How customer expectations are managed in firms

¶ … Customer Expectations Are Managed in a Firm

Managing customer expectations within the services industry has as its catalyst the transformation of intangible benefits into tangible experiences for the customer. Marriott Corporations' approach to transforming services marketing and the transformation of service intangibles into tangible benefits for customers is discussed. This specific company was chosen due to personal experience staying in the company's hotels. Marriott Corporations' expertise in transforming the intangible aspects of service hospitality into a tangible experience is well respected in their industry and in services marketing. Examining the strategies behind how this is accomplished is the purpose of this paper. Marriott relies on the tangible aspects of their service including hotel locations, the cleanliness and maintenance of rooms and meeting facilities, and suitability for both business and pleasure travelers as the foundation of their service-based differentiation strategy. From that foundation Marriott strives to turn reliability, responsiveness, assurance and sympathy, all essential building blocks of transforming intangible service to a tangible benefit (Reddy, Buskirk, Kaicker, Ajit, 1993). Marriott also has successfully been able to train their employees to be more like customers in their discernment of excellent service, and conversely, been able to turn their customers into fans in the process (Bowers & Martin, 2007). This is a unique attribute of the Marriott culture that contributes to their significant competitive advantage in the global hospitality industry.

Main Conclusions

Lessons learned from studying the transformation of services to tangible, readily perceived benefits of customers brings to light who this accomplishment requires exceptional levels of coordination, synchronization and effort on the part of services organizations. Marriott Corporation has been able to move beyond the adequate service level (Zeithami & Bitner, 2005), surpassing what many business and pleasure travelers would consider mediocre service as illustrated by the treatment of Japanese customers at the Izmailova Hotel in Russia (Zeithami & Bitner, 2005). Marriott's strategy continues to concentrate on transforming customers into fans by concentrating on how to create a community through their loyalty programs (Rosenbaum, Ostrom, Kuntze, 2005), while also striving to turn their customers into their best employees (Bowers & Martin, 2007). Marriott does this by defining the customers' job by selectively defining self-service options, in addition to rewarding customers for helping others. Finally, Marriott works to retain their best customers by rewarding them through loyalty programs ((Bowers & Martin, 2007). In conjunction with these efforts, Marriott strives to create a highly unique internal culture that treats employees as customers ((Bowers & Martin, 2007), the tangibilizing of the intangible aspects of service ((Reddy, Buskirk, Kaicker, Ajit, 1993), reliance on the use of nonverbal communication with customers to increase empathy, compassion and credibility (Sundaram & Webster, 2000). In addition to these aspects of the training programs that fuel the unique culture of Marriott, there is also recognition of regional and local differences in customs of customers (Altinay, 2007). The combining of the externally-facing strategies for creating a community of customers and in effect recruiting them as customers is balanced with the development of a highly unique internal culture that revolves around creating tangible value for customers from inherently intangible services.

Recommendations

In assessing the performance e of Marriott from personal experience in addition to the cited research, it is clear that the company is strong at delivering an adequate level of customer service (Zeithami & Bitner, 2005), yet can improve in exceeding customers' expectations in the area of pleasure travel and global business travel. The company excels today in U.S. business travel, yet from experience, has shown difficulty making the transition to purely pleasure-based travel. The company's resort hotels in Hawaii for example still have a services pricing structure more suited to corporate travelers and as a result do not reflect the bundling pricing prevalent in that segment of the market.

The following are recommendations to Marriott for increasing the level of performance in the pleasure travel segment:

First, Marriott needs to intensively train those employees in the remote resort locations in both vernal and nonverbal communications as personalized service as integral to their brand. The points made by (Sundaram & Webster, 2000) are a case in point.

Second, Marriott need to concentrate more on social media of all types specifically to increase their reputation in the pleasure segments of the hospitality industry. Bill Marriott, CEO, has his own blog today which isn't a PR ploy and is refreshing in its honesty. Yet much more could be done to stimulate word-of-mouth advertising for the pleasure travel segment of Marriot, and research has shown this is one of the three critical signals of service quality (Dean & Lang, 2007).