THE BUYER DECISION PROCESS – CASE STUDY

Valarie Zeithaml, a marketing consultant, published a classic article describing how

the consumer evaluation process differs between goods and services. Persons purchasing
hospitality and travel services rely more on information from personal sources. When looking
for a good restaurant, people ask friends or people familiar with the town, such as front-desk
employees or the con- cierge. Restaurants should attempt to affect positively those persons
whom potential customers may contact. In larger cities there is a concierge association. Smart
restaurateurs seek to host this club, letting their members experience the restaurants.
Postpurchase evaluation of services is important. The intangibility of services makes
it difficult to judge the service beforehand. Consumers may seek advice from friends but use
the information they receive from actually purchasing the service to evaluate it. The first-time
customer is on a trial basis. If the hotel or restaurant satisfies the customers, they will come
back.
When purchasing hospitality and travel products, customers often use price as an
indication of quality. A business executive who has been under a lot of pressure decides to
take a three-day vacation now that the project is complete. She wants luxury accommodations
and good food service. She is prepared to pay $175 a night for the room. She calls a hotel that
offers a special rate of $85. This hotel may be able to satisfy her needs and has simply
dropped its rate to encourage business. In this case, the hotel has dropped its rate too low to
attract this customer. Because she has never visited the hotel, she will perceive that the hotel
is below her standard. Similarly, a person who enjoys fresh seafood and sees grilled red
snapper on the menu for $7.99 will assume that it must be a low-quality frozen product
because fresh domestic fish usually costs at least twice as much. When using price to create
demand, care must be taken to ensure that one does not create the wrong consumer
perceptions about the product’s quality.
When customers purchase hospitality and travel products, they often perceive some
risk in the purchase. If customers want to impress friends or business associates, they usually
take them to a restaurant they have visited previously. Customers tend to be loyal to
restaurants and hotels that have met their needs. A meeting planner is reluctant to change
hotels if the hotel has been doing a good job.
Customers of hospitality and travel products often blame themselves when
dissatisfied. A man who orders scampi may be disappointed with the dish but not complain
because he blames himself for the bad choice. He loves the way his favorite restaurant fixes
scampi, but he should have known that this restaurant would not be able to pre- pare it the
same way. When the waiter asks how everything is, he replies that it was okay. Employees
must be aware that dissatisfied customers may not complain. They should try to seek out
sources of guest dissatisfaction and resolve them. A waiter noticing someone not eating his or
her food may ask if he or she could replace it with an alternative dish and suggest some items
that could be brought out very quickly.

According to the case, how does hospitality manager apply the buyer decision process to
meet buyer needs?