自由恋爱的时代,布衣神相 粤语,inabachiaki
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Conclusion and Implications 结论与启示
Since the strategy of branding can be assumed to have an impact on consumer’s perceptions of the brand, and this paradigm has increasing importance in the viability of a hotel in a competitive market, then the implications towards this research is that brand identification has an impact on the consumer’s perceptions of quality. The consumer’s perceptions of a brand image are directly related to the ability of an organisation to externally present its brand identity, but also the ability of the customer to receive a service without gaps between what is delivered and what is received.
Brand identity is what the organisation puts forth as its point of differentiation from consumers. The implication towards this research is that brand identification, as the organisation’s marketing strategy, values, aims, and mission, must be adequately shown to, and received by, the consumer to build a brand image. Thus if the consumer can not identify the brand, the consumer does not have a perception of the brand.
Consumer satisfaction is built on the consumer’s preformed beliefs and attitudes about a brand, compared to what the brand has actually delivered. Thus, customer satisfaction is the more positive when there is not a gap between service delivery and the brand image, and more negative as these gaps increase. The implications for this research are that the consistency of a brand image increases consumer satisfaction, which in turn creates consumer loyalty. Consumer promotions in price and non-price items may impact consumer loyalty by increasing the customer’s cognition regarding a brand in price versus value gaps.
Brand strategy exists to decrease the gaps between brand identity and the consumer’s perception of that brand. Thus, the ideal brand strategy will close the gap between the internal organisational statements and the external consumer. The implications for this research are that brand strategy in the service dimension relies highly on the consumer’s perception of the employees, rather than the organisation’s marketing strategy.
Consumer loyalty increases with consumer satisfaction, which increases with the gap reduction between brand identity and brand image through brand strategy. The implications for this research are that brand and consumer loyalty is based on the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty, where loyalty does not denote satisfaction. Loyalty is more impacted by service delivery than by promotions, and the consumer’s perception of service delivery impacts satisfaction with the delivery. This is based on attitude, behaviour, and cognition. Consumer attitudes are formed by the consumer’s emotional connection with the brand. Behaviour is the consumer’s habits in choosing a brand. Cognition is the consumer’s process of thought between the brand, the value, and satisfaction. The implication for hoteliers is that consumer attitude, behaviour, and cognition is due to several factors. Market signalling theory is when a consumer’s behaviour towards a brand becomes more positive based on the brand’s higher market position. However, higher market positions may also mean that the consumer attitude towards the brand has changed to create stronger gaps in perception of service versus brand. Lastly, consumer cognition may change based on price, value, and market place due to these attitudinal and behavioural factors.
Research Approach 研究途径
A deductive research approach allows for a dissemination of the relationship between brand identity-image and customer loyalty-satisfaction (Nueman 2003). In this approach, the researcher uses statistical evidence to deduce the characteristics that build the relationship, or lack thereof, and thus use said evidence to accept or reject the theoretical hypothesis. The deductive approach is preferred over the inductive approach in this research as it allows for a concrete explanation of the phenomena being explored (Nueman 2003). In contrast, the inductive research approach builds a theory from exploring the phenomena, thus it is theory-generating, where this research focuses on deductive theory-proving (Nueman 2003). Furthermore, the theory-proving approach allows for an explanation of the casual relationships between the variables, where the variables are noted as brand identity and image; customer loyalty and satisfaction. Based on this research approach, the casual relationships should arise without empirical generalisations, and the approach should allow for the middle-range relationships between the variables to be analysed based on frequency (Nueman 2003). The research approach utilises positivism to guide the design of the study, where information from the literature review is organised into deductive logic and thus enables precise observations of the phenomena at hand (Nueman 2003). The assumption in this research approach is that the variables operate within casual relationships based on each inherent characteristic, and these characteristics guide the research survey questions (Nueman 2003). The research began with the theory that the relationships between the stated variables exist and that these relationships can be statistically stated based on their occurrence (Nueman 2003).
Survey Questionnaire 调查问卷
The survey questionnaire was chosen for this research because it utilises statistical sampling as a foundation for deductive reasoning to be applied to the casual relationships that may exist in the stated variables (Salkind 2003). The survey questionnaire can also be delivered to many patrons in a student research paper time frame, thus allowing for the largest possible amount of information to be gained with the most relevance to the theory of the research in the specific timeframe of the research (Salkind 2003). A survey questionnaire is a basic set of questions that can be identified by the participants and are structured based on theme, and focused towards the establishment of the relationships of the variables (Salkind 2003). Unlike qualitative research methods such as experimental observations, the survey questionnaire has little inherited cost stronger time effectiveness (Salkind 2003). There is no long distance to travel, as there would have been in interviews with brand managers. The survey questionnaire was also chosen because of its subjectivity, where analysis can occur based on the presented evidence rather than suspected meaning (Salkind 2003). The limitation of this research method is that it does not allow for evidence to exist outside of the survey questionnaire, thus it can only show if there is a casual relationship, not how that relationship is limited or expanded by occurrences in the variables (Salkind 2003).
Survey questionnaires can use open or closed ended questions (Mcburney 2001). In the question design it is important that each question pertain to a single subject matter (McBurney 2001). It is also important that the language usage avoids bias and uses terms that the participants can easily understand (McBurney 2001). The survey questionnaire in this study uses only closed questions, where the respondents had to choose true, false, or unsure as the response (McBurney, 2001). Word bias was very carefully removed, terms such as brand identity and brand image that the average consumer may not understand were not used in the survey (McBurney 2001). Furthermore, the survey questions were all stated in a positive manner to remove any negative perceptions or bias from the participants (McBurney, 2001). For example, instead of stating “I would never stay at a hotel if I don’t agree with their mission statement” the first question is worded in a positive connotation as: “I prefer to stay at hotels that have a mission statement I agree with.”
Data Sampling 数据采样
A further limitation of the survey questionnaires is that there is a low return on investment rate, where fewer questionnaires are sent out than are received (Salkind 2003). This was found to be true in the first attempt of this research, where no surveys were returned from the original survey location. Thus, the research data sampling occurred via email. Email respondents were selected from the knowledge of the researcher and sent to persons the researcher knows to have stayed in at least one hotel or travelled to a hotel at least once. This in itself is a limitation, as the data sampling was restricted to persons within the researcher’s social scope. To overcome possible bias, the researcher maintained anonymity in the survey receipt and subsequent data analysis. While it is not a perfect manner to overcome such a limitation, the research is validated by the objectivity of the researcher and removal of bias in the statistical evidence presented below. The researcher received 20 survey responses of 60 emailed surveys, a return rate of 30%. Data Analysis
The gathered responses will be analysed in the following sections based on statistical evidence, presented in the following chapter. Analysis of statistical data is based on three main statistics: Standard deviation and variance; Analysis of variance; Correlations. These three statistical methods are tested in the Excel add-in ANOVA, which analyses the variance between two variables. Thus, each hypothesis contains only two variables, each will be tested yielding four hypotheses results to determine the correlations between each variable, if such correlations exist.
Chart 1 shows the total responses per question. In this chart, it can be shown that the highest positive responses exist in loyalty to good service and satisfaction with higher service expectations. The lowest positive responses are in service value identity and image of the hotel’s vision. |
