Imagine you have been hired to work an internship in a resort hotel in Hilton Head, South Carolina, for the summer. The manager learns you have had this service marketing class. In talking with you, she states that she feels the hotel is not always providing satisfactory service and may be performing in some areas below customer expectations. She stops talking and looks at you. Remember your future career may be riding on your answer. What do you tell her?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The better answer should begin with a discussion of how a service marketing research program would be more appropriate than any single type of research. The hotel will need a rich, multifaceted flow of information to close the gap between customer expectations and management perceptions of customer expectations. There should also be questions about how much time and money is available for the research project.
The basic answer is to suggest the hotel, at a minimum, use complaint solicitation, critical incident studies and trailer calls to identify common service failure points. It will also need to look at its employees because they may believe the service provided is adequate when customers do not believe this to be true. The mystery shopper would be a good type of research to study employees. Some students may also mention relationship surveys.
Finally there should be a brief discussion of how this research study is useless if it is not used to drive change or create improvements.