Search results

This study compared the results of self-report and ability-based tests of problem-solving abilities of 144 hospitality managers working at hotels and restaurants through an online survey. In the first stage of the study, the managers were asked to fill in the self-report problem-solving ability scale by Tesone et al. (2010). In the second stage of the study, the managers were asked to respond to questions in a case-study-based problem-solving test.

Problem-solving is a key aspect of business process management. This study aims to investigate and compare hospitality managers' actual and claimed (self-report) problem-solving abilities. A lack of unawareness of the actual level of skills may be an important problem as managers who tend to have inflated self-efficacy beliefs are less likely to allocate resources, e.g. time, money and effort, to develop a particular skill or ability they lack. They are also more likely to take risks regarding that skill or ability.

The results of the study showed that there was a major difference between the results of the self-report test and the actual test. This meant that the managers who participated in the study had inflated self-efficacy beliefs regarding their problem-solving abilities, i.e. they operated under the influence of the Dunning–Kruger effect. The study showed that self-report tests that are commonly used in businesses in recruitment and promotion may not provide a correct level of people's abilities. In general, managers who have inflated self-efficacy beliefs are less likely to be interested in developing a particular skill due to the overconfidence arising from their inflated self-efficacy beliefs. The study showed that managers were less likely to allocate resources, e.g. time, money and effort, to develop a particular skill they lack and are more likely to take risks regarding that particular skill.

Managers in the hospitality industry appear to lack problem solving-abilities. While the hospitality managers assigned high marks for their problem-solving abilities in a self-report problem-solving scale and appeared to be performing significantly good overall in problem-solving, they performed poorly in an actual problem solving exercise. It is recommended that businesses rather than depending on self-report problem-solving scales, they should resort to ability-based scales or exercises that actually measure managers' problem-solving abilities. Also, as managers who had formal tourism and hospitality education performed poorly, tourism and hospitality programme managers at universities are recommend to review their syllabi and curriculum so as to help support their graduates' problem-solving abilities.

The study is original as no previous study compared managers' problem-solving abilities by using self-report and ability-based tests. The study has implications for researchers in terms of developing knowledge, ability and skill-based scales in the future. The study has also significant practical implications for the practitioners.

Scales play an important role in researching and understanding a field. This study aims to explore scales developed in hospitality and tourism to identify the trends and the gaps in the scale development studies with a view to make scale development recommendations for future studies.

The study explores and analyses 253 scales developed from the perspectives of scope and methodology. The scales were first grouped into categories to identify trends and gaps in scale development to be able to make recommendations from the scope perspective. Then, for the methodology perspective, the scales were analysed according to various criteria such as sampling, reliability, validity and pilot testing reporting.

The study shows that while there are opportunities in some areas to develop newer scales, some areas appear to be saturated. It is important to note that all scales appear to be self-report scales which may result in the measurement of self-perceptions of people alone regarding a phenomenon. The study also pointed out some of the methodological shortcomings in the scales developed.

The study has both theoretical and practical implications. From a theoretical implications perspective, the study identified the overlaps and the gaps in scale development and provided several new scale development ideas concerning their scopes/topics and methodologies. From a practical perspective, the study shed light on the extent which the scales are relevant and useable by the practitioners in the tourism and hospitality establishments.

The study is original as there is no collective review of hospitality and tourism scales. The study identifies the trends, gaps, overlaps and some of the weaknesses of the scales developed and offers several valuable recommendations for the future.

The purpose of this paper is to review the book, Shakespeare, Einstein and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education, which takes a creative approach to marketing of universities to an increasingly global marketplace and an audience growing in sophistication.

The reviewer approaches a US‐oriented volume through the eyes of an academic outside of the USA but familiar with the thematics from a broad, interdisciplinary background.

Both the author and reviewer sense that those responsible for placing their institutions in an attractive position to survive and thrive in a global economy need to look at their efforts through the eyes of professional marketers while taking a more creative and opportune approach.

This volume provides such a more creative and opportune approach, which will be of interest to both administration and faculty alike.

This chapter explains and discusses the role and potential of psychophysiological tools of research in tourism and hospitality. As tourism and hospitality services are in general inseparable, i.e. the delivery and the consumption of the service mostly take place at the same time, they tend to involve service encounters which intense and frequent contact and social interactions between the customers and the service providers. These intense and frequent contact and social interactions during service encounters may determine the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the customers. Hence, the measurement of actual emotions to understand the reactions of customers to various aspects of the service is of paramount importance. Psychophysiological tools, often referred to as neuromarketing tools, allow the collection of realistic data regarding the emotions of the customers. Based on the above background, this chapter explains and discusses the use of tools such as the EEG, Eye Tracker, Galvanic Skin Response, and Facial Expression Recognition in understanding tourism and hospitality customers' reactions and emotions to various aspects of the service.

This chapter explains the role and potential of colour and lighting as two important elements of the service atmosphere in tourism and hospitality service encounters. The chapter first explains the importance of colour and lighting in services from the perspective of customers’ sensory perceptions. Then, the chapter provides examples to demonstrate how psychological/neuro-marketing tools of Eye Tracker and Facial Recognition, Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and Heart Rate (HR) can be used to understand the role of colour and lighting in customer satisfaction in tourism and hospitality service encounters. Based on this perspective, the study offers recommendations to design service environments in terms of colour and lighting.

Consumers are faced with many new products. In almost every product category it is seen that there are more alternatives than provided in previous years. This situation may cause consumers to feel uncomfortable/uncertain, especially about new products. Therefore, since they perceive this uncertainty, customers want to be in control. Control is one of the ways to help customers to decide on perceived risky situations.

The main purpose of the study is to explain the effects of the risk and control drive on consumer behavior and determine how businesses reduce the risk that consumers feel.

It is critical for enterprises to increase their brand awareness in order to reduce consumers’ risk perceptions and increase their controls (cognitive, behavioral, and decision) during purchasing decisions. Also, it will be useful for them to focus on activities increasing brand loyalty. They can especially carry out marketing activities allowing consumers to try new products or providing money back guarantees. Moreover, in order to reduce the risk perception and increase control by the customers, making the promotional contents of the product understandable and simple without hidden factors will contribute in a positive way.

A comparative analysis of ideologically opposed Turkish newspapers’ coverage of the Gezi Park protests, which was a wave of pro-democracy movement in Turkey, is critical because the media not only have a strong influence on opinion formation (Fairclough, 1989) but also provide the most relevant context for observing controversial interpretations and practices of democracy in Turkey. Although previous research on the media framing of social movements (Chan & Lee, 1984; Dardis, 2006; Hackett & Zhao, 1994; McLeod & Hertog, 1999) has shown that the media delegitimized the protests to serve the interests of the political status quo, it is expected that a much more complicated attitude may be revealed in the Turkish media because of the protest issue and polarized media. To this end, I triangulate corpus linguistics with frame analysis to explore discrepancies between the right and left wing newspapers’ coverage of the protests. Contrary to previous studies, no sort of unanimity on the side of the political authority is observed in Turkish media. While right wing newspapers widely use delegitimizing frames to portray the protests as an international plot or a masquerade, left wing newspapers only use legitimizing frames to deem the protests as a reasonable reaction to the controversial policies of the government. The findings of this study provide a new understanding of changing media attitudes toward social mobilizations in an era which has witnessed a series of movements for democracy and equality.

The development of information technologies and the increase in the number of new generation of technology-based consumers lead to significant changes in the promotion and positioning strategies implemented in consumer markets. Applications such as Augmented Reality (AR) have become widespread in promotion activities.

In this study, the authors aimed to determine whether there was a difference between customers’ brand trust and purchase intentions regarding real experiences of the consumers at the store, experiences about AR applications, and traditional advertisements.

Results show that AR applications differ in terms of brand trust and purchasing intention according to traditional advertisements, and the attitudes of consumers toward brand trust and purchase intention in AR applications are more favorable than traditional advertisements. In the light of the results of the study, various strategy proposals were presented to researchers and marketing practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to explore county tourism competitiveness, research performance, and overall country competitiveness with a view to pinpoint certain issues and perspectives to be explored for pubic policy makers.

This paper is a discussion paper and it presents data collected from a documentary survey based on an appropriate literature search.

The paper discusses some of the issues influencing country tourism competitiveness.

The paper is particularly of interest to public policy makers in government departments (tourism and other) as it reviews country tourism competitiveness and overall country competitiveness and for academicians and research bodies.