Relationship/collaborative selling, as opposed to traditional, transaction oriented selling, stresses the need to form relationships with prospects and customers across all stages of the buyer-seller relationship (Jolson, 1997). The problem is that applying the relationship selling process to...

Do customers in rural and urban markets want the same thing from a restaurant server? While researchers have stressed the importance of sub-culture and made the call for empirical research, few studies have incorporated sub-culture into their research, especially within the hospitality industry....

The hospitality industry continuously seeks to recruit available talents from a variety of sources in order to provide uniquely satisfying services to customers. This has become a more challenging task with companies expanding their business into markets where cultures are dissimilar to those of...

The offer of vacation packages is a marketing tool called bundling, selling at least two separate products at one single price (Guiltinan, 1987). Sellers adopt bundling strategies in order to sell more at lower costs, to contract consumer surplus, and to create value for consumers. Consumers...

The primary objective of this study was to explore the relationship among various market structure constructs (consisting of barriers to entry, competition, growth, and market share) and their potential impact on financial performance. By applying theoretical underpinnings from the disciplines...

Understanding the choice behavior of customers is crucial for effective service management and marketing in the hospitality industry. The first purpose of this dissertation is to examine the differential effects that cognitive, affective, and sensory attributes have on consumer hotel choice. The...

Emotional labor can be defined as the degree of manipulation of one¡¯s inner feelings or outward behavior to display the appropriate emotion in response to display rules or occupational norms. This study concerns the development of an emotional labor model for the hospitality industry that...

An Investigation of the Relationships between Diversity Management Training Involvement with the Personal Inputs and Outputs of Managers in the Lodging Industry.LaChelle Rachel WilbornCommittee Chair: Pamela A. WeaverDepartment of Hospitality and Tourism Management(ABSTRACT)Increased numbers of...

The concept of customer orientation is becoming increasingly more important to managers, especially in service industries. Given the premise of the study that a customer-oriented employee has a critical role in enhancing service quality, little research has investigated the antecedents of the...

The purpose of this study was to understand the types of competitive methods used by independent hotels in their bid to obtain and sustain competitive advantage. The concept of the co-alignment principle, as it relates to the choice of competitive methods and their implementation, was the focus...