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People today are looking for prevention rather than just cure. In 1994, 32% of New Zealanders took some form of supplement and in the latest study in 1997 this figure has increased to 74%. Each different product market consists of buyers, and buyers are all different in one way or another. They may differ in their wants, resources, locations, buying attitudes and buying practices. Because buyers have unique needs and wants, each buyer is potentially a separate market.
Consumer involvement is the perceived personal importance and interest consumers attach to the acquisition, consumption, and disposition of a good, service, or an idea. As their involvement increases, consumers have a greater motivation to attend to, comprehend, and elaborate on information pertaining to the purchase. (Mowen & Minor, 1998, p.64). In the case of low involvement, consumer views a purchase as unimportant and regards the outcome of his or her decision as inconsequential. Because the purchase carries a minimal degree of personal relevance or identification, the individual feels there is little or nothing to be gained from attending to the details of a purchase. (Hanna & Wozniak, 2001, p.290). High involvement purchases are those that are important to the consumer either from a financial, social, or psychological point of views. The purchase is characterized by personal relevance and identification with the outcome. (Hanna & Wozniak, 2001, p.291). An individual anticipates a potentially significant gain from expending time and effort in comparison-shopping before buying. For example, a girl purchasing an expensive ball dress has a high degree of personal identification. Therefore, a high level of felt involvement can increase an individual’s willingness to search for, process, and transmit information about a purchase.
The most important factors influencing a consumer’s involvement level are their perceived risks. The purchase of any product involves a certain amount of risk, which may include:
- Product Failure – risk that the product will not perform as expected.
- Financial – risk that the outcome will harm the consumer financially.
- Operational – risk that consists of alternative means of performing the operation or meeting the need.
- Social – risk friends or acquaintances will deride the purchase.
- Psychological – risk that the product will lower the consumer’s self-image.
- Personal – risk that the product will physically harm the buyer.
In a high degree of perceived risk, decisions in this case may require significant financial commitments, involve social or psychological implications. In the case of low degree of perceived risk, decisions in this case may require small or no financial commitments that involve social or psychological implications. Consumers may already established criteria for evaluating products, services, or brands within the choice category.
In high involvement situations consumers are usually more aroused and more attentive, which expands their short-term memory capacity to its maximal extent. In low involvement conditions, the arousal level is apt to be low, so consumers focus relatively little memory capacity on the stimulus. (Mowen & Minor, 1998, p.101). As involvement levels increases, consumers may allocate more capacity to a stimulus.
Evaluative criteria are the various features a consumer looks for in response to a particular problem. The number of evaluative criteria used by consumers depends on the product, the consumer and the situation. ((Neal, Quester & Hawkins, 2000, p.5.3-5.4 & p.5.22) Formal Clothing In the process of evaluation, a student will evaluate the characteristics of various formal clothing and choose the one that is most likely to fulfil her or her needs. The evaluative criteria of the students include tangible cost, social and psychological measures. The importance of particular evaluative criteria differs from consumer to consumer. The decision to purchase formal clothing is base on the following evaluative criteria:
- Price.
- Quality.
- Brand.
- Style.
- Store.
The evaluative criteria regarding the purchase of formal clothing are complex due to the level of perceived risk involved with such a high involvement purchase. Typically, high involvement planned purchases (such as formal clothing) follow the more complex compensatory decision rules. A compensatory model involves students evaluating each formal wear they view across all need criteria. In this instance, one formal wear may compensate for weaknesses in one criterion.
However, often consumers will go through different stages of rules, that is, they will utilize a range of rules when evaluating alternatives with different attributes being evaluated by different rules at each stage. There are certain criteria regarding the purchase of formal clothing that the students is not willing to accept at a minimum level. Style and price are two attributes that was found from the interviews. Students are not prepared to lower their expectations; therefore the compensatory model does not always apply in this situation. These two criteria are more non-compensatory rules. Initially a disjunctive approach was adopted by respondents, where they would evaluate all formal clothing that meet their requirements concerning style. Then they would move onto an elimination-by-aspects approach. This involved them choosing formal clothing that rated highest on their next most important criteria (price), and then continuing through the other attributes (brand, quality) until only one formal wear remained. In summary, the formal clothing purchase decision involves both compensatory and non-compensatory models depending on the stages of the evaluation.
There are any numbers of factors that affect a consumer’s decision making. Travel professionals not only have to appeal to the ego of the consumer with a Hotel’s service that makes them feel important, they must also deal with outside influencers – like friends, family, colleagues, and others. Understanding consumer behavior is one of the top jobs for all marketers. To sell a service, one must understand their consumer and what motivates them.
There are a number of strategies that can be employed to obtain loyalty from consumers. As all business people know, it is cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new one. However, loyalty in today’s competitive environment is hard to come by. By studying psychological factors that play into a consumer’s loyalty and commitment to a hotel and its service, programs to garner that loyalty have a better chance of succeeding. A traveler will earn points or rewards by staying at the Grande Bretagne Hotel. Rewarding repeat travelers with discounts or a points system whereby the traveler can earn points toward extra amenities or prizes like travel books, digital cameras, etc. can be as effective as expensive mailings or other marketing campaigns designed to retain Hotel’s customers.
Advertisers often show how the benefits of their products aid consumers as they perform certain roles. Typically the underlying message of this promotional approach is to suggest that using the advertiser’s product will help raise one’s status in the eyes of others while using a competitor’s product may have a negative effect on status.
Motivation relates to human’s desire to achieve a certain outcome. Many internal factors we have already discussed can affect a customer’s desire to achieve a certain outcome but there are others. For instance, when it comes to making purchase decisions customers’ motivation could be affected by such issues as financial position, time constraints, overall value, and perceived risk.
Motivation is also closely tied to the concept of Involvement, which relates to how much effort the consumer will exert in making a decision. Highly motivated consumers will want to get mentally and physically involved in the purchase process. Not all services have a high percentage of highly involved customers but marketers who market services that may lead to high level of consumer involvement should prepare options that will be attractive to this group. For instance, marketers should make it easy for consumers to learn about hotel’s services (e.g., information on website, free video preview).
Marketing plan
The marketing plan accurately describes the market, customers, service and the competition. Marketing plan plays an important role in the hospitality industry. It is essential for the development, growth and sustenance of a business.
For the first few years the Grande Bretagne Hotel will need to be aggressive in attracting new guests. The marketing strategy is subject to change upon guest feedback and surveys.
The hotel currently has the following business mix.
| Market Segment | Percentage |
| Rack Walk-in | 6 |
| Conferences/meetings | 11 |
| Corporate | 36 |
| Leisure | 28 |
| Airline Crew | 8 |
| Events | 11 |
Target Markets - Consumer:
- New visitors traveling to the area;
- Middle- and upper-income bracket;
- Returning visitors to the area;
- Businesses needing to hold small overnight planning and strategy sessions;
- Area wedding parties.
The Grande Bretagne Hotel will aim to attract business guests and their partners needing to hold planning or strategy sessions away from the office in order to even out revenues throughout the week.
The Grande Bretagne Hotel will maintain a front office staff member throughout the night so guests are able to get answers to any question or service when they need it. This flexibility is especially attractive to the business traveler. Clients will be able to contact the Grande Bretagne Hotel by telephone, fax, and e-mail.
By giving careful consideration to customer responsiveness, The Grande Bretagne Hotel’s goal will be to meet and exceed every service expectation of its hotel and lounge services. Its guests can expect quality service and a total quality management (TQM) philosophy throughout all levels of the staff.
Task 2 – Questionnaire Design and Fieldforce Instructions
A valid questionnaire measures what it claims to measure. In reality, many fail to do this. For example, a self completion questionnaire that seeks to measure people's food intake may be invalid because it measures what they say they have eaten, not what they have actually eaten. Similarly, responses on questionnaires that ask general practitioners how they manage particular clinical conditions differ significantly from actual clinical practice. An instrument developed in a different time, country, or cultural context may not be a valid measure in the group you are studying.
Reliable questionnaires yield consistent results from repeated samples and different researchers over time. Differences in results come from differences between participants, not from inconsistencies in how the items are understood or how different observers interpret the responses. A standardized questionnaire is one that is written and administered so all participants are asked the precisely the same questions in an identical format and responses recorded in a uniform manner. Standardizing a measure increases its reliability.
Just because a questionnaire has been piloted on a few of your colleagues, used in previous studies, or published in a peer reviewed journal does not mean it is either valid or reliable. The detailed techniques for achieving validity, reliability, and standardization are beyond the scope of this series. If you plan to develop or modify a questionnaire yourself, you must consult a specialist text on these issues.
There are two main objectives in designing a questionnaire:
To maximize the proportion of subjects answering our questionnaire - that is, the response rate.
To obtain accurate relevant information for our survey.
To maximize our response rate, we have to consider carefully how we administer the questionnaire, establish rapport, explain the purpose of the survey, and remind those who have not responded. The length of the questionnaire should be appropriate. In order to obtain accurate relevant information, we have to give some thought to what questions we ask, how we ask them, the order we ask them in, and the general layout of the questionnaire.
As discussed in last month's issue, there are three potential types of information:
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