Repeat Business Research Articles

Aqua Park Facilities as an Attraction Tool to Family Market: A Case Study on Hurghada's Hotel Properties – Red Sea, Egypt

Purpose– hotel business is facing an increasing competition in the hospitality market, especially where this competition is not taking place over the local market, but it is evolving all over the competitor destinations. That is why they are required to develop unique recreational facilities that would appeal to families and leisure travelers. Recently, Aqua Parks are vastly becoming one of the most popular recreational facilities in this business. It is wonderful fun-filled places, where families can spend their vacations splashing or lounging in carefree enjoyment, meanwhile, ensuring the required safety for them and for their children. Water has an ability to change the way people experience places through the enjoyment, peaceful and refreshing it brings. This study examines how Aqua Park facilities can be considered as an attraction tool to families and how it can lead to customers’ satisfaction and influence hotels with water park customers’ repeat business. It will also highlight how these properties can have a competitive edge that can attract families with children, and it might be used to enrich their experience through tailoring up a variety of programs that can suit this growing market needs and expectations. Design/methodology/approach– the data were collected via a questionnaire addressed to regular customers in these Hotel properties with aqua park facilities in the Hurghada - Red Sea region. Research limitations/implications – the research focused on a sample of hotel properties with aqua park facilities in the Hurghada - Red Sea, Egypt.

Ranking the Importance of Hotel Selection Attributes for Senior Tourists in Egyptian Resorts: A Comparison among Three Markets

Although there have been a number of researches investigating the needs of senior tourists, the existing tourism and hospitality literature is still limited in some area. In fact, the issue whether the senior tourists’ importance ratings of hotel attributes are similar across the different nationalities is an underexplored topic. Therefore, the current study aims to identify the importance of hotel attributes to Egyptian, British, and Russian senior tourists when selecting a hotel. Specifically, the current study presents the findings of a quantitative study of 108 Egyptian, 82 British, and 96 Russian senior tourists in terms of hotel selection attributes in three 5-star international resort hotels in Sharm El-Sheikh. The study employed the means and the factor analysis to rank the importance of 38-hotel attributes across the three nationalities. The variance analysis was also used to determine whether significant differences existed among the three sets of respondents in relation to the hotel selection attributes. The present study intends to contribute to the literature on senior tourist market by underlying the importance of hotel attributes to the aforementioned three market segments, particularly in a destination such as Egypt. Furthermore, acknowledging the importance of hotel selection attributes to senior tourists could potentially help hotels meet the needs of such a lucrative market in a way that satisfies their needs and increase repeat business.

Satisfaction, value and intention to return in hotels

PurposeThis research investigates employee and guest satisfaction, guests’ perceptions of value and their intention to return. Considered are hotel workers’ job satisfaction, how job satisfaction impacts guests’ satisfaction with the service experience and with the physical attributes of the hotel and how these variables affect perceived value and intention to return.Design/methodology/approachStructural equation modeling is used to analyze data from a large global hotel chain.FindingsGuest satisfaction with service and the physical attributes of the hotel differentially impact guest outcomes of intention to return and perceptions of value. Key findings are guest satisfaction with the physical attributes of a hotel is significantly more strongly linked to guests’ intention to return than is satisfaction with service received. Staff job satisfaction is significantly linked to guests being more satisfied with the service experience and their return intentions. Of all the factors directly contributing to guests’ return intentions, guest satisfaction with the physical attributes of the hotel was largest in impact. In contrast guest satisfaction with service is linked to guests’ perceptions of value, whereas satisfaction with the physical aspects is not significant. Guests’ perceptions of value do not impact intention to return.Research limitations/implicationsThe research was conducted within one global hotel chain, which due to its cross-sectional nature may possibly be a limitation. However, its single organizational nature does not diminish the importance of the findings.Practical implicationsHotel managers need to consider the importance of the physical attributes of properties in what has been largely a services-dominated debate. What guests value may not lead to repeat business.Originality/valueProviding excellent customer service may not be the main motivation for return business. Also, holistic measures of guest satisfaction may not accurately measure what guests value. Perceived value is not a significant predictor of intention to return.

Foreign Exchange Exposure Management Practices by Zimbabwe's Tourism and Hospitality Companies: A Case for the Depreciation of Rand (2014-2016)

One of the key challenges for tourism and hospitality in the Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) region is currency behaviours and Exchange rate regime choices. When a company engages in international business foreign currency risk management becomes a crucial part of doing business and the tourism industry of Zimbabwe was not spared on this issue. The objective of this research was to assess the foreign exchange (forex) Exposure Management Practices by Zimbabwe's tourism and hospitality companies. The study was done through a survey on 28 operators in Zimbabwe. A qualitative research approach was adopted in analysis of the data It was found out that the most commonly used ways of reducing the exposure by Zimbabwe's tourism companies were the amicable and mixed-method approaches, of receiving the currency and use it in the country of origin to import materials, matching receipts and payments in foreign currency, risk shifting though it come with low volumes and compromised repeat business. The study recommended that companies and the entire economy must consider invoicing products and services in Rands and even use the rand as a reporting currency. If for example tourism and hospitality players would price regional tourists especially from South Africa and other Rand countries, ignoring the impact of rand depreciation, it would mean that Zimbabwe's tourism and hospitality providers will be in direct competition with the former's own local service providers based on rand priced packages.

Qualitative Information Analysis on Managing Quality Service: Issues and Challenges

Quality and service management is a process intended to create and maintain importance to any service organizations strategy and competitive positioning where the similarities and differences of services offered are valued. The literature on quality service management has mostly emphasized on perceived service quality, customers expectation, judgment of attitude relating to the superiority of the service, measures of quality attributes associated with service delivery, to enable the survival and the success of the business. The current study examines the potential barriers to quality service delivery and suggests strategies to enhance quality and inclusiveness. It is based on a survey in ten hotels in Bangalore and the managers and executives were interviewed from these selected hotels. The study concludes that simple and successfully managing services to enhance quality can lead to more committed, better satisfied, better performing employees and potentially better financial performance and repeat business for an organization.

Growth and Customer Loyalty: Evidence from the App Economy

The burgeoning app economy increasingly drives growth in today's service sector. We study a dataset encompassing apps' daily, weekly, and monthly usership time series and show how its nested-echelon structure allows researchers to reliably infer how and when an app's customers adopt, use, and leave its services. Thereby gaining novel visibility into these services' customer flows, we study how firms should prioritize the acquisition of customers and market share via viral effects against cultivating customer loyalty. Contrary to common wisdom in the app economy, our findings reinforce the central role and effects of customer loyalty, as theorized by the Service Profit Chain. While loyalty bolsters customers' retention and repeat business (i.e., usage), a natural experiment that suppressed viral customer acquisition across the Facebook platform demonstrates the power of a more subtle benefit: improved customer loyalty actually amplifies the rate of word-of-mouth acquisition. A potent experience curve that rewards firms' experience with loyal customers dismantles a classic trade-off between customer loyalty and market share in services.

Empowering your team to encourage them to deliver better customer service

By providing outstanding customer service, clinic staff can create a memorable experience for their clients and increase the likelihood of securing repeat business. Giving employees the opportunity to use their initiative and respond to enquiries can motivate them to do a better job, and feel satisfied with their work. Jason Ratcliffe uses some case studies to demonstrate this strategy in practice

Authenticity and Commodification of Cultural Events for the Maldivian Tourism Industry

Authentication and commodification of cultural events for the tourists has been practiced for a long time. These practices have had both positive and negative effects on the host community and its cultural heritage. Tourism deals with experiences sold to tourists which has had to be authentic. Therefore, this paper aims to look at the authenticity and commodification of cultural events presented for the benefit of tourists throughout the resorts in the Maldives and its implications on authenticity of cultural products offered to the tourists. Authenticity played a wide role in tourist experiences and repeat business for the destination. Commodification on the other hand is a byproduct of making the events authentic in order for it to be presented to the tourists since these events cannot be presented in its original form or length. Hence, the events are ‘staged' for the benefit of the tourists because cross cultural encounters drive authenticity of the tourism experience and create more business to the destination.

Improving healthcare practice behaviors: an exploratory study identifying effective and ineffective behaviors in healthcare.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of exploratory research designed to develop an awareness of healthcare behaviors, with a view toward improving the customer satisfaction with healthcare services. It examines the relationship between healthcare providers and their consumers/patients/clients. The study uses a critical incident methodology, with both effective and ineffective behavioral specimens examined across different provider groups. The effects of these different behaviors on what Berry (1999) identified as the common core values of service organizations are examined, as those values are required to build a lasting service relationship. Also examined are categories of healthcare practice based on the National Quality Strategy priorities. The most obvious is the retrospective nature of the method used. How accurate are patient or consumer memories? Are they capable of making valid judgments of healthcare experiences (Berry and Bendapudi, 2003)? While an obvious limitation, such recollections are clearly important as they may be paramount in following the healthcare practitioners' instructions, loyalty for repeat business, making recommendations to others and the like. Further, studies have shown retrospective reports to be accurate and useful (Miller et al., 1997). With this information, healthcare educators should be in a better position to improve the training offered in their programs and practitioners to better serve their customers. The findings would indicate that the human values of excellence, innovation, joy, respect and integrity play a significant role in building a strong service relationship between consumer and healthcare provider. Berry (1999) has argued that the overriding importance in building a lasting service business is human values. This exploratory study has shown how critical incident analysis can be used to determine both effective and ineffective practices of different medical providers. It also provides guidelines as to what are effective and ineffective behaviors in healthcare.

Master your clinic marketing: telling patients the why before the what

Explaining why you provide a service, rather than what it is, can enable you to establish a much deeper connection with your prospects. Building positive relationships with patients can result in increased loyalty to your clinic and all-important repeat business. Jason Ratcliffe discusses the rationale for this method of marketing, and examines a few examples from popular culture to show its value

Conceptualization of Immersive Brand Experience (IBX) Measurement Scale of Emotion

Abstract The airlines industry is an important sub-sector in transportation and service industry. Since repeat business is critical to sustaining airline organizations, many have invested in various marketing strategies to entice customer loyalty. Customers’ travel experience may influence their commitment toward airline brand. Brand experience primarily emotional experience creates value in consumer buying behavior. Studies on Brand Experience (BE) in recent years have unravelled some gaps that exist in customer loyalty literature. For example, loyal customers are deeply involved and preoccupied with the brand. Their physical and emotional state of mind is engaged with the brand at every touch points along their consumption journey. Hence, brand experience contributes to business sustainability and growth. Therefore, in formulating branding strategy, marketers must focus on efforts to create an immersive brand experience (IBX) that drives brand attachment and engagement. Despite its importance, there is still limited empirical evidence to address this emerging concept. It could be speculated that lack of established reliable and valid scale to conceptualize and operationalize BE is one of the main contributing factors. Against this backdrop, this study attempts to develop a theory-based IBX conceptual framework by using established PAD Theory. Rigorous methodologies will be used to identify the factorial structure of IBX and subsequently the scale's psychometric properties of dimensionality, validity, and reliability will be determined by confirmatory factor analysis. The proposed new dimension, spirituality (S) will be integrated with PAD Theory, which then will be known as PADS. Finally to develop a theoretical framework, the nomological validation will be conducted between IBX construct and brand resonance. A mixed research methodology that includes in-depth interviews, focus group discussion, quasi-experiment, and consumer survey will be employed to achieve the research goals. The research findings shall contribute a new scale (IBX) to the marketing literature that could be utilized to formulate a winning branding strategy for airline brands.

Changing the look, feel and atmosphere of your clinic to alter clients' perspectives

How you treat clients from the moment they step through the door will likely influence their relationship with your clinic now and in the future, says Victoria Smith. Ensuring all staff are trained in customer service skills and client hospitality will stand you in good stead for repeat business. This article highlights the importance of making a good impression and creating a welcoming atmosphere

The impact of knowledge on attitudes of emergency department staff towards patients with substance related presentations: a quantitative systematic review protocol.

REVIEW QUESTION/OBJECTIVE The overall objective of this systematic review is to synthesize the available evidence on the relationship between new knowledge (gained through educational interventions about substance use/abuse) and health care providers’ attitudes (measured by well validated instruments such as the Drug and Drug Problems Perceptions Questionnaire, the Short Alcohol and Alcohol Problems Perception Questionnaire, etc.) towards patients with substance-related presentations to emergency departments. The specific review question is: Among emergency department staff, does the acquisition of knowledge (on educational interventions about substance use) impact attitudes in relation to their therapeutic role towards patients with substance-related presentations? INCLUSION CRITERIA Types of participants This review will consider studies that include health care providers (nurses, physicians, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health care professionals), working in urban and rural emergency departments (emergency rooms, accident and emergency rooms) of healthcare facilities worldwide, and providing care to adult patients who indicate some level of substance use. Substance-related presentation phenomena will include hazardous alcohol use, alcohol misuse, use of legal and restricted pharmacological agents, and illicit drug use. Studies that address patient presentations to emergency departments for traumatic injury, motor vehicle crashes, traumatic presentations secondary to violence, and drug and alcohol overdoses or physical health conditions related to substance usage (such as heart and liver failure, pancreatitis and gastric problems) will be included. Types of intervention(s) Quantitative papers examining the impact of educational interventions about substance use/abuse on health care providers’ attitudes towards substance using patients will be included. TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS

Highlighting the benefits of tourism humour: The views of tourists

The study considered tourists' perspectives about humour. It explored both the perceived benefits of humour for the tourists themselves and advantages for the businesses they visit. The work offers empirical data embellishing existing conceptual approaches. The data were collected across five tourism settings in Australia where humour was a well-recognised component of the experience. Both a questionnaire-based survey and focus group discussions were employed to access key information. The study identified a suite of reasons as to why humour should be encouraged during tourism experiences. The findings highlighted the role humour plays for tourists in connecting with others and in coping with difficult and stressful travel situations. Additionally, the research outlined key ways humour adds value for tourism businesses, notably in terms of providing truly memorable experiences. Further benefits of using humour for the businesses lie in distinctiveness, engagement with customers and enhancing the likelihood of repeat business.

The influence of homestay facilities on tourist satisfaction in the Lake Victoria Kenya Tourism Circuit

Kenya is one of the leading tourist destinations in Africa, which creates the need to foster closer linkages between the tourists and the local community members. As such, many homestay facilities have come up in the recent past to cater for the accommodation needs of the tourists. Yet information on the tourists’ satisfaction levels regarding the homestay facilities in Kenya currently remains largely unknown. The study therefore determined the influence of facilities and services offered by homestays on tourist satisfaction within the Lake Victoria area of the western tourist circuit. The study was conducted through survey design comprising a randomly selected sample of 20 homestay facilities (with a total of 42 respondents) that were identified through the Kenya Community-Based Tourism Network database (KECOBAT). The findings indicated that 71% were not satisfied with the homestays. This was largely attributed to deficient tangible factors of service quality of which the study also revealed were a better predictor of tourist satisfaction in homestays than intangible factors. Therefore it may be prudent for the homestay owners to ensure that they have adequate facilities (not necessarily high quality but should be functional) to ensure repeat business especially through recommendations.

Organizational strategies for filling the customer can-do/must-do gap

Service leaders have learned that it is not enough to attract customers who are ready and willing to experience what their organizations have to offer; they must also attract customers who are able to perform important roles in co-producing a successful service experience. This recognition has led to increasing interest regarding how organizations should manage these quasi-employees to ensure everything that must be done actually is done. Leading service organizations embrace this responsibility and have developed strategies to identify and accommodate variations in their targeted customers’ capabilities. They know that client satisfaction depends upon the organization making up for deficiencies between what the customer must do to have a great service experience and what the customer actually can do. Surprisingly, there has been little systematic investigation into how organizations create and execute strategies to ensure that these deficiency gaps are filled. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that organizations that have developed systems and procedures to fill these gaps are likelier to satisfy their customers and achieve higher levels of repeat business than firms that have not. This article offers strategies for organizations that commit to bridging the customer can-do/must-do gap and thereby ensuring their customers have a successful service experience.

Price fairness perceptions and hotel customers’ behavioral intentions

This study examines the causal relationship between consumers’ price fairness perceptions and behavioral intentions in the context of online hotel bookings. Using a cross-sectional sample of 506 customers of a budget hotel chain in the United Kingdom, structural equation modeling (using the partial least squares approach), multigroup t-test, and permutation tests were conducted to (1) validate the structural model where price fairness is the exogenous variable and behavioral intention is the endogenous variable and (2) examine whether the causal model is invariant (equivalent) across customers from different market segments—including, first-time and repeat customers, leisure, and business travelers. Results from the analysis supported a significant, direct relationship between customers’ perceptions of price fairness and behavioral intentions. The results of the multigroup test and permutation tests further indicated that first-time leisure customers are more sensitive to dynamic pricing practices and tend to perceive these practices as unfair. Thus, the budget hotel chain may want to be very cautious with new customers who are not familiar with this pricing practice.

Top VC IPO underpricing

Before the IPO bubble burst, the first day return for IPOs backed by top VC firms was double that of non-top VC IPOs. Top VC IPOs were also twice as likely to receive all-star analyst coverage and suffered twice as large negative returns upon lockup expiration. We argue that this was not a coincidence. Underwriters benefited from underpricing vis-à-vis allocation strategies whereas VCs gain from information momentum which allows them to cash-out at higher prices at lockup expiration. All-stars are a scarce resource underwriters allocate to their best clients (top VCs) who bring them repeat business. Post-bubble, regulatory shocks restricted preferential IPO allocations and reduced the value of all-star coverage. Consequently, these relations disappeared indicating that regulatory changes likely had the desired effect.

Service leadership for adaptive selling and effective customer service teams

Companies are increasingly relying on customer service teams to deliver quality service critical for repeat business and profitability. But these teams need leadership to be effective. This study proposes that service leaders promote quality customer service by encouraging teams to develop adaptive selling capabilities. Data were collected from 113 customer service team leaders and 285 team members from a sample of consumer electronics retailing firms in Beijing, China. Data support the reasoning that by espousing service values, listening to customers, and encouraging improvements, service leaders help their teams become capable adaptive sellers. Results further suggest the contribution of team adaptive selling on customer team task performance, orientation to customers, and ability to recover from shortcomings in service. Findings extend recent research that leaders can have substantial impact by strengthening teamwork among followers by finding that service leaders develop customer service teams to be effective adaptive sellers.

An Evaluation of Customer Service and the Impact of Efficiency on Namibia's Logistical Sector : A Study Involving Selected Courier Companies

Customers are important stakeholders in organisations and their satisfaction should be a priority to any company and its management. Customer service and satisfaction have been subjects of great interest to organisations and researchers alike. In recent years, organisations have been compelled to render more services in addition to the offers they provide. 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 expectation and satisfaction. The purpose of this study was to determine the level of Customer Service amongst a selected number of courier companies in Windhoek, Namibia. Simple random sampling was used to select customers from five selected courier companies. Quantitative data were gathered using a self-administered satisfaction level and expectation questionnaire. Purposively sampled managers from the same companies provided qualitative data through interviews involving service providers’ perspectives of customer service. The study found that customer service has a myriad of meanings to customers. However, these are not always in congruence with those of service providers’ results, yet it is a source of distinctive operational efficiency. Loyalty and repeat business can be enhanced through the relationship between service providers and customers. The findings imply that customer service and good relationships with service providers are two of the most important factors to customers and good levels of customer service are critical to the majority of the customers. Also, to provide total satisfaction to customers, the service sectors need to improve upon the factors that were given as reasons for satisfaction. This study contributes to existing theories by confirming or adding value to the relationships that are involved in customer satisfaction and service quality. It provides results that could be useful to managers in business organisations for strategic planning.