Dissertation Proposal
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- Title of the proposed dissertation:
An investigation into how guest diversity affects customer service policy at the Eagle Rock Resort, Pennsylvania, USA.
- Research question:
To what extent does guest diversity affect customer service at the Eagle Rock Resort?
- Aims of the investigation:
- To identify the current guest diversity at the Eagle Rock Resort in terms of nationality; age; income.
- To critically evaluate whether the current customer service policy meets the needs of its existing diverse clientele and to establish whether existing policy has been formulated with this customer base in mind.
- To determine how far other factors, such as location, can satisfy the needs of the guests and influence the likelihood of them continuing to stay in the Eagle Rock Resort and balance these factors with reactions to customer service.
- To draw conclusions from the findings on how far the current customer service policy of the hotel meets the needs of its diverse clientele and make recommendations to the Eagle Rock Resort in order for it to improve its understanding of its clients diversity and needs and provide improved customer service in the future.
- Initial literature review and references
- Initial literature review – this should be a synthesis of what you have read, not a list of quotations.
Kotler and Armstrong (2010) state that “in order to satisfy people’s need and wants, products and services are exchanged in mutually rewarding transactions, generally but not exclusively, using the monetary system”. Therefore, in order to maximize profit and gain a competitive advantage, a resort such as Eagle Rock must provide an experience with the ‘wow’ factor, that its customers will remember and recommend to their friends, as Pine and Gilmore (1997) suggest. This should help to create demand, which Kotler (1999) suggests needs to be managed in terms of amount, time and the components of that demand.
An analysis leading to management of demand must include an understanding of the people and nationalities that want a particular service of product. Although there may be difficulties due to differences in culture and levels of technology in different countries, as Usunier and Lee (2009) point out, market research needs to be carried out in a variety of nations by hotels that have an international clientele, like the Eagle Rock Resort. This would provide an overview of different nationalities’ preferences. However, many might say that the individual’s preferences are of equal importance, and as Judge, Higgins, Thoresen, & Barrick (1999) suggest, “an individual’s personality can influence behavior and the type of products purchased”.
4.2 References – check that you have the correct dates of publication below
Kotler, P. (1999). Kotler on marketing. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (2010). Principles of marketing. Harlow, United Kingdom: Pearson Education.
Pine, J., & Gilmore, J. H. (1999). The experience economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Usunier, J. C., & Lee, J. (2009). Marketing across cultures. (5th ed). Harlow, United Kingdom: Financial Times/Prentice Hall.
Judge, T. A., Higgins, C. A., Thoresen, C. J., & Barrick, M. R. (1999). The big five personality traits, general mental ability, and career success across the life span. Personnel Psychology, 52(3)621-652. doi:10.1111/j.1744-6570.1999.tb00174.x
- Proposed plan of work:
| 2016 | 2017 | |||||||
| Tasks | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May |
| Literature review & Methodology section | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | ||
| Request customer and employee participants & get their agreement
| ● | ● | ||||||
| Supervisor session 1 | ● | |||||||
| Design and set up research tools and online questionnaires | ● | ● | ||||||
| 1 to 1 Skype interview with the manager | ● | |||||||
| Participants (customers) complete online questionnaires | ● | ● | ||||||
| Supervisor session 2 | ● | |||||||
| Data analysis: write up findings section | ● | ● | ||||||
| Finalize and review the methodology or appendices | ● | ● | ||||||
| Supervisor session 3 | ● | |||||||
| Final draft writing: including tutorials with EAP team | ● | ● | ||||||
- Outline Methodology
The research for this dissertation will be conducted from an Interpretivist approach. It will be inductive and qualitative questionnaires with interviews will be completed by participants from the collaborating organization, Eagle Rock Resort, and its customers.
6.1 Interpretivism
Interpretivism, also known as the interpretivist approach involves interested researchers interpreting elements of the study, thus interpretivism integrates human interest into a study. Accordingly, “interpretive researchers assume that access to reality (given or socially constructed) is only through social constructions such as language, consciousness, shared meanings, and instruments” (Monette, Sullivan & DeJong, 2005). This researcher will adopt an interpretivist approach as well as an inductive one because it is hoped that conclusions can be drawn from interpreting the findings and observing participant reactions rather that starting with a fixed hypothesis which it is then attempted to prove or disprove. There may be a variety of responses to the questionnaire, which will need to be interpreted for each specific nationality and context.
6.2 Qualitative questionnaires
Qualitative research methods are interpretative and aim to provide a depth of understanding. Qualitative methods are based on words, perceptions, feelings etc. rather than numbers and they include experiments, interviews, focus groups, and questionnaires with open-ended questions.
Monette et al (2005, p.428) credit qualitative methods with the acknowledgement of abstraction and generalisation, and categorize vision, images, forms and structures in various media, as well as spoken and printed word and recorded sound into qualitative data collection methods.
The main sources and procedures associated with the most popular qualitative methods are presented on the following table as proposed by Yamagata-Lynch (2010).
6.3 References
Bernard, H. R. (2011) Research methods in anthropology (5th ed.). Alta Mira Press.
Goddard, W. & Melville, S. (2004). Research methodology: An introduction.(2nd ed.). Blackwell Publishing.
Monette, D. R., Sullivan, T. J., DeJong, C. R. (2005). Applied social research: A rool for the human services. , (6th ed.).
Myers, M. D. (2008) Qualitative research in business & management. SAGE Publications.
Yamagata-Lynch, L.C. (2010) “Activity Systems Analysis Methods: Understanding Complex Learning Environments”. Springer Publications
