Business Decision Paper
...ces for them to be successful. In order to keep the company ahead of their competitors and to satisfy their customers as well as their employees, the company frequently uses qualitative research. Qualitative research techniques are part of primary research. It is particularly helpful in identifying the scope of the research that should be pursued to fully understand the views, opinions and attitudes that may be encountered. It’s also ideal for generating new ideas, fine tuning concepts and testing advertisements. Survey instruments can be pre-tested in part using qualitative research techniques (www.ryerson.ca). Marriot used the survey research to gather information so that conclusions can be drawn or decisions can be made about a population of interest. The company believes that to have the most consistent results, it is important to take great care in designing survey content and determining who to survey. To ensure the survey is appropriate, the company also hires a research expert to guide them in designing the survey. Through the expert, they know exactly what issue or opportunity the survey is intended to address and what information needs to be collected via the survey to address that issue. Research questions: Marriott’s customer satisfaction surveys are comparable to other similar companies. They ask general questions such as: How long did you stay? Did you enjoy your stay? What did you like about Marriott? What did you not like about Marriott? What would you change if you could change something about the hotel? And, of course, any additional comments you’d like to add. These set of questions are designed to gage the satisfaction of current customers as well as new customers. Overall, they’ve been able to help Marriott determine the key factors that drive guest satisfaction and intent to return. On the associate’s satisfaction surveys, questions that are usually asked are: How would you rate this property on treating you with respect as an individual? How would you rate this property on providing you with an immediate supervisor that deals fairly with everyone? Is this property able to keep high quality Associates? How often are your contributions recognized at this property? How would you rate this property on each of the following issues? Are you given the flexibility you need to balance work and family life? These are the basic questions in the survey. These questions are designed to gage the feelings and opinions of the associates in different departments, but in an anonymous way. Sample size: According to Cooper, a sampling frame is the list of elements from which the sample is actually drawn. It is a complete and correct list of population members only (2003, pg.188). Determining the population targeted is the first step in selecting the sample. (www.ryerson.ca). In selecting the target population, the company usually chooses people who are knowledgeable about the subject matter. Marriott has used both probability sampling and non-probability sampling. Probability sampling was used for hotel guests. They picked on one person per room occupied, or one person per household or company that just checked out of the hotel. Non-probability sampling was used for associate job satisfaction surveys. This is a big sample size, as the population includes all employees that work in each property in the US, including the various corporate offices. They send an e-mail request for each associate to participate in the survey within a specified amount of time. Having the correct survey population will directly impact the soundness of the survey results. However, rarely can they achieve 100% participation, whether due to time constraints or lack of interest. Data collection After the survey was sent out, Marriott uses the following steps to analyze the survey data: • Make sure the data has been entered correctly and double check for data entry errors. • Run basic descriptive statistics such as averages, standard deviations, etc. • Additional tests of the descriptive statistics to determine whether or not there is a high degree of constancy in responses and what the average rating or response is on each item for the survey sample overall. There are several different data types in Research, but the majority of data types that Marriott used were Ordinal Data. Most answers are rating from 1 – 5, for example, 1 very good, strongly agree, or always. 2 for good/agree/frequently, 3 for average/neither agree nor disagree/occasionally and continue to number 5. An associate must answer all the questions to be included in the calculation. The first step they do is eliminating respondents that did not answer all the questions. At Marriott, if the response rate is 70%, it means the participation level was very good, 50% is generally considered sufficient and 30% is the minimum acceptable standard. Anything below this level would not be admissible as representative of all the associates, or even of the associates in each department. Responses to all of the items in the questions are added together, averaged, and converted to a 100 point scale. The following is the example of how Marriott computed the results: Associate Job Type Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Total Scores Average A PT – Employee 5 5 4 5 5 24 24/5 = 4.8 B FT – Supervisor 5 4 5 5 4 23 23/5 =4.6 C PT – Employee 3 5 5 4 5 22 22/5 = 4.4 D FT – Employee 4 3 5 5 3 20 20/5 = 4 E FT – Manager 5 5 5 5 5 25 25/5 = 5 Then they converted each individual respondent’s average score to a 100 point scale by multiplying each score by 20 4.8 *20 = 96 4.6 * 20 = 92 4.4 * 20 = 88 4.0 * 20 = 80 5.0 * 20 = 100 In this case, the sample that they choose are all full time employees, therefore they have to eliminate the part time employees which will leave 3 left. The method averages totals of each individual response, 92 + 80 +100 = 272/3 = 90.67. You could say that the average full time employees at Marriott are 91 % satisfied with their job. A higher score represents more effective job satisfaction. Defend choices of research design, sample design and data collection. ...