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TNS Launches Hotel Industry First
20/11/00



Taylor Nelson Sofres Hospitality & Leisure is launching the global hotel industry's first customer commitment tracking programme. The programme, which delivers results to clients via the Internet, uses Conversion Model, the leading brand equity model.

Developed by Dr Jannie Hofmeyr in South Africa, originally as a measure of religious conversion, Conversion Model is now used by 80% of the top global brands. Use of the model enables hotel groups to answer the following key questions:

  • How committed are my customers?
  • What's driving customer commitment?
  • Why are some customers uncommitted?
  • Is it because my customers are dissatisfied - and if so, why?
  • Is it a problem of lack of involvement - if so can I create compelling reasons for them to stay with me?
  • Are my customers attracted to my competitors - if so what can I do to create perceived parity?
  • To which brands are my customers defecting, and why?
According to Stuart Scher, Chairman of Taylor Nelson Sofres Hospitality and Leisure, "Classical customer satisfaction measurement continues to dominate marketing research in the hotel industry, even as the world's leading loyalty theorists recognise that it is fundamentally flawed. At the 12th annual customer satisfaction congress held by the American Marketing Association this year, Michael Johnson (the Mainer Phelps professor of marketing at the University of Michigan Business School and a key figure in the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index) admitted that theorists know a lot about what makes people satisfied, but very little about 'real-world' loyalty." Mr Scher continued: "As theorists are beginning to realise, the models on which the customer satisfaction industry is based are wrong. The industry uses extraordinarily sophisticated statistical models to identify 'drivers of loyalty', but the inputs it uses simply don't correlate well with 'real-world' loyalty. One reason is failure to understand the importance of emotional involvement as a measure of loyalty and satisfaction. Another factor to understand is the importance of competitor image, where customers can be committed to more than one hotel brand, which can undermine loyalty. Conversion Model is the only measure of customer commitment in the world that is based on a theory of the interaction of all these dimensions - satisfaction, loyalty and the attraction to alternatives." Taylor Nelson Sofres Hospitality and Leisure draws upon the TNS worldwide network to enable hospitality companies, particularly hotel chains, to understand the relationships between customer service, staff effectiveness and future profitability. TNS Hospitality and Leisure is the only specialist marketing information company able to conduct global mystery customer programmes and global customer satisfaction tracking programmes. The data is delivered to clients via the Internet using a website developed specifically to house Conversion Model. The website: Hospitality-Feedback.com allows clients to view, manipulate and benchmark their information.