tourism management
Mohsen Sohrabi; Ahmad Rahchamani; Rasoul Sanavifard
Abstract
The traditional goal of satisfaction has yet to work to ensure customer loyalty, and moving toward customer delight is essential for hotels. This research aims to design and validate the customer delight model in the hotel industry using mixed-methods research. At first, semi-structured interviews were ...
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The traditional goal of satisfaction has yet to work to ensure customer loyalty, and moving toward customer delight is essential for hotels. This research aims to design and validate the customer delight model in the hotel industry using mixed-methods research. At first, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 specialists using grounded theory and theoretical and purposive sampling methods. Three coding steps identified 98 concepts and 25 main categories presented as a paradigm model. The research hypotheses were tested using the structural equation modeling method. The findings of the quantitative section showed that the category of perceived value of service is the causal factor and the cause of customer delight, and this category will influence the consequences of delight (customer's positive behavioral intentions and improvement of hotel performance) through the optimization of the customer experience management process. Meanwhile, in order to successfully implement delight strategies, it is necessary to pay attention to the availability of cultural platforms (organizational culture, management's commitment to customer delight, and Customer engagement) and obstacles to delight (increasing customer expectations, increasing the costs of delight, and reducing the effectiveness of delighting actions).