employee satisfaction levels, the mean percentage scores of all positive and negative employees' responses were calculated. Satisfaction with Your Department received the highest positive total percentage mean score of 81.1%, while satisfaction with the Interact program implemented by the resort received the lowest positive mean percentage score of 44.0%. Similar to customer satisfaction, the 10 top positive and 10 bottom negative employee satisfaction response questions were identified. The strong positive relationship (r=0.66) was found between the Hotel A and B of the resort and customer satisfaction factors. Those areas that were ranked high by the customers of the Hotel A were also highly ranked by the Hotel B customers. A Person's correlation coefficient was run on the relationship between the hotel property and customer satisfaction levels. The strong positive association was found between two hotel properties and satisfaction statements. Paired sample t-test was also run in order to determine if there was a significant difference in customer satisfaction in two hotels A and B based on the customer's responses to the questionnaire. The t equal to (-2.5), and the probability of (0.016) were found. There was found to be statistical significant difference between the Hotel A and B customer satisfaction statements.

Submitted by Tatiana Lima (tatianasl@ufba.br) on 2015-03-19T20:47:10Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_formatada_REV3.pdf: 1870451 bytes, checksum: b5f612352a81ff6b4c75047bf0020db9 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Tatiana Lima (tatianasl@ufba.br) on 2015-03-20T19:27:24Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_formatada_REV3.pdf: 1870451 bytes, checksum: b5f612352a81ff6b4c75047bf0020db9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-20T19:27:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_formatada_REV3.pdf: 1870451 bytes, checksum: b5f612352a81ff6b4c75047bf0020db9 (MD5) / A importância do setor de serviços vem estimulando as empresas para prestarem maior atenção na qualidade dos serviços oferecidos aos seus clientes. As empresas também descobriram a importância de uma boa organização interna, de manter funcionários comprometidos e motivados para que os esforços sejam combinados com eficiência, para refletir no atendimento externo. A atenção dos diversos setores da empresa com a qualidade do serviço prestado internamente reflete na qualidade do oferecido ao consumidor final, o que reforça a importância em avaliar a qualidade dos serviços prestados por cada setor. Nesse sentido, o desafio das empresas atualmente é gerenciar os serviços internos, de forma que se garanta a qualidade nas relações intersetoriais e que todos os setores estejam alinhados em prestar serviços de qualidade aos clientes finais da empresa. A BR Distribuidora é uma empresa que atua no mercado de distribuição de derivados de petróleo e possui como clientes externos os postos de serviços de bandeira BR. A concorrência nesse setor é caracterizada pela busca da excelência em serviços de transporte, abastecimento, conveniências e outros serviços de suporte aos clientes externos. A BR possui, entre suas diversas gerências internas, a Engenharia, que é responsável em atender as demandas de seus clientes internos, representados principalmente pelas áreas comerciais. Esta pesquisa teve por objetivo avaliar os serviços prestados por uma das gerências regionais de Engenharia da BR, com base nas expectativas e percepções dos clientes internos, identificando o nível da qualidade percebida por eles e os atributos desta que interferiram em sua percepção. O pesquisador adotou como referência o Modelo Conceitual da Qualidade em Serviços, desenvolvido por Parasuramam, Zeithaml e Berry (1990), e a escala Servqual, fruto deste trabalho, para avaliar a qualidade percebida pelos clientes internos. A pesquisa também identificou a importância relativa das dimensões da qualidade de serviços para o cliente interno e a percepção da Engenharia sobre a opinião de seus clientes. Os resultados alcançados identificaram desafios e necessidades de melhoria para o setor de Engenharia (GEAC3), enquanto gerência que atua no atendimento às necessidades de seus clientes internos. A qualidade percebida pelo cliente interno da Engenharia não foi suficiente; verificou-se uma grande insatisfação com a dimensão confiabilidade, que é o coração para alcançar a excelência em serviços. The service sector has realized the importance of the quality of offered services and has been encouraging companies to pay more attention to the needs of their customers. Companies have also discovered the importance of good internal organization, and to engage and motivate their employees. This in turn improves efficiency and has a positive effect on client relations. Companies from different sectors have given their attention to internal quality and noted the correlation between internal quality and how it reflects on the level of quality of service to the consumer. This reinforces the importance of assessing the quality of service by each sector. Consequently, the current challenge for companies is to manage their internal service in order to guarantee the delivery of quality service and services among inter-sectorial relations. In this way, all sectors are aligned to provide quality services to their customers. BR Distribuidora is a company engaged in the distribution of petroleum products. The company’s clients identify their service stations as the ones flying the BR flag. Competition in this sector is characterized by the pursuit of excellence in transportation, supply, convenience stores, and other support services that cater to external clients. Among its various internal managerial structures is its engineering division. Engineering is responsible for meeting the demands of their internal customers; primarily those in commercial areas. The aim of this research was to evaluate the services provided by one of BR’s regional engineering groups. It focused on customers’ expectations, perceptions, and level of quality perceived by these customers. Any attributes that interfered with their perceptions were also taken into account. The reference adopted for this research was The Conceptual Model of Service Quality, developed by Parasuramam, Zeithaml and Berry (1990) and the SERVQUAL scale to evaluate the quality perceived by internal customers. This survey also identified the relative importance of dimensions of the quality of service for the internal customer and the perception of their customers’ opinions by members of the engineering groups. The results of this research revealed challenges and areas of the Engineering sector (GEAC3) that needed improvement. This is the level of management that is responsible for serving the internal customers’ needs. Engineering’s internal customers did not consider the quality of service satisfactory. Reliability, which is fundamental to service excellence, was the area of most concern.

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Purpose – Understanding student value in the Higher Education Sector has traditionally been conceptualised and measured using cognitive indicators, such as the National Student Survey (NSS). This thesis aims to build on the body of literature of service excellence, and alternative market sensing methods, such as the role of images and emotions in determining a deeper level of value for consumers. To apply a market sensing method to understand student value in an ever increasing complex environment, thus enabling a framework to develop differentiation in marketing strategy and communications for a University Business School. Design/methodology/approach – The focus for this inductive study was a Business School in which both undergraduate and post graduate students (n=24) were interviewed at depth, using a photo elicitation methodology based on Zaltman’s Metaphor Elicitation Technique, (ZMET) to explore their relationship with the business school and their real value. The process consisted of the candidate choosing a number of images, in-depth interview and then constructing emotion/value maps to elicit thoughts and feelings of value and relationship with the business school with respect to their stage of the journey. Findings – Results from the study found a number of emerging themes that were more significant at different stages of the transformational student journey. The study found that students resonated with similar images at respective stages of their programmes, and that a deeper level of understanding of the students emotional factors relating to their relationship with both the Business School and University, thus finding that an emotion based methodology was a better predictor of understanding student value, than cognitive measures of satisfaction such as National Student Survey (NSS). The findings from the ZMET based methodology also enabled better differentiation for market strategy, emotion based marketing communication and identified areas of operational process that could be improved through the internal marketing towards the internal customer. Originality/Value – The thesis establishes the need to use emotional depth methodologies when understanding the customer, to create differentiation in market strategy and customer driven market communications. This is the first time a Zaltman based methodology has been used in the UK Higher Education sector, specifically understanding student value. The thesis also contributes knowledge by extending the ZMET methodology with the development of a “Deep Value Mining” (DVM) depth gauge for understanding quality of data obtained through research methodologies understanding customer value. The research also created Emotional Value Maps (EVM) as a construct tool, creating a further extension to the ZMET methodology, to help researchers understand the association between value and emotion on a customer journey enabling the understanding of what’s really important to the participants of the research subject.

Market globalisation has led globalised companies and corporations to increase focus on synchronised and centralised business operations management to enjoy new and apparently boundless opportunities for growth and profit. The role of supplying companies as partners who provide globally consistent, coordinated and competitive support has been commonly recognised. However, supply base consolidation, increased bargaining power and imposed global competition have increasingly shifted power to the buyers. In order to reinforce balanced and sustainable business dyads, this thesis addresses global account management (GAM), one of the most discussed paradigms within recent sales and customer relationship management literature. Besides this fact, academics and practitioners still struggle to fully capture the dynamic and complex nature of GAM, not least due to the high degree of internal and external interdependence. Hence, the presented work followed an interdisciplinary aggregation of knowledge in the area of key account management (KAM), GAM and corporate culture. Further, best practice mixed-methods research contributed to a more comprehensive understanding of the interrelations and corresponding factors that determine suppliers’ success within global business relationships. Against this background, the case of a globally leading automotive supplier with long established and sophisticated GAM structures was analysed to gain exclusive primary research insights and add to the existing knowledge base. Thereby King’s (1998) template analysis technique found use to evaluate data from 21 semistructured interviews across operational, management and executive experts from global customer organisations (GCOs), supporting the development of a conceptual, novel and unique global account management performance model: the GPM. Moreover, to cope with the boundaries of purely qualitative research, structural equation modelling based on 199 data sets from an international online survey added to the refinement, statistical validation and generalisation of the findings. Through this process, the concept of structural, strategic and (corporate) cultural fit between global suppliers and customers have been revealed as key domains of the GPM, influencing relational and financial GAM performance outcomes. Subsequently, the contributions of the presented thesis are manifold: First, they extend the scope of current GAM performance models, as the GPM provides a more comprehensive view on structural and strategic aspects traditionally in the focus of GAM research. Second, they supplement prior account management research with empirical confirmation and complement earlier work in the field of corporate culture by illuminating the role of corporate culture for the first time in an international business context. Third, the study outcomes provide exclusive evidence for raising customer awareness of suppliers’ culture and cultural compatibility and explicitly outline cultural fit as a critical performance moderator of global account management. This study therefore offers new perspectives on performance determinants of GAM. Academics benefit from original theoretical and practical insights into the underlying mechanisms of global supplier-customer relationships and the GPM enables decision makers to build stronger relationships with a wider range of individual, multi-national and global customers.

Thesis (MTech (Quality))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2009 / The Catalytic Converter Industry (CCI), forms part of the component supply chain in the motor industry. The CCI is made up of a plethora of different suppliers, however for the purpose of this study, the focus will be on three of the five main suppliers, namely the ‘monolith substrate manufacturers’, the ‘coaters’, and the ‘canners’. The latter suppliers supply directly to the car manufacturers, also commonly referred to as the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM), and are known as first tier suppliers. Some OEM’s exercise control over the entire supply chain. The control is exercised through various ‘customer requirements’ and ‘customer specific requirements’. Customer specific requirements influence the Quality Management System (QMS) of a supplier. Most OEM’s require that strategic suppliers must be ISO/TS 16949:2002 certified. ISO/TS16949:2002 refers to an internationally recognised specification, specifically adopted for the motor industry, and dictates the certification requirements that an organisation’s QMS must adhere to. The specification also makes provision for additional requirements that could be specified by the customer. In this instance, the customer is the OEM, in terms of which additional requirements can be specified over and above the certification requirements. For organisations manufacturing generic components for the various motor manufacturers, customer specific requirements add to the complexity of activities related to quality management systems. Applying an array of methods to minimise the risk of sending defective products to the customer by building each customer’s specific requirements into the quality management system, can lead to confusion and make work difficult to execute. To mitigate the complexity, the quality management systems should be simplified to ensure that the quality management system is entrenched and adds value to the organisations’ activities.

Thesis (MTech (Tourism and Hospitality Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2010 / Within the hospitality industry, where revenues are driven by guest satisfaction, service is a key to success. Internal communication plays a role that should be examined on how its performance affects guest satisfaction within hospitality. The purpose of this study is to determine if internal communication plays a role in guest satisfaction within hospitality establishments in Cape Town. The study found that sources (such as newsletters, magazines, books, journals and peers) emphasised importance of internal communication in hospitality organizations. This internal communication serves as a nerve centre of an organization. If one does not have a functioning internal communication system, one may lose guests. In addition, advanced internal communication solution forms a backbone of a wide range of guest services, and increases the guests’ motivation to stay. Cape Town, where hospitality and tourism is increasingly competitive and diverse, human resource management becomes more problematic. There should be channels of internal communication, which transmit messages across the organization’s structure. The guest’s review demonstrated that growth of hospitality organisation will be determined by its ability to deliver superior guest value and importance of understanding guest needs and expectation. The reason for growing emphasis on guest satisfaction is that satisfied guests lead to a stronger competitive positioning, resulting ultimately in loyal guests, increased market profitability. Management teams in Cape Town and hotel industry sectors are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that their services are guest-focused and that continuous performance improvement is being delivered. Internal communication research generates principles and strategies, which improve managerial performance, as internal communication acumen is essential to render success in a wide range of activities. Language proficiency, as well as what a manager says, and what a manager does, contributes to individual effectiveness. Furthermore, words and actions should be consistent and aligned so that they have maximum impact. Selected research findings regarding verbal internal communication and non-verbal internal communication as well as electronically are presented to demonstrate how wise internal communication choices can further managerial goals. In addition to using words effectively, managers in all functional areas can also increase their effect and improve their performance by applying results of research that are focused on internal communication. A self-administered questionnaire was compiled to collect data, and the study was based on 10 selected hotels within Cape Town and a great value is given to Cape Town business centre where most of tourism businesses held. Information was supplied by senior and junior managers from 4-5 star hotels and the final report combined results from the question about the role that internal communication plays in guest satisfaction within hospitality establishments in Cape Town by using an SPSS Program, while recommendations are also based on these findings. At this period of twenty one century, the technology is challenging organisational internal communication, it take major part in marketing and marketing research. The management are busy straggling with internal communication which they will never know exactly how much they perform without guest concert. They run to the Internet to research what the guests comment about their satisfaction of service they received. The guest reviews about hotel service industry emphasized the quality of service received within the hotel organization even if most of the hotels in Cape Town were too expensive as guest review recommended.

Tradition dictates that marketing decision-makers remain accurately aligned with the dynamic and vacillating need structures of the target markets they serve. To comply with this caveat, a time-honoured and largely unchallenged philosophy of customer orientation has been applied. Theory further strongly contends that if such a business stance is vigilantly and diligently applied, any firm is bound to gain a competitive edge in the market place. A weakness in the above marketing mindset is the perception that when a spectrum of business elements are orchestrated and focussed on customers, target audience members will automatically be satisfied and return their patronage. This so-called marketing concept has undergone major reevaluations over the past decades, and it is now becoming ever more prevalent to witness varied permutations of new marketing architecture evolving in literature and practice. The unit of analysis selected for this research study is a niche restaurant that flouts many of the rudimentary traditional rules of marketing and iconoclastically succeeds despite all counter-logic. What such organisations have been practicing, albeit unknown to themselves, is a new way of business - a stance that has only recently been taken seriously by academics, writers and marketing professionals. These intuitive marketers are succeeding in niche businesses, despite going against the tide of the ingrained paradigm mindsets of conventional marketing stalwarts. Such niche business people have discovered is that there is more to satisfying consumer needs than simply honing in and understanding what the basic needs of designated audiences are. A growing band of new age marketers have been challenging orthodox marketing philosophy. Tofler, the visionary futurist, alluded to a host of unarticulated psychic consumer needs that would emerge as society drifted into a clinical and dispassionate ‘new’ millennium. In a world geared to instant gratification, fast-paced living and mechanistic social interactions, jaded consumers seek recognition as individuals (Tofler, 1970). They quest for inclusion rather than exclusion. They need a place to feel safe and find solace. Hence, it is now clear that simply attempting to satisfy the fundamental dimensions of consumers’ needs is no longer sufficient. Consumers rather seek the fulfilment of an holistic band of experience dimensions. Increasingly, phrases such as “winning consumer hearts and minds” are entering the vocabulary of marketers on a regular basis. The present vogue is to isolate and then include a range of intangible elements that are embodied in the process of satisfying customers needs. However, despite a growing awareness of the significance of mental-need satisfiers, in the specific domain of this investigation there is sparse evidence in literature of the mechanics of such novel thinking. The study unit is a second generation restaurant where many of the hollowed cornerstones of conventional marketing are inadvertently flouted. Different sets of rules of engagement seem to apply to their customers, who are also their most ardent advocates. A unique philosophy and business ethos also appears to prevail. In the study, the idiosyncratic characteristics which socially and competitively differentiate such a business were identified, explored and expiated. The constituents were then harmonised in an effort to establish what ‘it’ was that magnetically attracted patrons back despite the owner’s unintentional dismissive predisposition towards fundamental theory. As a result of this in-depth qualitative study, an holistic model encompassing all of the dimensions of a dining out experience at a niche restaurant have been proposed. Consequently the pillars upon which a sustained, enduring, loyal staunch customer base can be bed-rocked have been identified. Further, for the study unit, a typology of its diner corpse has been developed. The owners of the establishment under investigation have succeeded to provide an intimate family haven for their patrons. They, and their diners have collectively given strong, descriptive voice to the psychogenic need satisfying elements that have always existed, but to date have been unarticulated and unrecorded. This thesis brings the milieu of the iconoclast niche restaurant marketing practitioner to life.