TBS922: Market Segmentation and Customer Engagement Report for Novotel

This report provides a detailed analysis of market segmentation and customer engagement strategies, focusing on the Novotel Wollongong North-Beach Hotel. It begins with a background on market segmentation and customer engagement, then delves into the hotel's business description and location. The purpose of the study is to explore effective marketing strategies for Novotel. A literature review provides context, followed by an analysis of the hotel's market segmentation, considering its competitors and targeted customer segments (tourists, business travelers, and wedding parties). The report examines Novotel's current business model, its social media engagement, and identifies research problems and questions related to market trends, competitive positioning, and differentiation. The research methodology includes secondary data collection, content analysis, and a descriptive research design, with a purposive sampling plan. A detailed timetable outlines the research process. The report concludes with a discussion of the findings and recommendations for improving the hotel's market position and customer engagement.

Running head - MARKET SEGMENTATION AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
Market Segmentation and Customer engagement
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author’s Note

1MARKET SEGMENTATION AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
Background
a. Description of the business
Market Segmentation is recognized as a process which is used for dividing the
potential customers of the market into various sub-group or into different kinds of segments.
These segments are based on the different characteristics of the various kinds of segments
(Alt and Iversen 2017). The segments which are created are basically composed with those
customers, who responds in a similar manner to that of the marketing strategies developed for
marketing.
b. Location
These consumers also share many traits which includes related kind of interests,
locations and the needs. The following report would be discussing about various aspects if
marketing segmentation and customer engagement based on the selected organization
Novotel Wollongong North-Beach Hotel (Heinemann 2016). The report would also be
discussing about the various other rational that are considered if marketing segmentation is
applied in the undertaken research hotel.
Purpose of study
Market segmentation is considered to be an important aspect to any marketers for
developing various marketing strategies. These segments provides an easier background for
the marketers for developing a better marketing campaigns. The segmentation helps the
organization in arranging the desired target for the market for each of the subdivided
segmented groups rather than setting target for each potential customers in an individual
manner (Cho, Bonn and Brymer 2017). With the help of this process, the marketers would be
having an upper hand upon time management, funds management and various other resources
that are necessary for achieving the target if they were hunting each individual customers’.

2MARKET SEGMENTATION AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
Literature review
Customer engagement is also demonstrated as a part of business management, which
is described as a business communication (Pansari and Kumar 2017). This kind of
communication channel or system that develops a connection in between a stakeholders that
are involved as external affairs and the organization itself. The communication is based on
various kinds of channels and correspondences. The connection can also be identified as a
reaction and interaction or effect of the total customer experience, which takes place in both
offline and online manner (Moreno-Munoz et al. 2016).
From the collected information, it could be demonstrated that Accor Hotel Group
have been providing hospitality service more than 50 years in a row and have been constantly
expanding their domain (Santos, Brochado and Esperança 2016). They have been developing
new projects that have been providing edge cutting service and satisfying a variety of
customers in a row. The Group have their establishment in various notable part of the globe,
such as, Middle East, South East Asia and the Sub Saharan part of Africa. One of the notable
achievement of the Group is Novotel Wollongong.
Market Segmentation Analysis
The Novotel Wollongong North Beach have a huge accommodation spacing with
more than 204 rooms, 14 huge conference rooms and a grand ballroom that have a holding
capacity of more than 600 people in it (Place 2017). Other than that, with the latest
refurbishment in all the accommodation rooms in it, it have created more live like living and
greater experience for their customers.
With the marketing segmentation analysis, it can be put forward that Novotel hotel
can be attracting more tourists that enjoy magnificent view during their holidays. Along with

3MARKET SEGMENTATION AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
the create interior design in the hotel rooms, the customers would be enjoys a scenic beauty
of the ocean that lays in from their rooms. The main targeted customers would be the tourist
that have come to live a relaxing weekend with a superb view they would love to pay for
enjoying. The hotel should also concentrate in attracting business meeting between high class
management teams of business tycoons. With the huge conference rooms with a super
oceanic view, it would great for them. The ball hall would also be great for people that live to
have a splendid weeding beside the sea (McLennan, Paton and Wright 2015). This would
help them in achieving the dream as the hotel could target customers that are willing to do a
destination wedding like this.
Novotel hotels can create a brand new position in the market by developing their
marketing plans and upgrading their strategies. Rather than just concentrating on
accommodation, the hotel could also host many business conferences, weddings and other
charity functions that would help them in achieving a position in the market.
The primary business model that is currently being followed by Accor group divided
into three consecutive hospitality stages –
a. Divesting their real estate portfolio
b. Expanding their partnership and acquisition in terms of innovation and technology by
creating Smart Rooms
c. Extending their services outside of hospitality and servicing to non-travelers.
With these stages of business model, Novotel hotels have been trying to fit in the
second two stages perfectly. They have been creating better living experiences for their
customers by developing their rooms technologically and with better equipment. They have
also been expanding their service form just servicing normal hotel accommodation to opening
the hotel to other challenging services (Place 2017). This model have been effective for the

4MARKET SEGMENTATION AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
High cost
High QualityLow Quality
Low Cost
Novotel Wollongong
Park Hyatt
The Brandio
Elements of Byron
The Farms
Four Season
Kauri cliffs
Qualia
Novotel in many terms as they have been creating brand new opportunities for the group to
cope up with too.
Fig – 1 Competitors of Novotel and Novotel’s place in the market
Source – Author
The main targeted market of the Novotel Wollongong would be the tourists and non-
travelers. This would be helping the hotels in achieving a proper place in the market for
competing with their primary and secondary competition in the hospitality filed.
Novotel could develop new strategies for competing in the market that would
eventually differentiate from their competitors.
Social Media Engagement

5MARKET SEGMENTATION AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
Due to the scenic beauty that the customers have been enjoying while their stay in the
hotel, they have been creating a better impression of the hotel in the social media. The
pictures of the scenic beauty that have been circulating in Facebook and Intsagram have
attracted a lot of customers to enjoy the view. Also, the positive reviews about the hospitality
service of the hotel have helped the hotel being popular among the social media sites (Aluri,
Slevitch and Larzelere 2015).
As the association of the hotel have kept employees that would handle the social
media account of the hotel, they have been collecting reviews form their prior customers have
developing platforms that would attract more customers at their hotels.
With the help of new strategies that is could be developed by the advertisement team
of Novotel Wollongong hotel, they could create more social media connection by connecting
to more people and promote their hospitality via social media platforms (Touni et al. 2019).
Research Problem
Market segmentation have been one of the significant and prominent section of
problem that have immerged while marketing and managing sales. Customer engagement
have also been one of the problem that have been faced by many of the sellers and marketers
in the long run.
Research questions
Following are the questions that the research paper would aim at answering:
1. What are the contemporary market trends that are prevailing in the hospitality market?
2. In relation to the competition, where does Novotel fit in the market?
3. How can the hotel differentiate itself from the competition?

6MARKET SEGMENTATION AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
4. What is the current Business Model used by Accor and how does Novotel
Wollongong fit into this business model? How effective is this model and why?
5. What are the strategic advantages of the business?
Data collection
Data collection method in the research paper would be purely secondary in nature, in
which, the researcher relies on existing sources of information for data interpretation.
Measurement
The information which would be required to solve the research questions, will be
retrieved from academic and business journals. The following journals would be used for the
purpose:
 Journal of hotel and business management
 Hotel business magazine
 Journal of international management
 Journal of marketing and management.
Apart from this, any additional information would be searched up on SAGE journals.
Also, press releases from Novotel will be reviewed for the same purpose.
Research design
This research would be purely descriptive in nature. In this kind of a research, specific
points are noted down and they are thoroughly looked into and described, to answer the
research problem.
Sampling plan
The research will include a purposive sampling. Purposive sampling is a form of non
probability sampling, in which not every source has an equal chance of being selected as the

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sample for collecting information. This is because specific information about the market and
the business can only be best retrieved from specific sources.
Data analysis
As it can be understood from the proposal so far, the data analysis method to be
adopted in the research is content analysis. Content analysis is the method of studying,
understanding and interpreting data from textual artefacts, which convey information on a
particular subject.

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Time table
Task Name Duration Start Finish
Research Proposal
Timeline 82 days Wed 7/4/19 Thu
10/25/19
Selection of the
Research Topic 1 day Wed 7/4/19 Wed 7/4/19
Approval of the
Research Topic 2 days Thu 7/5/19 Fri 7/6/19
Researching and the
Development of the
Aims and Objectives
6 days Mon 7/9/19 Mon 7/16/19
Preliminary
Investigation 10 days Tue 7/17/19 Mon 7/30/19
Assembling all the
Preliminary Data 5 days Tue 7/31/19 Mon 8/6/19
Researching the Data 6 days Tue 8/7/19 Tue 8/14/19
Compiling the Data 10 days Wed 8/15/19 Tue 8/28/19
Submission of the
Draft 1 day Wed 8/29/19 Wed 8/29/19
Continuation of the
Research 20 days Thu 8/30/19 Wed
9/26/19
Assembling New
Information 10 days Thu 8/30/19 Wed 9/12/19
Identification of the
Sample 1 day Thu 9/13/19 Thu 9/13/19
Researching on the
Available Data 21 days Thu 9/27/19 Thu
10/25/19
Compiling the Total
Data 10 days Thu 9/27/19 Wed
10/10/19
Assembling and
Preparing the final
Report
10 days Thu 10/11/19 Wed
10/24/19
Final Submission 1 day Thu 10/25/19 Thu
10/25/19
Table 1: Time table of the research flow

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References
Alt, J. and Iversen, T., 2017. Inequality, labor market segmentation, and preferences for
redistribution. American Journal of Political Science, 61(1), pp.21-36.
Aluri, A., Slevitch, L. and Larzelere, R., 2015. The effectiveness of embedded social media
on hotel websites and the importance of social interactions and return on
engagement. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(4), pp.670-
689.
Cho, M., Bonn, M.A. and Brymer, R.A., 2017. A constraint-based approach to wine tourism
market segmentation. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 41(4), pp.415-444.
Heinemann, M., 2016. Leveraging Data Mining and Market Segmentation to Gain
Conservation Opportunity Intelligence.
McLennan, J., Paton, D. and Wright, L., 2015. At-risk householders' responses to potential
and actual bushfire threat: an analysis of findings from seven Australian post-bushfire
interview studies 2009–2014. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 12, pp.319-
327.
Moreno-Munoz, A., Bellido-Outeirino, F.J., Siano, P. and Gomez-Nieto, M.A., 2016. Mobile
social media for smart grids customer engagement: Emerging trends and
challenges. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 53, pp.1611-1616.
Pansari, A. and Kumar, V., 2017. Customer engagement: the construct, antecedents, and
consequences. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(3), pp.294-311.
Place, E.T., 2017. 2016 Arthur Phillip Fieldwork Competition. Geography Bulletin, 49(2),
p.33.

10MARKET SEGMENTATION AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
Santos, M., Brochado, A. and Esperança, J., 2016. Foreign direct investment patterns of
global hotel chains. Journal of Business Research, 69(11), pp.5235-5240.
Touni, R., Kim, W.G., Choi, H.M. and Ali, M., 2019, July. ANTECEDENTS AND
OUTCOME OF CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT WITH THE HOTEL BRAND
COMMUNITIES EMBEDDED IN FACEBOOK. In 2019 Global Marketing Conference at
Tokyo (pp. 1634-1635).