A Qualitative Study of Service on Customer Satisfaction

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
In recent times, customer’s satisfaction has been the main concern for every hotel and resort. Customers are now more valued and every effort is being made to keep them loyal to the hotel and make them permanent visitors. The hotel industry believes that higher level of customer satisfaction may result in higher levels of repurchase. Repeat purchasing is essential to a continued stream of profitability through achieving higher levels of customer satisfaction (Oliver, 1997). The customers’ satisfaction can be defined as “the fulfillment response” which they feel towards given service. It has been a judgment that a product or service feature, or the product or service itself, provides (or is providing) a pleasurable level of consumption-related fulfillment, including levels of underfulfilment or overfulfilment” (Oliver, 1996, p. 14). The concept of consumer satisfaction occupies a central position in marketing thought and practice. Conceptually, satisfaction is an outcome of purchase and use results from the buyer’s comparison of the rewards and costs of the purchase in relation to the anticipated consequences. Operationally, satisfaction is similar to attitude in that it can be assessed as the sum of the satisfactions with the various attributes of the product or service.
With due consideration of this marketing approach, every effort is being made to provide the customers with better services in order to keep them loyal and make them a repeat visitor. The customer’ behaviour is considered as the ultimate success scale within the industry. The hotel industry is also among those sectors which have been trying to attract customers as long term visits. For this purpose, the hotel industry consistently applies different approaches to assess the customers’ satisfaction level in order to introduce new methods to attract them and make them their repeat visitors.
The Pearl of Africa (Uganda) has many

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