I would like to thank all of you from the College of Management, Mahidol University staff for providing the helpful advice outside of class and helping with difficulties around campus. The tourism industry is 7.3% of the total GDP (Growth Domestic Product), which is worth 825.6 billion Baht (World Travel and Tourism Council, Economy impact 2013, Thailand).
Company Background
Market Share of Hotel and Resort Industry at Ban-Krud in Prachup Khiri Khan
- Problem Statement
- Research Questions
- Scope of Study
- Purpose of study
Baan Klang Aow Beach Resort is one of the leading resorts in the Baan Krud area. The result of the study would be helpful in increasing the revenue of the food and beverage department in Baan Klang Aow Beach Resort.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Service Quality
- Reliability
- Responsiveness
- Assurance
- Empathy
- Tangibles
The service elements service quality are very important for customer perception which will be the factors of restaurant performance (Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry 1988). The definition of responsiveness: "The willingness to help customers and provide prompt service" (Parasuraman et al. 1988 p.23).
GAP Model of Service Quality
The importance of service quality will influence the customer's attitude towards a purchase (Qu, 1997; Pettijohn et al., 1997). Tangible in the service quality dimension was defined as “physical facilities, processes and procedures of the service” (Parasuraman et al., 1988).
Proposal Framework
The decision of the SERVQUAL model will be used to increase and improve the efficiency of the service quality in the resort restaurant.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Survey Instrument
The first section will be questions designed from the literature review's information on service quality (SERVQUAL). The design of the questionnaire will be divided into two pages to measure both customer expectation and customer perception. On the left side, the customer's expectation will be measured, and on the right, the customer's perception will be measured.
Expectation will be measured consumers' attitude towards the resort and restaurant before they received the services. With perception on the right side, the customer will appreciate the service after they perceive the services of the restaurant in the resort. The customer will be asked to rate the attribute 27 on the five-point scale, (1) is considered "very low" and (5) will be the highest score "very high", which is an indicator of the customer.
The second part asks the customer about the service overperformance the customer has perceived.
Data Collection
Data Analysis
FINDING AND DISCUSSION
Demographics Analysis
Most customers at Baan Klang Aow beach resort were first-time visitors with a majority number of 57.3% (51 respondents), and second-time visitors at 21.3% (19 respondents).
Gap Model Analysis
The result shows the importance of the attribute that satisfied the needs and desires of customers regarding service quality in the food and beverage department. Attribute number 7 and 14 had a score of 0.00 points, which means that customers are satisfied with the quality of the food and beverage department. Table 4.5 shows the order of attributes that have the highest rating of customer expectations.
Additionally, this feature has a positive gap score, meaning customers are satisfied with the resort's food and beverage department. The customer was not satisfied with the service of the resort according to the result from table 4.5. The characteristic described as the quality of the ingredients and the freshness of the food and drinks are consistent in every dish.
The result also shows the positive gap score of 0.04 which means that the customers were satisfied with the food and beverage component that the resort provided to their guests.
Reliability Analysis
The lowest score on customer perception means that only two factors the customer tends to score less than other factors. The result means that the customer experiences a low level of service quality, which could lead to customer dissatisfaction, which will affect customer repurchase and willingness to pay. The result of table 4.8 also shows in relation to table 7 that assurance has the lowest score on both customer expectation and customer perception.
The mean score shows that the reliability factor has the highest mean on both customer expectation and perception of the customer. The result is important to know that the customer was concerned about the reliability of the resort's service. The result shows that the customer has the low expectation for the tangible factor and is more concerned about reliability and empathy because the gap score of these two factors has the lowest score from a total of five service quality dimensions.
After customer perceived service, the result shows that responsive has the higher perception score than sensitivity factor.
Factor Analysis
The quality of the ingredients and the freshness of the food and drinks are consistent in every dish (as ordered). Akbaba (hospitality management Page suggests that a factor loading variable greater than 0.4 should be considered significant. The eigenvalue of the factor should be more than one to be significant and considered important to analyze.
However, all the characteristics have the factor loading higher than 0.4 (tangibility, reliability, empathy, responsiveness and assurance). Based on the result of the factor analysis, the tangible factor was important due to the number of factor loading that had higher score than other factors (characteristic and 8 was high than 0.5). The last factor was Assurance with 26 and 27 features having a significant number of factor loadings.
Regression Analysis
There are two factors related to customer satisfaction with the significant number less than 0.05. The most important factor that has an impact on customer satisfaction is reliability, according to table 11 show the beta score of 0.449 and followed by empathy at 0.282 points. Empathy and reliability have a significant number that is important to the overall quality of the service.
The relationship shows the importance of these two factors affecting customer satisfaction.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Conclusion
This research focused on the performance of the resort's food and beverage department, including restaurant, room service and food and beverage quality. But the reliability factor is most concerned with improving the quality of service to achieve a higher level of customer satisfaction. The result of customers who will complete the questionnaire was 89 respondents out of 130 questionnaires that were handed out during the check-out of customers from the resort.
The result showed opposite direction that the guest of Baan Klang Aow Beach Resort cared about the individual service while they perceived the service. The most important aspect was the factor of reliability, which involved characteristics such as delivering the service as promised, staff willing to serve and the quality of the food and drink was standardized through each course. The empathy factor came as one of the important factors, but not the most important factor.
The customer is concerned about the individual service he experiences and wants the staff to serve and pay more attention to it.
Recommendation
However, the most factor that affects the performance of the food and beverage department is the reliability factor. The iconic sense will have a higher level of customer expectations, but the resort's food and beverage department must be reliable to deliver the quality of the product. The freshness and taste of the food and drinks are a very important factor to improve the service quality performance of Baan Klang Aow Beach Resort.
The researcher recommends that the resort should emphasize on improving the service quality of the food and beverage department. These are two important factors that influence customer satisfaction. Although the result shows that customer expectations on the tangible factor are low, this factor needs to be improved due to the negative gap score. In particular, the attribute of the tangible points to the menu design and equipment of the restaurant.
Since the resort staff come from different backgrounds and have different life experiences, it is difficult to provide a comprehensive service for everyone.
Limitation and Further research
The result from table 9 shows significant data on empathy and trustworthiness factor with a significant number < 0.05, namely 0.000 on trustworthiness and 0.021 on empathy factor. To meet the customer satisfaction point, the resort should immediately improve these two qualities because it is easy to imply and takes less time than factors such as empathy and reliability. The resort needs time to train its staff so that staff understand the importance of individualizing customer service and treating and speaking to the customer in a polite and friendly manner.
Future research should emphasize and narrow the scope of the study to a restaurant attribute, such as the DINSERV model (To what extent does restaurant kitchen design affect consumers' eating experience? An exploratory study; Abel Duarte Alonso and Martin A O'Neil, 2010 ), which will have another factor and attribute which is more than the SERVQUAL model (Parasuraman, 1988) and will be able to gain an understanding of the factor that is important for customer satisfaction regarding food and beverage. Future studies could contribute to hospitality and hotel industry research on service quality knowledge. In order to find out the different outcome of the two groups, because culture could influence the client's expectations and perception of the end.
The result could gain more understanding of consumer insight in relation to the resort's service quality.
Department of Business Development, www.dbd.go.th retrieved on the 5th August 2014 Tourism Authority of Thailand: www.tourismthailand.org retrieved on the 23rd July.
APPENDICES
The relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality: a study of three service sectors in Umea. Gwo-Hshiung Tzeng, Hung-fan Chang.2011. Application of importance- Performance analysis as a service quality measure in food service industry.
APPENDIX B: Questionnaire
ความคาดหวังก่อนได้รับรายการคุณสมบัติบริการ/แบบสอบถาม ต่ำมาก ต่ำ ปานกลาง สูง สูงมาก ต่ำมาก ต่ำ ปานกลาง สูง สูงมาก คุณจะให้คะแนนประสิทธิภาพโดยรวมของคุณภาพการบริการที่คุณได้รับในแผนกอาหารและเครื่องดื่ม (ร้านอาหาร) ที่รีสอร์ทอย่างไร โปรดระบุ) 5) ระดับการศึกษาที่คุณได้รับระดับการศึกษา โปรดระบุ) 6) รายได้เงินเดือนของคุณ.
