Introduction
The firm randomly sampled 30 customers that visited the restaurant between 1st match 2016 to 28th march the same year. The overall is further divided into three strata with each having a total of ten respondent based on whether the customer purchased alcohol beverage, non-alcoholic beverage or food. The decision is taken since the paper aims at understanding its ability to retain customers based on satisfaction and probability of return measures in each business line. In addition, the firm is interested in understanding satisfaction level associated with the support facilities such as the washroom, interior design, sink cleanliness and accessibility of the dinner since they will play a role in improving the willingness to return. First, the respondents were first classified by gender, age and whether they were visiting the establishment for the first time. The level of satisfaction on the satisfaction measures and the likelihood variables are quantified using a Likert scale with 5 being the highest level of satisfaction and likelihood of return.
Data Summary; Descriptive
Data Meaning
Age, gender and whether the customer is a first timer is categorical data. Therefore, the applicable measure of central tendency is the mode, the most likely value to be sampled (White, 2005: Wegner, 2007). From the collected data, the firm's beverage customers, alcoholic and nonalcoholic, mainly comprises of customer between 26 years to 35 years. In relation to foods, most of the customers are customer between 16 years and 25 years. In relation to gender, the firm serves a higher number of male beverage customers, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, than the female customers. However, the firm has more female customer purchasing food. Finally, the firm customers are mainly regulars in all the three business.
Examining the satisfaction levels on both overall and specific satisfaction measures and the likelihood to return, several matters arise. Considering the alcoholic beverage business line, the firm records a below average score in bar cleanliness measure in all the three measures of central tendency where the below average score is any score below 2.5. The measure also has a high dispersion from the mean and relatively high correlation of variation meaning that the responses are highly fluid. Considering the nonalcoholic business line, all the satisfaction measures are above average. Finally, considering the food business line, variety of food measure records a below average score in all the three measures. Also, the dispersion from the mean and the correlation of variation are relatively high.
Overall, the firm has a performance that is above average but cannot be considered as excellent. Also, the variation is very high meaning that there is a high level of fluidity in customer opinion. In this case, it is assumed that 20% coefficient of variation is the acceptable variation. The coefficient of variation gives a more realistic view of dispersion from the mean than standard deviation since it considers the aggregate deviation from the mean (Anderson, 2013: Bajpai, 2009). Therefore, from the output, only three measures namely employee knowledge, nonalcoholic variety and alcoholic beverage customer likelihood to return are within the limit hence, the responses in these measures are highly affirmative. Fluidity is important since it inform the organization on the convergence (affirmativeness) of provided feedback (White, 2005).
There are two factors that are considered using the quartile technique namely overall satisfaction likelihood to return. First, the likelihood to return for the nonalcoholic beverage customer needs urgent attention since it registers the most dismal performance. From the quantile reading, up to 50% of the entire customers are represented by code 2. From the coding, 2 mean that the customer is not likely to return therefore more than half of the alcoholic beverage customers are not likely to return. In other consideration, the second quantile is the border line to inform the decision since it captures at least half of the customers in the sample. Consequently, the higher the value of median tends to 5, the better the organization is performing. The higher value means that more satisfied and likely to return are included in the first fifty percent since quartile values are arranged in ascending order. Any value that is below 3 must be addressed since it means a larger part of the customers are dissatisfied or in different thus are not likely to return.
There are there supportive factors that may affect the customer satisfaction thus the willingness to return. From the table below, the support factors are adequately playing their role in supporting the business operations since they are edging towards excellence (Greater than3) and the coefficient of variation is lower than 20% meaning the opinion would rarely vary, the responses are highly affirmative.
Correlation Analysis
The weakest relationship between satisfaction and likelihood to return relates to food customers. However, in all the three, the correlation is positive meaning that an increase in customer’s satisfaction will lead to an increase in the customer likelihood to return. For instance, if food customer satisfaction increases by 1 unit, it is likely to lead to 0.5044496 increases in the likelihood to return.
Percentages
The firm has been recording mixed growth trajectory. Therefore, the chart below summarizes the percentage growth of the firm for the last 16 quarters on quarter to quarter basis.
Software Used Summary
The data that is corrected from the questioner is summarized in numerical form in excel spreadsheet. Excel is a powerful tool that is used in an analysis. As such, the paper is based on outputs that have been generated using excel spreadsheet by tapping into the program in build functions.
The Business Report
Growth in profitability is one of the factors that can determine business survival. Therefore, the trend that a business takes is one of the key elements that the management has to consider to ensure the business survives. However, growth in sales is one of the indicators that drive profitability. In the hospitality industry, there is a high profitability margin which is relatively constant. Consequently, more attention should be given on the ability to drive sales since they will be the key profitability driving force. The chart below summarizes the organization performance over the last sixteen-quarters and two-quarters projection.
The data shows a worrying trend that the managers have to address to guarantee the survival of the firm. The growth in revenues has been declining significantly considering that quarter year data is used. From the projection, the future does not look bright since the polynomial of degree 3 predicts that the firm sales revenues will continue on a downward trend.
The firm should not read too much on the actual revenue. Quarter to quarter development is better since a business is always based on improving on the most recent performance. As evident in chart 2, the firm is recording a low positively sloped revenue growth trend that is characterized by fluctuations. As such, the firm is not consistent with its growth. Considering the future outlook, the three-degree polynomial that makes the projection suggests that the firm sales will be declining.
The firm needs to understand the cause of the registered results. Therefore, from the correlation analysis, it is clear that the level of satisfaction of has a strong correlation with the firm’s customer likelihood of returning. However, overall satisfaction is a measure influenced by specific satisfaction measures. As such, overall satisfaction and specific satisfaction measures were examined. From the analysis, two critical issues were observed. First, customers were dissatisfied with the food variety that the establishment offers. Examining the proportion the food business line contributes to the overall revenue, it was discovered that food sales accounted for an average of 70 percent of the total revenues. Therefore, an effect on the food business line would have a 70% effect on the entire business. However, from the analysis, the business fails to satisfy its customer on its core business line considering the food variety is not satisfying. Second, customers are not satisfied with the level of cleanliness at the bar. Considering the proportion of contribution from each business line, the alcoholic-beverage sales account for 15% of the business. Similarly, affecting this business line will have an effect of 15% of the entire business revenue. In order to improve on future prospects, the firm must address the two situations by carrying out market research and business benchmarking from some of the leading enterprises in order to redevelop its food variety and understand the customer meaning of cleanliness since the enterprise has passed all public health requirement on cleanliness yet the customers are not satisfied. The analysis shows the reason the customer has a high value in new customer but examining the growth rates, the firm ability to attract new customer does not match its growth since the firm should be recording an increasing quarter to quarter growth rate. The table below summarizes the frequency of new customers and regulars.
Further consideration must be factored in to complement on the primary improvement initiative in the food and alcohol business line. From the data collected, the firm is termed as above average. However, excellence is the currency that characterizes the hospitality industry (Sheth, Parvatiyar, and Shainesh, 2001). As such, for the firm to have sustained growth, the firm must strive to attain excellence. Therefore, the firm must invest in improving on its staff skills to better attend the customers. Primarily, this will include training the employee on customer service skills. In addition, the firm will need to incorporate customer service into the vision statement in order to share the vision that the firm has a primary goal of offering exceptional service to the customer (Goodman, 2009).
In addition, the firm ought to develop a total quality management system. The system is intended to guarantee on the improvement of quality at all stages. In essence, total quality management sees quality management process as a system that is affected by the effectiveness of each stage in the process (Tuntirattanasoontorn, 2005: Total quality management, 2011: Sharpe, 2011: Naagarazan and Arivalagar, 2005). Therefore, each stage is given all the required attention to ensure it does not undermine the rest of the process. In addition, the total quality management will align the firm quality objectives with the organization goals that the firm pursues (Kanji, 2005: Rao, 2006). The inclusion of quality as an element in the vision statement shows the senior management commitment to quality improvement process which serves to encourage the employee to work in a manner that promotes service quality.
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