Study of customers' perceptions toward informative service setting items in U.S. hotel industry

Abstract

Scope and Method of Study: The purpose of this study was to uncover how the hotel ISSI (informative service setting items) were being perceived by hotel customers, and how these perceptions affect customers' satisfaction and their hotel-selection decision. Thus, the research design for this study was a cross-sectional descriptive research that investigated customers' perceptions of ISSI. An online survey was conducted. Data analysis in this study included the following techniques: frequency, compared-means, independent t-test, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA), Factor analysis, and Multiple Regression Analysis.

Findings and Conclusions: Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) was employed to compare the overall perceived ISSI Hospitality educators and hotel customers differed in their importance rating of ISSI attributes (t = -2.012, df =254, p<0.05) and also in their performance rating (t = -1.65, df =254, p<0.05). Western customers and Asian customers also differed in both importance rating (t = -3.462, df =254, p<0.01) and performance rating (t = -3.665, df =254, p<0.01) of ISSI attributes. Also, this study identified six underlying ISSI factors that have influence on customers' satisfaction level, their future recommendation, and their hotel-selection decision. The regression model in this study revealed that the six factors appeared as significant independent variables to three major dependent variables.