The Importance of Market Segmentation

MANAGING THE CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK...............................................................................................................................................1
The value and importance of understanding the needs, wants and preferences of target
customer groups for hospitality services......................................................................................1
Customer experience Map for Hotel Hilton.................................................................................3
The consumer touch points and the consumer journey influences the response, behaviour of
the consumer and create business opportunity.............................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Customer experience is refer to any subjective response or interaction in direct or indirect
manner of customer with any organisation. Managing customer experience is designing practise
and reacting to the customer response to meet or exceed their needs and expectations, it is
valuable to increase customer loyalty, their satisfaction. The study report will cover importance
of target consumer and market segmentation to know about the need and want of consumers.
TASK
The value and importance of understanding the needs, wants and preferences of target customer
groups for hospitality services
Market segmentation is a technique which divide consumers with their similar needs and
buying behaviour into segments. It is customer centred that offer the best match product based on
consumer's interest.
 Segmentation of market allows the hotel to target the market to various consumer groups
with their different behaviours and help them to provide the best services that match their
spending power and needs and also help Hotel Hilton to identify the various trend of the
business (Peppers and Rogers, 2016). Market segmentation help to analyse and identifies
the purpose of consumer trip; it could be either leisure or business. Demographic
segmentation helps in to target the consumer who have moderate to high spending power,
business persons, families. Behavioural segmentation focus on the reason of consumer to
stay, number of time they visit the hotel. And psycho-graphic target the market according
to consumer's lifestyle, their social status seeking behaviour, etc. The segmentation and
consumer profile made easy to target the market according to Hilton profile. And also it
increases the success of marketing to influence consumer behaviour and enhance the
experience of customer (Peppers, Rogers and Kotler, 2016).
 Customer profile also called as customer persona, it is a set of consumer that include
segmentation of market, as well as their staying history in the hotel, their pattern of
decision. Customer profiling gives opportunity to increase more insight into their visitor
and be able to understand their behaviour and interest. It can be done by analysing their
segments, their searching behaviour by which channel through online or offline, finding
out their needs and wants that drives the consumer to book the room. For profiling hotel
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can make use of questionnaires or interviews to find out why guest chose Hotel Hilton.
By collecting all this information profile can be created (Nema and Joshi, 2016).
Following are the different ways by which consumer can be profiled:
 Demographic profiling- Consumer can profiled by their geographical location, marital
status, age, gender and some basic information like mobile numbers, emails etc.
 Psychological profile- Consumer can also profiled by their psychological status, such as
their social status, buying behaviour, spending power.
 Lifestyle- This include consumer's income, their preferences and choices.
Profile gives Hotel Hilton a better view of consumer need, want and their expectations and adjust
the products and services accordingly to meet their needs. It helps to know that which factor or
service make them feel happy and satisfied, Hilton can create long term relation with its
consumer. These personas show what motivates the consumer, which help the hotel to target the
market and consumer better and not wasting time on changing unvalued services and
environment. It also enables effective communication with consumer, which make them
comfortable to suggest any changes they want in their services (Yang, Liu and Li, 2015).
 Hotel Hilton concentrates on building a healthy and trustful customer engagement, they
customise their services according to consumer preferences. Customer engagement is an
important part of any organisation for enhancing the loyalty of consumer towards the
industry. Target customer are a group of consumers targeted by the advertisement. It can
be classified by their age, gender, behaviour, interest and spending power. These target
consumer can influence customer engagement with the organisation. On the basis of
demographic segment of consumer hotel can enhance customer engagement by
addressing their marketing strategy on families, business persons, travellers. Across
psycho-graphic segment the organisation build customer engagement with status seeking
person and who prefer luxurious lifestyle (Hum, S. and et.al., 2016). On the basis of
behavioural segment, organisation focus on the reason behind people visit the hotel and
reason behind they select the Hilton amongst all. By using these segments they can build
strong relation with the consumer by their services. For example, for business person they
can provide services and rooms which will sufficient to the visitor for business meeting
and conferences. For families including kids they provide separate foldable beds that can
use for kids, and as well family pool. For traveller, they offer a flexible check-in- check-
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out time, which is important thing for travellers while they travelling. All this will help
hotel in engaging more customers with firm.
 Consumer on-boarding is important for consumer engagement in Hilton. There are many
ways or strategies to revamp the on-boarding of consumer by the staff or employees of
Hotel Hilton (Hollebeek, Srivastava and Chen, 2016).
 Personalized welcome- On offline engagements, greeting is the best way to interact with
the new guest. It can be done when guest enters in the hotel. Staff can welcome them by
some special welcome treatment like; serving welcome drink, greeting them by
personalise cards or gifts. Also they can welcome the guests in their personal style.
 Demonstrate the service- Hotel can give free demonstration of one of their services to on-
boarding consumer. It can improve consumer engagement with the hotel.
 Offer assistance- Hotel should provide assistance on on-boarding to the consumer who
take them to their rooms adequately and being present to provide any services or help,
Consumer or guest feel valued by the nice gestures and presentable personality of the
staff(Lovelock and Patterson, 2015).
Customer experience Map for Hotel Hilton
From visiting the hotel to having the services till exit, consumer go through different
stages of experience. The journey of consumer starts from first contact the hotel to exit including
influenced by advertisement, going through decision making process, selecting the hotel as the
priority, then staying there and check-out from the hotel.
 Research and Planning- At the very first stage, customers research about various hotels at
their travel destination. For researching they probably use online travel agencies or by
word of mouth, other advertisement sources by magazines, Television. Ads, social media.
This being the very first impression of hotel that customer have. It is important for Hilton
to maintain a healthy profile on popular online travel sites and maintain the engagement
with their existing consumer, they probably suggest others to visit the hotel if you
providing satisfied services to your consumers and most important to respond effectively
and on time to the negative reviews (Influencing Factors in Customers’ Intention to Re-
visit Resort Hotels: The Roles of Customer Experience Management and Customer
Value, 2017). In this stage the hotel Hilton can attract consumer mind towards their
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organisation by effective advertisement or by providing adequate information about the
hotel.
 Evaluation and booking- After researching and influencing or satisfying by the
information and image of hotel consumer decides to stay at the hotel. This choice arrived
after considering various factors including, purpose of visit, online feedbacks and
reviews, range of services, and after deciding of the hotel Hilton customer than makes
booking either through travel agency or contacting with the Hotel directly (Hum, S. and
et.al., 2016).
 Customer experience in hotel- This include all interactions between the hotel and the
guest from the moment of check-in. The engagement with consumer starts from
welcoming the guest with the smile by staff and take them to their rooms with etiquette.
Also, the in-room services experience influence the shape of brand perception towards
the guests. Also, some other factors include food quality, facilities, professionalism of
staff (Yang, Liu and Li, 2015).
 Exit or check-out from the hotel and continued engagement- This is the most important
stages of the hotel, the check-out phase of consumer journey. The Hotel Hilton providing
a delightful and smooth check-out experience to their consumer without giving them a
long feedback form to fill. They just give short, simple questionnaire about their services
through internet. A delightful and satisfied guest will promote the hotel by giving positive
online reviews (Nema and Joshi, 2016).
The touch points of consumer starts right from booking or pre-stay to stay in hotel and lastly post
stay:
Pre-stay- The interaction of consumer with the hotel before staying there through
websites, SMS/ e-mails, through booking channels.
Hotel-stay- One to one interaction between consumer and hotel starts from check-in to
entering the room and in room experience, hotel services and check-out.
Post-stay- This is the last stage of interacting with the hotel after checking- out from
there. It can be done trough the reviews and feedbacks. And being in touch or engaged through
social media such as Facebook, Instagram, etc.
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The consumer touch points and the consumer journey influences the response, behaviour of the
consumer and create business opportunity
Hotel can use the map of customer journey or touch points to improve the business
opportunity. It can be negative and positive as well. Hotel can use the touch points as the
suggestion to their business. When, consumer research on online for appropriate hotel, the first
thing they consider is their location, services and food. It is an opportunity for business to
showing them hotel's best quality that can be either food or services or rooms. As while
evaluating and booking the rooms of hotel by consumer, they give priority to easy booking
process providing by the hotel and the activities and other facilities providing by the hotel. Hilton
can take this as their opportunity by improve their facility according to consumer preference
(Peppers, Rogers and Kotler, 2016). The customer experience give feedback to the hotel to
improvise their services and products or improve the marketing techniques to increase the
potential of attracting consumer. The mapping of customer journey shows the strength of hotel as
well as, which they can use as their major marketing tool for increasing business opportunity.
CONCLUSION
From the current research it was explained that the market segmentation is important to
achieve the objective of Hilton. The study discussed about consumer's journey map of Hilton and
the touch points which drives consumer engagement, influence the behaviour of them and create
opportunity of business. The conclusion of study about knowing that customer engagement is an
important part of the hotel, and it analysed the consumer need by creating consumer profile. The
study also mentioned that on-boarding treatment of consumer by the hotel is effective for
consumer engagement.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Hollebeek, L. D., Srivastava, R. K. and Chen, T., 2016. SD logic–informed customer
engagement: integrative framework, revised fundamental propositions, and application to
CRM. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. pp.1-25.
Hum, S. and et.al., 2016. Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Managing Customer
Relationships using a Lightweight Messaging Platform. U.S. Patent Application
14/558,680.
Lovelock, C. and Patterson, P., 2015. Services marketing. Pearson Australia.
Nema, G. and Joshi, A., 2016. Managing Customer Relationships through Customer interaction
management. International Journal of Research in Finance and Marketing. 6(4). pp.74-82.
Peppers, D. and Rogers, M., 2016. Managing customer experience and relationships: A strategic
framework. John Wiley & Sons.
Peppers, D., Rogers, M. and Kotler, P., 2016. Managing customer experience and relationships.
Yang, Y., Liu, X. and Li, J., 2015. How customer experience affects the customer-based brand
equity for tourism destinations. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing. 32(sup1).
pp.S97-S113.
Online
Influencing Factors in Customers’ Intention to Re-visit Resort Hotels: The Roles of Customer
Experience Management and Customer Value. 2017. [Online]. Available through <
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-59282-4_12 >
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