< .0001), and Appearance (t = 3.61, p < .0001) were statistically significant between leisure travelers’ and hoteliers’ perspectives. It seems that these significant differences concentrated on the functional and procedural aspects of service. No statistically significant was found on Server factor (t = -1.67, p > .05) in their perspectives.Overall, the investigation suggested that the leisure travelers and hoteliers had different perspectives of hotel service quality. The primary difference came from the Facility, Management, Speed of service, and Appearance factors rather than Server factor. Both leisure travelers and hoteliers regarded servers as important index of hotel service quality in Taiwan that guest contact employees played important role of delivery high quality of service experience. Most of the customer evaluated the service quality and determined the level of satisfaction during service encounter (Enz& Siguaw, 2000). In contract to this finding, employee factors didn’t function for hotel service quality by extending the SERVQUAL model in USA (Mount, 1997).Nevertheless, some experts in hospitality industry tried to find some ways to build their service strengths and improve the service quality by focusing on service audits of servers or guest contact employees service (Brownell & Jameson, 1996; Martin,1986).
4.3. The comparisons of service quality perspectives derived from cluster analysis
Cluster analysis was encouraged to use and develop classifications of customer groups for hotel market segmentation that is a means of increasing marketing sales (Jurowski & Reich, 2000). Segments of leisure travelers with similar perspectives were established through a cluster analysis. Comparing the results of two, three, four, and five clusters, the three-cluster solution was chosen for further one-way ANOVA because of having greatest difference between three clusters(Kennedy, Best, & Kahle, 1988). The results of cluster analysis and further ANOVA test were shown in Table 4.
Table4 The one-way ANOVA test of service quality perspectives for three leisure travelers clusters Segment 1 Segment 2 Segment 3 F Post Hoc tests a Factor Mean b Mean Mean
1. Server 6.56 5.56 6.51 327.2 * 1>2; 3>2
2. Facility 5.58 5.41 6.47 340.3 * 3>1; 2>3
3. Management 5.43 4.57 5.96 332.7 * 1>2; 3>3; 3>1
4. Appearance 4.28 5.43 6.30 576.3 * 2>1; 3>1; 3>2
5. Promotion 6.34 5.67 6.64 261.9 * 1>2; 3>1; 3>2
6. Speed of service 6.68 5.67 6.61 310.7 * 1>2; 3>2
7. Information 6.22 4.39 6.07 317.5* 1>2; 3>2
n (N=1084) 133 328 623
Name Service Not Holistic Encounter Management
a Post hoc tests based on Scheffe’s p < .05; b Means were calculated from a 7-point Likert scale(from 1=strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree); * p < .0001
Of the three leisure travelers clusters, this segment (n=133) had lowest mean of Appearance domain but regarded the Server and Speed of service factors as important index of hotel service quality. For these leisure travelers, they were interested in the process of service encounters in hotel. Segment 2 leisure travelers(n = 328) placed little attention on Management and Information domains that the government coerced service industry for Good Store Practice regulations. When compared to other segments, segment 3 (n = 623) viewed all the domains of hotel service quality importantly. Therefore, by using the holistic to describe the perspectives of these leisure travelers. It was also the largest segment in leisure travelers. Since this study investigated the service quality perspectives of all the hotels in Taiwan, the hoteliers can know how the competitors manage the service quality system in order to create their own market positioning. Two independent clusters emerged for hoteliers. The results of cluster analysis and further independent sample t-test were shown in Table 5.
5. Conclusion
Even though LODGQUAL, the hotel quality instruments, were recommend to hotels by administering periodically to track the service quality trend (Getty, 1994).It is hard for the hotels in Taiwan to conduct these quality instruments practically because of different culture and regulations. These hotel quality instruments just can be tailored to meet the needs of inpidual hotels based on their different marketing strategies or business goals because there was a significant different between the service quality measures and different cultural groups (Armstrong et al., 1997). LODGSERV在客户和酒店经营管理英文文献和中文翻译(4):http://www.youerw.com/fanyi/lunwen_31976.html