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.

M.Phil. / The issue of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) within organisations has gained importance over the last five years, and the trend is set to continue with new CRM software vendors entering the market regularly. For a business, it is cheaper to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones, therefore increased customer loyalty and interaction is important. The value that electronic CRM (eCRM) allows is that it increases customer interaction, by eliminating physical intervention and subsequent errors. The Internet has allowed this interaction to become more sophisticated, with service information instantly available to both the customer and the business. The number of channels for interaction has also increased. Specifically, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need low cost eCRM solutions that adapt to their business models and IT structures. The South African SME is limited by certain budgeting, resource and time constraints, and the owner of the SME cannot always devote time in search of a suitable eCRM solution for his business. The multitudes of vendors, offering various levels of functionality with increased focus on the SME sector, allow the SME many choices. However, companies selecting eCRM software vendors often lack an objective basis due to a lack of alternative information sources. Vendors making unsubstantiated and incorrect claims about the functionality of their software, further complicate the problem. From an SME point of view, the functionality and cost criteria of the eCRM solution is the most important. However, the minimum functionality criteria that vendors’ software packages must adhere to, in order to be considered an eCRM suite are: Customer Analysis; Marketing Automation; Sales Automation; Customer Service and Support; and Web-centricity. The research problem lies therein that South African SME owners or managers are unsure which functionalities are available, and which to deem important when considering eCRM solutions for their businesses. The objective of this study is to formulate a matrix of functionality that eCRM solutions must adhere to in order to be successfully implemented by the SME. This matrix is not prescriptive, but will guide SME management by identifying criteria and functionality that the solution needs to contain. The aim is to help SMEs select the right software, not to select the software for them.

M.Com. (Marketing Management) / Despite the extensive research undertaken in the subject area of services marketing, not much research has been conducted in the internal marketing area, specifically in the South African context. This study attempted to address this subject and focused on seven internal marketing mix elements (internal product, internal price, internal promotion, internal distribution, internal people, internal process and internal physical evidence) and their influence on the satisfaction of graduate development employees within retail banks in South Africa. Further to this, the link between employee satisfaction and affective commitment was explored due to its impact on employee productivity. The growth of the service sector worldwide has led to services being considered as one of the most important sectors in the world. The contribution of the South African service sector to GDP was 68.1% in 2012, where the financial services sector in South Africa has already overtaken the manufacturing sector as the largest contributor to GDP. The financial service sector contributed 22% in 2008. Given the homogeneity within the retail banking industry, there is very little differentiating the banks, and imitation of any innovation is inevitable. For this reason a market-driven strategy that enables retail banks to deliver superior quality is essential as service quality is the only real differentiator and key to building a competitive advantage. Given its employees who create the service experience, the employee as the internal customer becomes the organisation’s most valuable asset. For this reason, retail banks in South Africa have been placing an increased focus on recruiting at the graduate level leading to the establishment of Graduate Development Programmes (GDPs). These banking GDPs are specifically designed to help graduates succeed in complex environments and to build the talent pipeline by providing an in-depth training programme. However one of the biggest challenges faced by banks is the satisfaction and retention of their GDP employees. Banks generally experience high attrition rates amongst this group of employees mainly due to job dissatisfaction which impacts service quality provided to external customers, and which increases the organisation’s costs. An internal marketing programme aimed at employees could enhance employee satisfaction which in turn could enhance employee levels of affective commitment resulting in higher retention rates. Satisfied employees will go the extra mile to serve external customers and in this manner service quality can be improved. In order to investigate the influence of the internal marketing mix on employee satisfaction and test the relationship between employee satisfaction and affective commitment, an empirical investigation was conducted. The primary research objective of the study was to investigate the influence of the internal marketing mix on employee satisfaction from GDP employees’ perspective in order to enhance their satisfaction at retail banks with graduate development programmes in South Africa. In addition to this, the relationship between satisfaction and affective commitment was explored. A census approach was applied to the study using a person administered and an electronic survey method. All retail banks with graduate development programmes were invited to participate in the study of which three agreed to participate. Of the 360 graduates, 64 employees agreed to participate in the study. Regression analysis was used to test the relationships proposed in the study. The internal promotion and internal physical evidence scales were discarded due to poor construct validity, internal distribution emerged as a two-factor solution and was split into collaborative culture and organisational structure, and the internal price element was not regarded as statistically significant. From the study, the internal marketing mix elements that influenced employee satisfaction to come to fore included internal product, collaborative culture, organisational structure, internal people and internal process. The outcome of the regression analysis showed that employee satisfaction is influenced by internal product, collaborative culture, organisational structure, internal people and internal process. In addition to this, it was concluded that employee satisfaction influences affective commitment. Based on these outcomes, recommendations were made to retail banks for the implementation of a formal internal marketing mix through for example the implementation of the internal people element. Retail banks would be able to ensure that supervisors are easily accessible and providing constant ongoing feedback, a benefit which was identified as the most important contributor to GDP job satisfaction.

The social construction of client service impacts on the everyday lives of all community members. This qualitative study was conducted to establish how frontline employees construct their client service in the police environment. Front-line employees, such as police officers and civilians working for the police, were interviewed in seven focus group discussions, and afterwards during in-depth interviews on a one-on-one basis. Data was also collected by studying unsolicited organisational documents such as policies and internal correspondence. I contributed by writing an essay on my personal experiences while working for the police service. Grounded theory was applied to analyse data through open, axial and selective coding. Twenty-one themes emerged from the data during open coding. Data was put back together again to find alternative links in the data. Eight main themes that could be tied to "dissatisfaction in the organisation" emerged from the data by applying this axial-coding process. Finding the single story line that could drape all themes saw the emergence of the core category. This process of selective coding identified the core category as being "dissatisfaction with internal processes in the organisation". A literature review covered topics such as motivation, commitment, policy, organisational culture, resistance to change and willingness. This process facilitated the development of my version or interpretation of a Process Satisfaction Model (PSM) which has been explicated in terms of the conditional matrix. The "goodness" of the study was evaluated in terms of reflexivity, peer debriefing, audit trail, credibility and dependability, authenticity, transferability and member checking. The main contribution of the study is to the social science in terms of theory and methodology and organisational human resource and management practice. Practical value was added to mainly policy formulation, implementation and accountability and education, training and development (ETD) practice. The study was concluded by reflecting on the researcher’s experience of the study during the course of the research. / Prof. Willem J. Schurink Prof. Karel Stanz

Hotel rating refers to the process where the comfort and services of a hotel are assessed and classified, usually in five categories, using stars as symbols. Conventional hotel rating systems are generally operated by governments or independent parties. However, with the growth of social media and customer-review sites, guest review platforms became an important source of information. The main aim of this study is to establish whether guest feedback can determine hotel ratings more accurately than conventional methods and whether a social media platform such as TripAdvisor can provide the necessary data to do so. The customer-review website, TripAdvisor, has grown rapidly and made a strong impact on the tourism and hotel industry. This study identifies the nature of TripAdvisor, its reliability, how its ratings compare with conventional ratings, and what criteria are used in guest reviews on TripAdvisor when assessing the quality of a hotel. These findings were triangulated with findings from the conventional rating systems of the 11 destinations that were sampled for this study to identify the value of TripAdvisor. Two samples were taken from TripAdvisor of 110 and 33 hotels, respectively. From the latter, ten guest reviews were gathered and analysed per hotel, resulting in a total of 330 reviews that were analysed. The study’s findings indicate that TripAdvisor is the largest guest feedback platform for hotels and its data can be considered to be reliable. The TripAdvisor ratings were not connected to the conventional ratings of the sampled hotels. The criteria used in TripAdvisor reviews focused more on service delivery than on the objective tangible elements used in most hotel rating systems. The rich context found in most guest reviews makes the information presented on TripAdvisor valuable. There is no evidence that conventionalrating system controls are linked to the comments found in TripAdvisor reviews. The results facilitated the identification of the delight and frustration factors in services marketing for the hotel industry. A new theory to include guest feedback in hotel ratings is developed and proposed. The study further presents two future scenarios, the most likely one of which predicts the demise of conventional rating systems as a result of the success of guest feedback platforms such as TripAdvisor.

In today’s competitive arena, organisations need strategically to shift their focus from primarily concentrating on new customer acquisitions and rather to realise the importance of improving customer defections, thus looking at strategically retaining the existing customer base. Customer retention to all intents and purposes reflects the core of any service offering organisation and drives the competitiveness and viability of the business. Customer retention is a concern for all sector organisations including the medical aid schemes industry. It has been proven that retaining customers is less costly than attracting new ones and through a satisfied customer a business can elevate its competitiveness in the market. The significance of the study hinges on the importance of each business having comprehensive knowledge of why customers remain loyal patrons or why they choose to defect. It is important to note that the financial resources and time the business expends on improving service to the customer become futile if not matched by the high performance of the internal business units’ strategies. Having an understanding of customer movement will assist the organisation in properly addressing such issues and employing strategic processes that will enable the business to improve its retention strategies and curb defections. The primary objective of the current study was to investigate the impact internal service quality and customer relationship management have on customer retention. The study employed the SERVQUAL model as a measuring tool in establishing the relationship. The study investigated how customer retention (the dependent variable) is influenced by the different elements of internal service quality, namely assurance, empathy, service reliability, responsiveness, tangibles and elationship management, which represented the independent variables. The sample comprised eighty-one (81) out of a possible 130 AA Medical Scheme participants through the organisation’s four national offices. The empirical results showed that of all the variables relationship management, responsiveness and the tangibles have a positive impact on customer retention in medical aid schemes.

Service delivery is critical to the customer’s perception of value and is core to the success of an organisation. Excellent customer service incorporates the critical aspects of: expedient service delivery; open and honest communication; individual, personalised service; engendering customer loyalty; problem-solving; under-promising and over-delivering; meeting and exceeding expectations; efficient use of infrastructure, systems and procedures to facilitate efficient operations and, in particular, effective use of knowledge management with a focus on customer lifecycle care (Kingstone, 2004, 2005; Zarbock, 2006). Best-practice organisations now use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programmes that are customer-centric based in order to ensure excellent customer service delivery. Recently, organisations such as Tesco and Nordstrom have adopted customer-centric CRM successfully, providing concrete proof that this CRM model is sustainable and that it produces the highly lucrative win-win benefits which organisations seek (Beasty, 2005; Hallberg, 2001:19; Gratehouse, 2002; Rowe, 2002). 5 Glossary • Continuous improvement: an approach to improving performance which assumes more and smaller incremental improvement steps (Pycraft, Singh, Phihlela, Slack, Chambers, Harland, Harrison, & Johnston, 2002); • Connectivity: the ability to communicate with another system or piece of hardware or software, or with an internet site (Encarta World English Dictionary); • Customer-centric: the use of every touch-point to stimulate interest, close business, satisfy a need or demonstrate commitment to the customer relationship (Gianforte, 2005); • Customer expectations: the customer's perception of the quality of service (LeBoeuf, 1991) and value (Thompson, 2004); • Customer Experience Management: managing customer interactions to build brand equity and long-term profitability (Thompson, 2006a); • Customer lifecycle care: to ensure that every touch-point fulfils its value-potential, regardless of whether the interaction happens in marketing, sales or customer service (Gianforte, 2005); • Customer loyalty: customer’s attitudes and behaviour relating to their perception of value at every touch-point where they feel welcome, important and valued (Thompson, 2004); • Customer Relationship.

Waiting for service is common in many purchase situations. As such, it is important to understand how consumers react to waiting. Only then can appropriate actions be taken to reduce any aversive aspects of waiting and alleviate any negative consequences that may result from the wait. This research focused on how consumers react to waiting for service. Specifically, three reactions were examined: (1) consumers' perceptions of wait aversiveness, and the circumstances under which consumers found waiting aversive or unpleasant, (2) consumers' perceptions of felt duration, and the circumstances under which waits were felt to be longer than they actually were, and (3) the resulting service evaluations, in particular, the extent to which, and the circumstances under which waits impacted on consumers' evaluations of: (a) punctuality of service, (b) overall service quality and (c) other service attributes. A model of a consumer's wait experience was proposed and used as a framework to examine these three issues. A quasi-experimental setting involving delays in passenger airline travel was chosen for the empirical study. Delayed passengers were questioned regarding their perceptions of wait aversiveness and duration. In addition, their pre-boarding feelings and responses on flight service evaluations were compared to those of nondelayed passengers. The results of the empirical test suggest that perceptions of wait aversiveness were associated with: perceived airline control over the wait, higher perceived consequences of waiting, such as inconvenience and financial costs, and higher levels of affective costs such as annoyance, anger, frustration, uncertainty, boredom, uneasiness and helplessness. Many of these costs increased as the actual wait duration and time pressures increased, and as the degree to which time was "filled" decreased. Longer felt duration was associated with longer actual durations and increased wait aversivenness. The results also suggest that waiting did affect consumers' overall evaluations of service, their evaluations of specific service attributes and the relative importance of these attributes in predicting the overall evaluation. Implications for management and directions for further research were then discussed. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

M.Com. / Please refer to full text to view abstract