The remedies used for the COVID-19 pandemic such as travel restrictions and quarantine have created severe difficulties for the hotel industry. However, there is also a scarcity of effective response strategies for the tourism and hospitality industry. This paper introduces a responding strategy developed by a case hotel in Vietnam to help survive this troubled period. Marketing's service-dominant logic and Bourdieu's theoretical framework of habitus, capitals, and field are used to facilitate the analysis of findings. Our empirical analysis further highlights the development of the paid quarantine service in a case hotel, which can help both hotels and authorities in Vietnam to respond effectively to the pandemic.
Service Innovation is critical for service improvement and development that enhance customer satisfaction. Besides the importance of technology and tangible products, innovativeness leverages customer satisfaction by stimulating their five senses perception. Service-Dominant Logic emphasises the role of innovativeness in service delivery in alignment with customer perception to create Service Innovation. In other words, innovativeness involves the innovative service clues that drive customer perception when experiencing the intangible values of the operation. Despite the importance of innovativeness, studies for the issue appear to be limited and are especially scarce on qualitative research technique. Thus, this study aims to explore the impact of innovativeness on customer satisfaction in the case of hotel operations as qualitative research. A set of propositions are generated based on relevant works of literature and an approximate of one thousand reviews on the TripAdvisor website. The reviewers were international customers of 20 boutique hotels in Vietnam. The thematic analysis with deductive approach was employed to determine the key themes of Innovativeness that influence customer satisfaction. The findings suggest a conceptual model about the influences of 1) Innovative Humanic Clues, 2) Innovative Mechanic Clues and 3) Innovative Functional Clues on the customer's Transaction-Specific Satisfaction. The model explains how customers perceive innovativeness through the five senses and their evaluation on the innovativeness of the operations. The study, therefore, addresses the importance of innovativeness in service operation management to satisfy customer expectation for a new experience.
Purpose
This paper aims to propose a conceptual framework to investigate the influences of innovative services on customer satisfaction and behavioural intentions. As service innovation has been focusing on the influences of product and technology innovation, this paper provides another insight into service innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
The proposed conceptual framework is based on findings from reviewing key theories and concepts, together with relevant literature in the service operation management, service innovation and hospitality management.
Findings
The proposed conceptual framework can be used to test empirically and explicate customer satisfaction and behavioural intentions towards service innovation of the hospitability operations. There are seven determinants can influence customer satisfaction: innovative mechanic clues, innovative humanic clues and innovative functional clues to influence customer transaction-specific satisfaction; complexity, meaningfulness, novelty and affordability to influence customer overall satisfaction. Customer expectation is formed by social factors, information, knowledge and their need to influence their actual perception, and the comparison between customers’ expectation and actual perception cause their satisfaction. The relationships amongst transaction-specific satisfaction, overall satisfaction and behavioural intentions can explain customer satisfaction comprehensively as a process of before, during and after their perception.
Practical implications
This paper highlights the importance of innovative service delivery and customers’ evaluation to contribute to creating service innovation. A synthetic definition of service innovation emphasised can help practitioners to define key determinants to effectively influence customer satisfaction and their behavioural intentions. Thus, marketing strategy aligned with operation management, can be practised appropriately.
Originality/value
This study provides key determinants to influencing customer satisfaction of service innovation through innovative service delivery in the hospitality operation, based on key theories and relevant literature.
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