Since submitting the draft of the dissertation proposal, I begin to plan and think more about my dissertation.
For the proposed topic, I would like to find out how the quality of service in spa tourism in Thailand is perceived among people who have experienced spa tourism in Thailand. The reasons I selected this topic for my dissertation are mainly from my personal interest. First of all, as I dream of being the owner of a Thai Spa shop when I graduate from Greenwich University, I would like to study and understand the background of the spa tourism in Thailand. Plus, the customer is deemed to be the most important for the success in operating the business. And then, I would like to know how these customers perceive the quality of the spa service.
To reach the aims of my research in discovering the visitors’ satisfaction on service quality of spa tourism in Thailand, the objectives of my research then are to explore the history and trends of spa tourism globally and nationally, to identify the importance of service quality in tourism industry, to determine the tools used in service quality evaluation and its benefits, to evaluate the level of tourists’ satisfaction towards spa tourism in Thailand, and to develop the result and recommend it to the spa tourism industry operators in Thailand how to improve their service quality.
With those objectives I set, I hope that my research will help me to understand and gain the knowledge about the spa tourism and the importance of the service quality.
Then, the key words I need to study and make a research are spa, spa tourism, services, service quality, customer satisfaction, customer perception, customer expectation, and SERVQUAL technique.
As stated in the draft of proposal, I would do the research based on the deductive approach and collect the quantitative data by following the SERVQUAL dimensions before using MS Excel programme to collect and analyse the data from the frequency of each dimension and the difference between customer expectation value and the customer perception value.
Although the draft of my proposal looks ok, but after I sent the email to my supervisor, there are many issues I need to fix such as the specific group of respondents and the way to gather the data. Another problem that I might find during conducting my research is the available data in the online database as I have already moved back to Thailand.
Any comments or suggestions are warmly welcomed!
I have been following your worksteps since i am very interested in it. I think u are on a good way now and got the key aspects u wanna write. Can't wait for your next posts and get some closer interesting informations about Thai Spas
ReplyDelete..first of all nice of you to write your dissertation about topic that is correlated with your goals in life.
ReplyDeleteObviously you hit upon difficulties collecting data of :
"services, service quality, customer satisfaction, customer perception, customer expectation" which are very individiallly evaluated.
Anyway once you find a way to get your database your dissertation will be very intresting.
Wish you the best finding and writing!
waiting for your next post
Dom
Interesting topic you chose! As you mentioned though, it is very difficult to get hold of useful quantitative data which is in fact relevant for your research, especially as it a relatively new phenomen. Furthermore the Thai spa industry is not set up as a chain business (yet). The owners are not big corporations but rather local enterpreneurs I believe. Therefore marketing techniques as eg. market research are probably not very well established and often conducted. You might need to do some field research or use data from non-specific spas & wellness tourism.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion it is adequate and sensible to choose servqual as measurment scale. You can focus on important attributes and won't lose any of your scarce time ressources!
Looking forward to read more and wish you best of luck with your research and with your dream of course, too. ;)
kevin
I think you're definitely on the right path now! I will be travelling to.thailand in summer, so im really looking forward to further results and progress of your study!
ReplyDeleteT think this is great topic that you should keep going becauce
ReplyDelete1. This business would help Thailand more well-known as present.
2. Thai is a massive famous spa in the world and dramatically growing.
As mentioned u'll continue ur profession in such industry, I ENVY! Spa and massage is not for the rich and famous like old days, but it matters in terms of health. With your future marketing plan that you may gain along conducting this matter, I believe u'll succeed in creating one lovely spa and massage service center; and please dont forget to make it affordable for common person like me, hehe ^_^
ReplyDeleteAnyway, in order to succeed ur dissertation, you need to put a lot of effort into it. Fighting!