The Effectiveness and Efficiency of Psychology of Marketing: Is the Understanding Psychology of Consumer Behaviour Useful in Hotel Industry?

By

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to sincerely thank my friends, family, colleagues and mentor for the endless understanding, guidance and patience, and most importantly, the support and friendship during my studies. The mentorship of these people has been paramount in facilitating me a well-formed experience which has always provided unswerving guide in achieving my goals. They encouraged me to go further with all my projects and helped me groom into an independent thinker and a good student.

DECLARATION

I adjudge that the entire content of this dissertation is entirely my own work; the content used in this dissertation has not been submitted before in any educational institution and represents my own opinion.

Signed __________________ Date _________________

ABSTRACT

The study deals with the concept of assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of the psychology of marketing at the hotel industry. By thorough research on the idea of consumer behaviour, the current thesis studies the types of consumer behaviours, the decision-making, and consumption patterns of the hotel services by the consumer. In the digital generation, consumer is recently getting smart and a company is affected by psychology of consumer and behaviour. Thus, business culture is changing such as consumer to consumer. Many companies have been doing marketing research till now. Within the field of consumer decision making, a relatively small number of studies have been conducted on the socially conscious consumer. Significantly more research has been conducted on consumer choice and general decision making behaviour. Many valuable contributions from that stream of research are directly applicable to the questions this research asks about environmentally conscious consumers. The main aim of marketing research is to suggest information of consumer and support business decision-making. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of Psychology of marketing in hotel industry by understanding the consumer behaviour. In order to do so, the case of Intercontinental, Hilton, and Marriott hotel are discussed and studied so that an effective conclusion on the subject of the application of psychology of marketing can be reached.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTII

DECLARATIONIII

ABSTRACTIV

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Introduction1

Problem Statement3

Aims and Objectives3

Purpose of Study4

Research Question4

Learning Process4

Electronic Database Searches5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW7

Marketing7

Psychology of Marketing8

Consumer Behaviour9

Factors Influencing Consumer Behaviour12

Family and Reference Group influences12

Individual Differences13

Atmospheric Effects13

Consumer Decision-making14

Hotel Industry and consumer behaviour17

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY20

Mixed Research Method Approach20

Selection of Participants21

Instrument21

Data preparation and statistical procedures21

Data Analysis22

Data Collection22

CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION24

Introduction24

Selected UK Hotels24

Hilton hotel24

Marriott hotel24

InterContinental Hotels25

Descriptive Analysis of Questionnaire26

Interview Questions29

Descriptive analysis of literature review32

Consumer behaviour and hotel industry32

Hotel Marketing and consumers' decision of making purchases (Four p's)34

Consumers Expectation from Hotels37

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS39

Recommendations45

REFERENCES46

APPENDIX51

Survey Questions51

Interview Questions53

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The study at hand explores the mush researched and modified concept of the field of psychology of marketing. This field is related to studying the behaviour of consumers in the markets for goods and services. This dissertation deals with investigating the effectiveness and efficiency of the psychology of marketing by assessing the usefulness of consumer behaviour in the hotel ...