CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.3 Research Methodology
3.3.1 Quantitative Research Method
The quantitative method is applying to explore the tourist behavior during the food consumption period at the Thai full-service restaurant as a state in objective 1, follow by the evaluating the efficiency of the customer experience touchpoints along the customer journey in Thai full- service restaurant as appearing in objective 2.
Moreover, in objective 3, the quantitative method applies the structural equation model to examine the influence of customer satisfaction on customer satisfaction. The result of the quantitative research methodology will answer these research objective
1) To identify the tourist behavior in Thai full-service restaurant 2) To evaluate the efficiency of customer’s experience along the customer journey in Thai full-service
3) To examine the influence of overall customer experience on customer satisfaction.
These results can support the researcher to explain the relationship between the dependent and independent variable. The hypothesis is as follow:
H1: Tourist’s importance and perception level of customer experience components in Thai full-service restaurants are the same.
H2: The overall customer experience significantly influences customer satisfaction
H3: The overall customer experience significantly influences consumption emotion.
H4: The consumption emotion significantly influences customer satisfaction
3.3.1.1 Population and Sample
The population of interest is the international tourists visiting Bangkok during the research period and had gone to Thai full-service restaurants. As the basic need of the human being, food and beverage are required; therefore, the international tourists who visit Bangkok and have gone to Thai full-service restaurants in the research period might be higher than one million. With the limited amount of time and budget, to research on every tourist might not be possible. Thus, this dissertation is on the international tourist visiting Bangkok in the research period, which has gone to Thai full-service restaurants. This research adopts non-probability sampling to calculate the sampling size and determine the sampling technique since the international tourists' names and profiles are not available.
3.3.1.2 Sample Size
In order to have the reliability of sample size. The sample size is based on the number of international tourists visiting Bangkok for the last 3 years (2012- 2015) to find the average number representing the “N” in this research. The calculation appears in Table 3.1, the average number of tourists visiting Bangkok in 2013-2015 is 18,028,761 person (N). The sample size was calculated by using the formula of Yamane
(
1973)
,which applies a level of reliability of 95%
with a deviation of 5%
as following:
n = N 1 + Ne2 where n = Sample size
N = Size of target population
e = The level of precision (the reliability level of 95%), 0.05 population variable So, the calculation of the sample size of this study was:
n = 18,028,761 1 + 18,028,761 (.05)2
Therefore, the requited sample size was 400.
Table 3.2 International Tourist Visiting Bangkok
Source: Department of Tourism, 2015, 2014, 2013.
With a large amount, an exact unknown number of populations, the researcher followed Yamane's (1973) table at a population of more than 1,000,000 people with a confidence level of 95% and a margin error of 5 %. The recommended sample-sized is 400. Moreover, the appropriate sample size for the structural equation model is at least 10 – 20 times of parameter or the path that shows the relationship of a conceptual research framework or at least 200 cases to apply the structural equation model (Kline, 2011). This study has 13 parameters and set the sample size at 20 times of parameter. Therefore, the sample size is 260 cases. For a large population's appropriateness and relevance, this study has set the sample size at 400 cases (n=400).
3.3.1.3 Sampling Technique
This study employed purposive sampling to select the respondents and focus on the respondents who had ever gone to the Thai full-service restaurants.
According to the researcher's judgment, the purposive sampling techniques select the sample for a specific purpose to reduce the generalization (Sharma, 2017). This technique helps the researcher to achieve the objective (Zikmund, Babin, Carr, &
Griffin, 2013) and answer the research question. The criterion for selecting the restaurant was that the restaurant should be an authentic Thai style restaurant. For convenience, the researcher provided a list of the restaurants for tourists to check on.
2015 2014 2013 3 Year Average
19,586,811 17,031,723 17,467,750 18,028,761
3.3.1.4 Research Tool and Design
Questionnaires were used as the tool for the quantitative part of the research since the questionnaire effectively meant to gather the opinion and attitude about people, objects, ideas, or events (Mangal & Mangal, 2013). Additionally, using questionnaires is allowed the researchers to efficiently ask many questions to many people (Zikmund et al., 2013). The questionnaires were written in English since the target respondent is an international tourist. There are comprised of 4 main parts in the questionnaires.
Part I: Tourist Behavior in Thai full-service restaurant. Each tourist has different behavior. The questions asked according to the decision-making component in selecting the restaurant, expense, member, motivation factor, and preference.
Part II: Efficiency of customer experience touchpoint along the customer journey. Each tourist evaluated customer experience touchpoints' performance and the important level of each customer experience touchpoints to find experienced management efficiency in Thai full-service restaurants. There are six parts of the experience touchpoints along six stages of the customer journey at Thai full-service restaurant to examined.
Part III: Consumption emotion and overall satisfaction of the customer.
The tourist identified the overall level of satisfaction as the dependent variable to learn the influence of overall customer experience generated from the customer experience touchpoint orchestrated together on the customer satisfaction by using the consumption emotion as the mediating factor. This part of the questionnaire applied 5 points Likert scales to evaluate respondents' attitudes toward the topic positively or negatively. The use of the 5 point scale allows respondents to neutralize the question to avoid bad information quality when the respondent does not know or does not understand the questions (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). Respondents are required to choose rating scales from the minimum score of 1 to a maximum of 5.
Part IV: Socio-demographic profile
Each respondent provided information about their socio-demographic profile consisting of gender, age, nationality, marital status, religion, education, and income. The questions ask by using both open-end and close-end questions.
Table 3.3 Interpretation of Five-Point Likert Scales Level Statement of
the Important Level of Customer Experience Touchpoint
Statement of Performance
Level Customer Experience Touchpoint
Statement of Consumption
Emotion
Statement of Overall Satisfaction
1 Not very
Important
Not very efficiency
Not very High Strongly dissatisfaction 2 Important Not efficiency Not high Dissatisfaction
3 Not so
important
Not so efficiency
Neutral Neutral
4 Important Efficiency High Satisfaction
5 Very important Very efficiency Very high Strongly satisfaction
3.3.1.5 Validity and Reliability Tests
The questionnaire was evaluated by applying the Item-Objective Congruence Index (IOC) by three experts to test the validity and reliability and ensure the questionnaire's quality. After the expert review, the instrument was examined to calculate in index of items-objective congruency (IOC) to ensure that the information obtained is relevant. If the content and structure were suitable, the result must equal to or more than 0.5. However, if the average questionnaire is below 0.5, the researcher needs to improve it or omit it (Rovinelli & Hambleton, 1977). The criteria were used as follow:
1 refers to a suitable item of information that is related to the content 0 refers to a question of whether an item or content is related or not.
1 refers to an item or information that is not suitable or unclear to the content.
Table 3.4 List of Three Experts Evaluating IOC
Experts Position
1. Assist prof. Dr. Kritsadepat Pitchayadetcharnan
Lecture, Burapha University International College
2. Assist prof. Passarin Palitnonkiet Lecture, Burapha University International College
3. Mr. Phuritt Maswongsa Chairman of the Tourism Industry Council
As the results of the content, validity shows in Table 3.2. This questionnaire's value was 0.88 (Appendix) above the minimum acceptable score of 0.5. Meaning that this questionnaire is suitable for use in this research.
Furthermore, before distributing the questionnaire to the actual target market, 30 sets of questionnaires were distributed to the international tourists as represented sample groups in the study to test the questionnaire's reliability. To check the reliability values by using the Cronbach coefficient formula, the result should be around 0.8 – 1.00, which means the data is reliable. This study obtained reliability of 0.916. Thus, it can use the final questionnaire to collect the data from the sample group.
3.3.1.6 Data Collection
400 set of Questionnaires distributed to international tourists who were traveling around Bangkok in January-December 2018 and ever gone to a Thai full- service restaurant. The area of distribution of the questionnaire was around the tourist attractions in Bangkok. The researcher and the assistants screened the respondent by asking the screening questions and the proportion of quota to reach the objective of the research.
3.3.1.7 Data Analysis
The quantitative data was coded into and analyzed by put into the computer software program. Descriptive Statistic consisted of frequency; percentage, mean, standard deviation was employed to describe the primary data of tourist behavior such as the consumption patter, motivation and preference, and tourist demographic profile. Furthermore, this study applied the paired t-test to compare
importance and performance (Important and performance Analysis) to evaluate each customer experience touchpoint's efficiency along the six stages of the customer journey in Thai full-service restaurants. Furthermore, the structural equation model was applied to examine the influence of the overall customer experience at Thai full- service restaurant on customer satisfaction.