| Author: | Xiao, Xuan |
| Title: | A cross-cultural study on perceived images of luxury hotels |
| Advisors: | Song, Haiyan (SHTM) |
| Degree: | DHTM |
| Year: | 2023 |
| Subject: | Hospitality industry -- Customer services Hotels Consumer satisfaction Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | School of Hotel and Tourism Management |
| Pages: | xiii, 260 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | After two decades’ steady growth, the luxury segment of global lodging industry is facing great challenges, such as fierce competitions among homogeneous products, customers’ changing expectations and preferences. The COVID-19 pandemic has also reshaped the landscape of global hospitality industry. Therefore it is urgent for hospitality practitioners to have a thorough understanding of customer perceived image to achieve accurate strategic positioning and greater operational proficiency with better targeted service foci. Despite of abundant studies implying cultural impact on customer behaviors, there has been very limited literature elaborating cultural impact on their perceived image of hotels; nevertheless, with the globalization of luxury hotel brands and the development of international tourism, it is necessary to explore customer perceptions and preferences by the segmentation of culture. In such background, this paper will focus on luxury hotels’ images perceived by customers from various cultures, examining the differences through CIT (Critical Incident Technique) and big data approaches, disentangling the relations between perceived image and satisfaction, and investigating culture’s effect on the linkage between perceived image and customer satisfaction. This paper consists of two studies. In Study I, CIT method was utilized to explore the key dimensions of customer perceived images about luxury hotels. 67 participants from different cultural segments were interviewed about their most impressive experiences staying in Chinese luxury hotels in recent three years. The findings indicated nine major dimensions of the participants’ cognitive image (location & environment, design & ambiance, guestroom, food & beverage, publish facilities & equipment, service, cleanliness & security, brand & value and experiences). This study detected cross-cultural differences in luxury hotel customers’ perceived images in pre-stay phase as well as onsite and post-stay phases. This study proved that in the pre-stay phase, high or low context culture and indulgence-restraint orientation were relevant with people’s information searching patterns; however, this paper argued that demographic characteristics, especially the age range, also impacted such propensity significantly. Cultural variations were also reflected by the purchasing channels and package preferences. In addition, this study discovered greater expectation variations between business and leisure travel types for customers from restraint-oriented cultures. In the onsite and post-stay phase, this study summarized nine key cognitive dimensions. The researcher observed that customers from greater power distance cultures showed greater need for status (NFS). Cultural variations on service expectations were also discovered: customers from greater power distance cultures seemed to show less tolerance to service failure, with greater expectations for personalized services. This study posited that customers’ priorities of these critical procedures could vary across culture, which was later proved in the keyword analysis and crosstab analyses of affective* cognitive image in Study II. Customers’ adoption of new technology was found to be relevant with the uncertainty-avoidance cultural dimension. In study II, the researcher selected 141 luxury hotels of nine most popular Chinese tourist cities, and collected their online reviews on TripAdvisor from Jan. 1st, 2006 to June 30th, 2021. This study consisted of three sub-research questions: 1) How does customer satisfaction (revealed by overall rating and specific rating scores) differ across various segments? Does culture (or cultural distance) play a role in the satisfaction perception procedures, and how? 2) What are the cognitive images and affective images perceived by customers, and how they differ across various cultural segments? 3) What are the linkages between cognitive images and affective images, and how these linkages differ across various cultural segments? The quantitative analyses were conducted to detect the cultural variations in rating patterns. For overall ratings, the Mainland Chinese cohort gave the highest value and the Southeast Asian cohort gave the lowest value. Comparisons were conducted on overall ratings across the five cultural zones, and variations were further analyzed by hotel category and location, by customers’ travel type and by time. For specific ratings, the rating pattern and values of Mainland Chinese customers were distinguished from their counterparts. The keyword analyses showed the decomposed cognitive images and affective images perceived by the five cultural cohorts, suggesting greater variations between Mainland Chinese cohort and other four. The wordcloud of dissatisfied Mainland Chinese customers also distinguished from those of their counterparts. The affective*cognitive crosstab analyses were conducted at rough-grained and fine-grained level. The rough-grained crosstab analysis corroborated that “service encounter” and “experiences” were most critical constructs in the perceived images of luxury hotel customers, with great dissimilarities in the constructs of “accessibility”, “design & decorations”, “public facilities & equipment”, “in-room facilities and supplies”, “brand”, “brand-rated impressions” and “companion”. The fine-grained crosstab analysis further revealed the detailed types of affective image associated with each cognitive constructs, and discovered greater variations between the Mainland Chinese cohort and the other four cohorts. The theoretical and managerial implications were mentioned as well. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7309.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 7.29 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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