Customer centricity, customer service perception in hospitality

Year 2019

The project explores the relationship between customer centricity, change in organizational culture, service customization and reputation. The research is based on the in-depth study of three business cases of hotels that have implemented a software called Hoxell (hoxell.com) that has already been studied in literature as a smart technology (Neuhofer et al., 2015) able to deliver personalized and memorable experiences (Piccoli et al., 2017) through co-creation of value in the hospitality sector (Piccoli, 2014).

The research aims to i) analyse the organisation's commitment to customer centricity; ii) investigate the role of technology in encouraging this involvement; iii) measure the impact that the degree of use of technology and the organisation's orientation towards customer centricity have on its reputation and results. The methodology involves the collection of the following data in each of the cases analyzed: a) semi-structured interviews with hotel management on a questionnaire of 11 variables based on Shah et al. (2006); b) collection of Tripadvisor reviews available for each hotel until 1 October 2017 (5008); c) analytics of Hoxell's CRM to measure the use of the platform by hotels. The study is being reviewed (second round) for publication in the International Journal of Hospitality Management.