Service Marketing
Focusing on a contemporary service topic e.g. “What is an Effective Approach for Managing Service Quality within a small, local Restaurant?’, design and carry out a primary research study to collect and analyse data so that your results can be compared with those from other studies found in the Literature.
The research topic should be in line with the subject matter and Industry Sector that was chosen for the first assignment in this unit e.g. Service Quality; Service Recovery/Complaint Behaviour; Employees and Service Provision; . This is strongly advised since you will benefit from having a working knowledge of: definitions; questions that might be addressed; methods that have resulted in empirical findings.
This is an individual report of 3000
For example
Topic 1: Service recovery/consumer complaint behaviours.
Service recovery assumes that the consumer has complained, whereas consumer complaining includes NOT complaining although one is dissatisfied. Thus, it might be interesting to study why consumers do not complain although they are dissatisfied with a service.
Alternatively, you might study what kind of service recovery people have experienced and how it affected their relationship. On the other hand, you could study it from a company point of view, what are their service recovery policies, how are these implemented and perceived by employees? Alternatively, study what service employees do with compliments/complaints that are made to them directly. An analysis of website responses might give a sample to explore qualitatively or quantitatively. Alternatively, a survey or interview approach might be suitable.
Topic 2: Service quality.
Do a study of perceived service quality, either a small quantitative study (40
respondents) on private consumers’ perceived B2C service quality, or a qualitative study
(about 8 interviews). It can be any type of service, any type of company/sector/market. You could use or PZB’s Servqual Model as a basis or Christian Grönroos’ model …
Topic 3 Topic 3 Co-creation and the role played by each party in the service delivery process
You might look at the factors, which are important for Co-creation in a high-contact extended service such as Education/training. You might research what personality factors are important for successful Co-creation. Alternatively, you might look at resistance to Co-creation or the problems in training Customers/Consumers for Co-creation in sectors where I.T. is required.
