Issues and Opportunities
In the present era of competitiveness, customer loyalty and retention can be considered as one of the most important feature in maintaining the customer loyalty of the organization. The customer engagement and enthusiasm is positively linked with the brand performance, product performance and referrals. In the tourism sector, the involvement of the customers with the brand boosts the customer loyalty, enhance their performance, and increase the brand satisfaction and the loyalty of the customers.
The engagement of the customers is characterized by the repeated interactions between the customers and the company. These interactions strengthen the bond with the customers and increase the emotional, physical and the financial investment that a customer has towards the brand. Trip advisor, Riverhead can establish a customer-brand link by balancing the costs and the benefits over a period of time. The customers can enhance the enthusiasm and receive several benefits which includes the product news and offers. There are several dimensions of customer satisfaction such as enthusiasm, attention, absorption, interaction, and identification (So, King, Sparks, & Wang, 2016). The customer enthusiasm refers to a high level of excitement or zeal which shows the high amount of interest in a brand. Therefore, it is important that the brand invokes interest through different marketing channels. Therefore, the present research will explore the impact of customer involvement, customer engagement and enthusiasm on the behavioral intention of customer loyalty towards the tourism organization.
The trip advisor is one of the largest travel sites, which enables the travelers to explore different options in travel destinations. It provides the reviews of different customers as well as cover wide range of hotels, airlines, attractions and restaurants. The company provides advice and knowledge to the customers to provide them with the advice related to different hotels, restaurants and travel destinations. It has made alliance with various branded organizations in different travel locations and a travel community of 455 million users is registered on the website. It has a center in Riverdale. The customers can also access the data through online mediums (Trip advisor New Zealand, 2018).
The customer loyalty is developed as a reson of various factors. The customer satisfaction, commitment, corporate image, and communocation are several factors which can enhance the loyalty in the customers. Trip advisor, Riverdale can get benefit from the the customer loyalty. In the present competitive environment, it is the essential for the business organizations to enhance the loyalty of the customers. It directly impacts on the profitability of the organization. The present research will provide the business organizations with the opportunity to increrase their market share. It is also important to build the market share of the company.
Research Objective
In the views of Gustafsson, Johnson, & Roos (2005), the tourism and the travel industry has observed immense growth in the recent years. The tourism industry has become a significant contributor to the international economy and results in millions of jobs all across the globe. It also provides a large number of job opportunities all across the globe. The hotel industry is the service provider and also provides immense investment opportunities. In this situation, it is important that the business organizations remains in contact and communicated with the customers. In the recent years, the communication through social media has become crucial in enabling the organizations to increase their interactivity with the customers. With the growing popularity of the internet, the companies are commonly using the social media to engage with their customers.
As per the views of Mittal, & Kamakura (2001) loyal customers are a major success factor of the company. The loyal customers can increase the customer loyalty by increasing the competitiveness of the organization. The loyal customers can increase the value of the organization and keep it in an appropriate level to attract new customers. Therefore, consumer involvement with the organization can strongly influence the consumer loyalty in the tourism industry.
As per the views of Verhoef (2003), consumer engagement means to receive the attention of the consumers. Contrary to it, the customer loyalty refers to the phenomenon in which the customers have a deeply held view or the commitment to buy a preferred product or service. The loyal customers of the organization consistently repurchase from the organization and invest more money in the organization. In this case, the firms aim for high profitability and the superior performance with the help of customer loyalty.
Bendapudi & Leone (2003) has highlighted that the customer satisfaction has a strong impact on the customer loyalty. There is a positive relationship between customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. The customer satisfaction is directly linked with the market share and the customer retention. As a result, most of the tourism companies all across the globe develop their products or the services with focus on the comfort of the customers. Trip advisor, Riverhead can use similar strategies. It is assumed that the customers satisfied with the products or the services of the organization remain loyal to the company. The companies get benefits in the market share and the profitability. In the service industry, the loyalty refers to the likelihood of the customers returning to avail the particular service, making referencess and providing strong word-of-mouth to other customers. There are several latent benefits of providing high-quality services, which includes references and publicity. The customer loyalty can be divided into four categories, namely, loyalty, latent loyalty, spurious loyalty, and no loyalty (Jiang, Potwarka, & Havitz, 2017). The loyalty refers to positive attitude, and high repeat behavior. The latent loyalty refers to the positive attitude towards the brand/ however, low repeat purchaser. The spurious loyalty refers to high repeat purchase; however, lack of any relative attitude towards the brand or the organization. On the other hand, no loyalty refers to the phenomenon when there is relatively low attitude as well as low repeat purchase by the organization. Most of the companies in the tourism industry desire the first type of loyalty as it is directly related to the purchase behavior.
Hypothesis
Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, (2017) have discussed that the customer satisfaction is also an important dimension of the service industry and it provides critical srtategic information which is significant for the strategic decisions. It also supports the organization in establishing regular communication with other companies. The customer satisfaction research can help the business organizations in producing information related to service attributes of the organization and the link between these attributes and their impact on the customer satisfaction. In the tourism sector, satisfaction is related to the match between the expectations of the tourists and the services provided at the tourist location.
In the perspective of Omar, Devi, Phillips, & Cook (2017) the service quality also has a strong relation with the trust of the customers. The trust can be defined as the willingness of the customers to rely on the company for the offered services. In the business enterprises, confidence can be considered as the most important factor in establishing collaborative relationship with other business organizations and enhancing the reliability of the organization. The image of the organization and the overall impression of the organization is a result of their feelings, attitude, and ad experience with the organization. The corporate image of the organization is associated with the physical attributes and the behavior of the firm in the organization. The image of the organization is related to the communication process of the organization and the manner in which the firms deploy their messages to the firms as part of their strategic mission, purpose and identity. Therefore, the company’s image is constructed on the basis of the services provided by the organization to the customers.
In the views of Mohamad, Ab Yazid, Khatibi, & Azam, (2017) the customer satisfaction is the interpretation of the feelings generated from the evaluation of the services offered by the customers. The customers conduct an evaluation on the basis of the services provided and the services offered to the customers. The costumer sartisfaction develops the customer loalty. It is a construct developed through the attitudes and the behavior of the customers.
The research proposal aims to investigate the relationship between the behavioral intention of loyalty and customer involvement, customer engagement and enthusiasm with the trip advisors in the Riverhead enterprise.
- What is the relation between Customer involvement and the behavioral intention of loyalty towards the trip advisor?
- What is the relationship between customer engagement and behavioral intention of loyalty towards the trip advisor of the Riverhead?
- What is the relationship between enthusiasm and the behavioral intention of loyalty towards the trip advisor?
H1: There is a positive relation between customers’ involvement with a trip advisor and the behavioral intention of loyalty towards the trip advisor
H2: There is a positive relationship between customer engagement and the behavioral intention of loyalty towards the trip advisor of the Riverhead
H3: There is a positive relationship between enthusiasm and the behavioral intention towards the trip advisor
The research methodology is an important aspect of the research as it directly impacts on the results or the outcomes of the research. There are two research paradigms, including positivist approach and interpretivism research paradigm. In the present research, the positivism research paradigm is used. In this research paradigm, it is proposed that the researcher keeps himself distant from the research and no bias is introduced by the researcher (Onwuegbuzie and Frels, 2016). The quantitative research design aligns with the positivist paradigm. In the present research, the research instrument of survey has been selected for the research. The survey method will be used to establish the relation between the customer engagement and the customer loyalty. The survey will be conducted with the customers of Trip advisor, Riverdale. The quantitative research will be used to analyze the numerical data (Bui, 2013). A likert scale will be used to collect the data and they will be used to establish the relation between the independent and the dependent variables.
The research design of the research ensures that the evidence based from the research assists the people to effectively address the research problem in the most logical and unambiguous manner as possible. The research design refers to the overall strategy, which integrates the different components of the research in a coherent and the logical manner. It refers to the blueprint of research, which includes the data collection, measurement and the analysis of the research data. In the present research, the exploratory research design is used for guiding the researcher. The exploratory research is used to improve the research design, use the best data-collection methods. The exploratory research will cover the scanning of the secondary data will help in understanding the issues and the opportunities in customer engagement for the organization. The exploratory research design is selected as per the choice of research questions, aims and objectives. The research questions are formed to explore new information related to the customer loyalty, customer engagement and customer enthusiasm. Therefore, it is the best research design method for the research. The survey data will be used to support the hypothesis formed in the research study. The survey instrument will comprise of 10 close-ended questions (Kaar, 2009). The survey participants will be selected through random sampling method. In this method, the survey participants are selected to represent the entire population. The sample size of the organization is 100-120 people depending on the number of people who respond to the survey. The data analysis will be conducted through SPSS software. The questionnaire will be sent to the participants through the email. If the participants agree to take part in the research, they have to fill a consent form and send it along with the survey questionnaire. The secondary data will be collected by collecting the data in the literature review section. The secondary data will be collected through books, journal articles and through the work of eminent authors. A cross-sectional interview will be used to collect the data from the customers of the survey.
The ethics are an integral part of the research studies. It is important to adhere the research with the ethical guidelines in order to increase the credibility of the work. The research must understand the ethical aspects of the research so that the research questions are answered in a justified ad proper manner. The primary data is collected through survey. However, it is important that the researcher will protect the private and confidential information of the research participants. The researcher will make sure that the identity sand the personal information of the participants is not disclosed to other people. Moreover, the researcher will ensure that the participants consent to the research process. The research participants will consent to the research. They will be made aware of the research aims, and the privacy policy of the research process (Stebbins, 2001). The researcher will also give due credit to the authors whose work is selected in the research study. Appropriate referencing will be used to acknowledge the secondary data used in the research process. The researcher will assure that the data used in the research is obtained from authentic sources. The data will not be collected through non-credible sources such as Wikipedia and online blogs.
The information obtained from the research will have severe implications for the managers in the tourism industry. The research will try to establish the link between customer loyalty and their enthusiasm and loyalty towards the organization. The study can offer valuable insight which can support the organization in increasing the customer loyalty. In the last few years, there has been drastic increase in the competition between the firms in the tourism industry. Therefore, it is important that the organizations develop their competitive advantage and customer loyalty. The research highlights the importance of the customer loyalty and its link with the customer engagement, enthusiasm.
Research is strenuous process which requires extensive hard work. It is important that a timeline is set for the entire research so that the progress of the research can be monitored in a proper manner. There are several activities in the research, such as introduction, research objectives, literature review, and research methodology. The expected timeline for each of the research activity is discussed below.
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Selection of Research methodology |
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References
Bendapudi, N., & Leone, R. P. (2003). Psychological implications of customer participation in co-production. Journal of marketing, 67(1), 14-28.
Bui, Y.N. 2013. How to Write a Master’s Thesis. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
Gustafsson, A., Johnson, M. D., & Roos, I. (2005). The effects of customer satisfaction, relationship commitment dimensions, and triggers on customer retention. Journal of marketing, 69(4), 210-218.
Harrigan, P., Evers, U., Miles, M., & Daly, T. (2017). Customer engagement with tourism social media brands. Tourism Management, 59, 597-609.
Jiang, K., Potwarka, L., & Havitz, M. (2017). Sub-Dimensions of Destination Brand Love and Their Influences on Destination Brand Loyalty: A Study of First-timers and Repeat Visitors.
Kaar, M. 2009. Critical Investigation of the Merits and Drawbacks of In-depth Interviews. GRIN Verlag.
Mittal, V., & Kamakura, W. A. (2001). Satisfaction, repurchase intent, and repurchase behavior: Investigating the moderating effect of customer characteristics. Journal of marketing research, 38(1), 131-142.
Mohamad, H. A. D., Ab Yazid, M. S., Khatibi, A., & Azam, S. F. (2017). MEASURING THE MEDIATING ROLE OF CUSTOMER SATISFACTION BETWEEN SERVICE QUALITY AND CUSTOMER LOYALTY IN UAE HOTEL INDUSTRY. European Journal of Management and Marketing Studies.
Omar, S., Devi, G., Phillips, N., & Cook, J. (2017). An investigation of multi-stakeholder value co-creation processes: a conceptual model of customer engagement, co-creation, and their impact on customer satisfaction and behavioural intentions. 50th Academy of Marketing Conference, 3-6 July 2017, Hull University Business School.
Onwuegbuzie, A.J. and Frels, R. 2016. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach. London: SAGE.
So, K. K. F., King, C., Sparks, B. A., & Wang, Y. (2016). The role of customer engagement in building consumer loyalty to tourism brands. Journal of Travel Research, 55(1), 64-78.
Stebbins, R.A. 2001. Exploratory Research in the Social Sciences. Boston: SAGE
Trip Advisor. (2018). About Trip Advisor. Retrieved 29 January 2018 from https://tripadvisor.mediaroom.com/NZ-about-us
Verhoef, P. C. (2003). Understanding the effect of customer relationship management efforts on customer retention and customer share development. Journal of marketing, 67(4), 30-45.
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