Exploring the relationship between culture and satisfaction in a luxury hotel setting in Iran: a Homa Hotel Group study

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Habibikermani, M, 2022. Exploring the relationship between culture and satisfaction in a luxury hotel setting in Iran: a Homa Hotel Group study. DBA, Nottingham Trent University.

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Abstract

The possible relationship between customer Satisfaction and Culture is the main focus in the present research project. Satisfaction is defined as the gap between customer Perception and Expectations (Parasuraman et al., 1988). The present research project attempts to explore the impact of Culture on both customer Perception and Expectation and if any impact is observed, it can be inferred that there is a relationship between Culture and Satisfaction. The data collection tool was a questionnaire administered on 412 respondents in Tehran and Shiraz Homa Hotel Group (HHG) which provide services to mostly business guests and leisure guests, respectively. The items of the questionnaire were selected based on an expert review. Culture was measured by the Hofstede’s (2011) cultural model. Additionally, lack of cultural distinction was also measured by a Cosmopolitanism measurement (Clevel et al., 2014). Furthermore, Perception was measured by the HOMALUXPERF which is a Perception measurement tool specifically developed by the researcher to be applied in the HHG. HOMALUXPERF was developed based on the SERVPERF model (Cronin and Taylor, 1994). For the evaluation of Expectation, Kano model, which was developed in 1984 by Noriaki Kano, was utilized. The main objective of the research was to categorize respondents based on their cultural evaluation derived from Hofstede’s model and Cosmopolitanism measurement and then conduct a comparison between these cultural categories in order to be able to provide suitable and individualized service offerings to the HHG guests based on their cultural background. However, the results of the comparison between cultural clusters in terms of guests’ Perception did not produce any significant differences among these clusters of respondents except for occasions where Iranian respondents were involved, which is unclear whether it is an own-country issue or a cultural difference issue. Moreover, the results of the Kano model demonstrated that most of the services questioned were categorized as "Indifferent", which translates to unimportant/insignificant to guests’ Satisfaction (Kano, 1984), by the majority of the respondents. In order to compare the Kano model results across different cultural clusters contingency tables were utilized and the items in the Kano questionnaire were grouped based on their themes. The results were not indicative of any significant differences except clusters where Iranian respondents were present. In conclusion, the results could only produce suggestions for the two branches of HHG based on their constitution of guests.

Item Type:	Thesis
Description:	Abridged version
Creators:	Habibikermani, M.
Date:	February 2022
Rights:	This work is the intellectual property of Majid Habibikermani. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed in the owner(s) of the Intellectual Property Rights.
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Laura Ward
Date Added:	26 Aug 2022 08:48
Last Modified:	26 Aug 2022 08:48
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/46924