英语论文网

Service failure recovery in China
The Authors
Vincent P. Magnini, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the College of Business and Economics, Longwood University, Farmville, Virginia, USA
John B. Ford, Professor of Marketing and International Business at the College of Business and Public Administration, Norfolk, Virginia, USA
Abstract
In the hotel industry, exceptional service failure recovery is a key determinant of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Western-based hotel corporations should adapt their failure recovery training programs for their properties in China. Adjustments are necessary because of differences in cognitive processing. Modifications are also required due to various Chinese cultural characteristics.
Article Type:
Literature review
Keyword(s):
Hotels; Hospitality management; Training; China.
Journal:
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management
Volume:
16
Number:
5
Year:
2004
pp:
279-286
Copyright ©
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISSN:
0959-6119
Introduction
Many western-based hotel corporations are investing in properties within mainland China. Starwood's Asia-Pacific president, Ted Teng said:
My dream is that there will be more Starwood hotels in China than anywhere else outside the US (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 225).
The company now operates 12 hotels in the mainland and would like to have a portfolio of 30 by 2005. The Hyatt Corporation shares this mood. In 1999, Hyatt opened a 34-story hotel in Shanghai with a price tag of $540 million (Tomlinson, 1999). In the past four years, Hyatt has extended its mainland portfolio from three hotels to nine. Another example is the Radisson Hotel Corporation, which opened a five-star, 502-room property adjacent to Tiananmen Square in Beijing (Conner, 2000). In fact, this “mad dash” for China is so intense that six continents, Marriott, Starwood and Accor opened a combined total of over 40 hotels in China in 2002 alone (Coleman, 2002).
As a result of this aggressive expansion, western corporations have an increased stake in understanding how to best manage properties within the Chinese culture. Western-based hotel companies should consider adapting their training programs for the Chinese market, especially when it comes to dealing with service failures. Chinese employees see things in different ways from westerners, and these differences must be taken into account when devising appropriate and effective training programs. This is especially pertinent when ensuring that employees are able to deal effectively with service failures because how employees deal with customer problems is a major determinant of overall customer satisfaction and resulting hotel loyalty. In fact, many researchers contend that how employees handle these failures is more important to customer satisfaction than the failures themselves (c.f. Hart et al., 1990; McCollough et al., 2000; McCollough and Bharadwaj, 1992; McDougall and Levesque, 1998; Smith and Bolton, 1998; Tax et al., 1998). While research has shown that Chinese customers have similar responses to service failures as their western counterparts (Liu et al., 2001)[1], the training requirements of Chinese employees are unique. As a result, hotel managers should adapt standard service failure training programs for Chinese audiences. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate that although customer responses and attitudes to servic本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。