To evaluate customer loyalty toward e-CRM on Dusit.com website in Thailand
To evaluate customer loyalty toward e-CRM on Dusit.com website in Thailand
Nowadays, the internet is one of the great functions which effects society and customer behavior has changed track to respond to customer satisfaction. So, many businesses in the global market have to develop themselves and build competitive advantages from the internet and technology to increase service marketing. Every business seeks for an implement to understand their customer satisfaction in order to gain more customer loyalty. Customer satisfaction and loyalty are base factors of completing succession especially in hospitality industry. Most hotels and resorts are using e-CRM as a marketing strategy. Visitors can assess a company's website, check room rates, make or cancel a reservation. In addition, e-CRM on the internet has provided alternative channels to contact to the hotel such as e-mail, fax, toll-free number, postal address, call-back button and other functions for instance: site tour, site map, electronic bulletin board, product highlights, affinity program, and FAQs (Feinberg and Kadam, 2002). To fulfill and improve their customers' satisfaction and loyalty, they have to disscuss some questions such as how can they improve their customer service. Are customers satisfied with company instruments? Can e-CRM increase customer loyalty to use their products and services? The main objective of this study is to understand what the research is, what the social research is and concern which science, what philosophies in the social research are, methodologies, method or approach, benefits and limits of each philosophy and methodology, types of data which concerns the research, and approaches to evaluate customer loyalty toward e-CRM on Dusit.com website in Thailand.
Researchers describe a concept of research in many ways. Sekaran (1992:4) mentioned research as "a systematic and organized effort to investigate a specific problem that needs a solution" (cited in Finn et al., 2000: 2). In the same way, research is methodical collection and interpretation of information to find things out with clear purpose (Saunder, 2003: 3). In fact, researching is a scientific activity that is followed by the role and the rule of the scientific method (O'Leary, 2004). The research consists of a description, an explanation, and an evaluation which can find out what happens, what it is, what it should be or how it can improve in the real world. In early age, pure and applied research has been distinguished by postmodernity (Finn et al., 2000: 14) known as the main type of research in social science. Briefly, postmodern refers to the end of the wisdom-age believing in the reason of validity and reality of the society can be known by terms of "a transition from darkness into light, a transition and an implicit theory of moral evolution that came to be known as process" (Seale, 2004: 43). Then, the theory involves the research and represents itself as a hypothesis to support the ideas how and why something happen which researcher's believe are true and it conducts researchers through the research process (Finn et al, 2000). Thereafter, both pure and applied researches have had a role in seeking a reason what people belief in the facts. Formerly, according to Kumar (1996:8), pure research is "concerned with the development, examination, verification and refinement of research methods, procedures, techniques". In addition, pure research is "intended to lead to theoretical development-there may, or may not, be any practical implications". But it may take at least three forms: discovery, invention, reflection (Easterby-Smith et al., 2002:9). Therefore, pure or theoretical research refers to the understanding of fact or phenomena and combines more components of facts or phenomena which the limits of knowledge by enlarging to theory. On the other hand, applied research differs a lot from pure research. It is "conducted to analyze and find a solution to a problem" (Finn et al., 2000:3). Moreover, Easterby-Smith et al (2002:9) stated "applied research is intended to lead to the solution of specific problems, and usually involves working with customers who identify the problems and who may pay for their solution". Finn et al (2000: 3) stated "most research in the tourism and travel field falls in the applied research category". Hence, applied research is involved directly in the hospitality research working with people and emphasizing on solution making.
As Finn et al mentioned doing research in the field of tourism and leisure involves with social research. "Social research is the means by which social scientists understand, explain and predict the social world" (Williams, 2003:1). Equally important, anthropology is the study of humanity and anthropologists have sought the way to understand and explain how human societies work in reality (Burns, 1999). In particular, social science consists of tangible and intangible factors from human beings and it creates 'meaning' in their life when 'people' do something for them (Seale, 2004). For one thing, in Durkheim's view, sociology was the study of social facts which refers to a wide range of regularities of social life, for instance, for 'religious beliefs and practices, the rules of morality and innumerable precepts of law' (1972: 73 cited in Seale, 2004: 13). Also, Macionis (2001: 2-5) mentioned "sociology is a social science that aims to empirically appreciate the complexity of human life. In broader terms, sociology can be defined as an orientation that reveals 'the strange in the familiar' and places individuality' in social context" (cited in Marvasti, 2004). Both sociology and anthropology concern to understand the other and the self of society having human as a center and recognize 'meaning' and relationships of social action (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). In addition, other philosophies concerned in sociology are ontology and epistemology. Ontology is the study of phenomena which understands what exists in reality (Gray, 2004) and it can categorize different factors such as subjective, objective, normative-evaluative (Carspecken, 1996 cited in Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). Epistemology refers to the philosophical theory of knowledge which tries to understand 'what it means to know' (Gray, 2004: 16). Hence, social science research known as a project of social study tried to reveal, to tell something of the underlying structure of social life would explain more than its descriptive or surface feature (Hardy and Bryman, 2004: 568). On the whole, the importance of social research is to understand interaction and relationships between the individual and the social world and all is related to the hospitality in order to answer a question that has the meaning and interaction in the reality of the hospitality (Crouch, 1999).
Before emphasizing on appropriate approaches of this topic, the first understanding is what a philosophy or a research paradigm and methodologies are. The term paradigm refers to assumption about the natural knowledge and the process of scientific practice based on people's thought or wisdom (Kuhn, 1962 cited in Easterby-Smith et al., 2002:11). Likewise, "the examination of philosophies of science will enable us to understand the complex relationships between theory and observation and what it might mean for social sciences to be modeled on the natural sciences" (Seale, 2004: 9) and the term philosophy, there are many types of research philosophies debated whether science is a distinctive kind of activity and their contributions are discussed below. But, the two main philosophies mostly used in the field of social research are positivism and phenomenology.
Positivism known as a philosophy of science is identified with empiricism which beliefs concentrate on observation, the collection of facts, and the assumption of the former practice to exist in theories (Haralambos, 2000). Positivism based on reality of natural and human science discoveries. It emphasizes on questions in practice dealing with facts not with values (Gray, 2004:18). In the same way, Veal (1997: 31) stated that "Positivism is a framework of research in which researcher sees people as phenomena to be studied from out side with behavior to be explained on the basis of facts and observations gathered applying theories and models which had been developed by researchers". Also, positivism works with people's observation and finds the facts of the social reality according to the physical and natural scientists (Remenyi et al., 1998: 32 cited in Saunders, 2003). Hence, the core of this philosophy is 'facts' of natural science can be measured and collected as numbers in order to remain in theories, hypothesis, or models of evidence of previous practices. Researchers can use these benefits of positive philosophy to seek an amount of quantitative proof so as to develop and improve statistical analysis. But, Positivism has its own limits because it conducts the researcher to go straight on numerical research and it is not flexible enough to explain the real meaning of society.
Nevertheless, Positivism is not an appropriate view of a social scientific phenomenon if it concerns humans and their real-life experiences (O'Leary, 2004). In particular, the reality of the social world is intangible not objective and it is socially constructed and giving the meaning by people concerned to the philosophy of Phenomenology (Brotherton, 1999). Therefore, positivism might evaluate slightly in the term specific human behavior of social science especially expression in words such as attitudes, belief, and values. Phenomenology puts an importance on the human being which can explain people behaviour (Veal, 1997: 32). Similarly, "The phenomenologist views human ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
Nevertheless, Positivism is not an appropriate view of a social scientific phenomenon if it concerns humans and their real-life experiences (O'Leary, 2004). In particular, the reality of the social world is intangible not objective and it is socially constructed and giving the meaning by people concerned to the philosophy of Phenomenology (Brotherton, 1999). Therefore, positivism might evaluate slightly in the term specific human behavior of social science especially expression in words such as attitudes, belief, and values. Phenomenology puts an importance on the human being which can explain people behaviour (Veal, 1997: 32). Similarly, "The phenomenologist views human behavior . . . as a product of how people interpret the world. . . in order to grasp the meaning of a person's behavior, the phenomenologist attempts to see thing from that person's point of view" (Bogdan and Taylor, 1975:13-14 cited in Bryman and Bell, 2003:17). Phenomenology emphasizes the study of internal person-factors and the value of experiences rather than external factors or objects which happen in the reality Remenyi et al (2003: 286). Then, the importance of phenomenological philosophy is being able to understand and explain why people have different experiences, beliefs, attitudes, and trusts in their behavior or existential consciousness (O' Leary, 2004). The phenomenologist certainly believes the social world's evaluation is based on an explanation of the human behaviour and it involves 'how people think' rather than 'how much people think' so, it does not have a standard to measure how deep or what the meaning is. However, this philosophy Researchers can use the sense of human behaviour by categorizing in order to interpret social action into visibility so as to obtain qualitative data of phenomena to answer and solve a problem based on applied research.
Besides, what are methodologies? How can they relate to philosophy? A methodology is a general approach as a 'framework' concerned with a particular assumptive of paradigmatic sets conducted to study a research topic, which creates the way of studying any phenomenon (Seale, 2004). Methodologies as theories cannot be true or false, only more or less useful. Saunders (2003) stated methods as techniques, tools, and ways used to seek for data, obtain, collect, and analyze them, i.e. interview method, surveying, focus group. Common methodologies in social research are quantitative methodology and qualitative methodology. The quantitative methodology used for the deductive approach relates to using numbers to test hypotheses and involves the development of a theory. It is also a general research approach of the natural sciences, where "law provides the basis of explanation, permits the anticipation of phenomena, predicts their occurrence and therefore allows them to be controlled" (Hussey and Hussey, 1997: 52, cited in Saunders et al., 2003: 86). Differently, qualitative methodology used for inductive approach which is exploratory seeks for construction of a result from the data collected (David, 2004). Each methodology is used as the framework in paradigmatic assumptions of particular philosophy. Consequently, quantitative methodology is used for positivist philosophy and parallel qualitative methodology is used for phenomenology.
According to Sarantakos (1998: 467) defined "quantitative methods employ quantitative theoretical and methodological principles and techniques and statistics" (Cited in Gray, 2004). Quantitative researchers collect and analyze data of social reality as an objective to test theories and fine the relationship between those theories and research based on the natural science (Bryman and Bell, 2003). Using quantitative research such as cross-sectional, experimental, survey and longitudinal methods (Gephart, 1999) gives a reason that the theory comes before the research and that research is undertaken to test the validity of a theory which can be verified or falsified (Nichollas and Rob, 2000). Hence, quantitative method gives more benefits in using the collection of large amounts of customers and having assumption of a previous theory in order to test the former related on a research. However, for this approach, a researcher needs to spend long time so as to collect enormous customer data and make accurate measurement of quantitative data in his or her statistical analysis. Also, it is difficult to classify the truth of social action. Moreover, it can not explain customer attitudes or how they feel on statistical data. Quantitative research only shows the result of the research in numbers more that feeling trend. The meaning of society could not measure an entire validity in statistical analysis of the deductive approach such as the feeling love is not fixed in details. It can not explain how much love is in statistic of limited data. But the love can be described by the inductive approach which concentrates on understanding the reality and shows how people think in individual.
Phenomenology dramatically leads to qualitative rather than quantitative methods because researchers find that people's words provide greater access to 'subjective meaning' than statistical trends (Seale, 2004). Qualitative researchers concentrate on the collection and analysis of 'subjective data or words' of individual creation in the social world to generate the theory and find out the relationship between theory and research (Bryman and Bell, 2003). In the same way, qualitative methodology refers to an inductive approach to explore and explain a phenomenon in order to collect and analysis a variety of 'rich' data from few people rather than limited data of wide numerable people (Veal, 1997). This method opposes to quantitative method. It is confined to relative small group in events measuring without standard scale and strict processes but in depth of meaning details. Qualitative or inductive approach is available to describe the social world as values and qualitative data observed and analyzed allows researchers to construct a theory. It also examines exactly what are attitudes, beliefs, and values of phenomena. Qualitative method shows a set of interpretive activities used in various separate disciplines such as questionnaires, interviewing, sampling, observation, personal diaries, case studies, and focus groups. Some of these methods refer to suitable research approaches are discussed further in the next section.
For this topic, "to evaluate customer loyalty toward e-CRM in case of Dusit.com web site in Thailand is concerned with qualitative more than quantitative researches based on the social research. This topic is slightly more suitable for quantitative approach which involves the use of methodological techniques, represents experiences in numerical groups such as statistics which collects, arranges, and analyzes statistical data from lots of people because it cannot support and understand the mind of customers, their views when they use e-CRM on the website. Finn et al (2000: 6) stated that in social world, the positivist methodology explains phenomena built from the cause and effect of the behavior observation, whereas, phenomenologist point out how individual thought gives 'meaning' to the social world. As mentioned before, the internet has become a part of society. The hospitality industry uses e-CRM on hotel website for service marketing which allows visitors to assess and search for hotel information, which in return generates customer satisfaction and loyalty and enhances sales activities. Yin (1999) mentioned the core of loyalty as consisting of repeat purchase and return behaviour. Then, the center of loyalty is what effects to people feeling and their behaviour? of doing. In the same way, Griffin (2002: 32) defined a loyal customer as "a person who makes regular repeat purchases, purchases across product and service lines, refers others, and demonstrates immunity to the pull of the competition" and neither creating nor maintaining customer loyalty is easy for businesses. In the business world, many companies struggle for long time in order to gain their customer loyalty. Customer relationship management (CRM) known as being strategies is a part of service marketing approach, which increases customer relationships and provides long-term benefits for businesses. Feinberg and Kadom (2002) stated e-CRM as a place providing CRM functions on the internet trough the web site. E-CRM also is "the use of Web browsers, the Internet, and other electronic touchpoints (e-mails, POS terminals, call centers, and direct sales) to manage customer relationships" (Turban et al., 2005). According to Feinberg and Kadom (2002) they identified features of e-CRM in 36 areas, the main part of e-CRM such as personalized web pages, FAQs, e-mail and automated response, chat rooms, call centers, and troubleshooting tools. The Dusit group has used the internet as an access in order to provide wide information for visitors.
In overview, The Dusit group has been developing its properties by using knowledge management with innovation and service quality. As a result, the local company has been promoted to one of the international chain hotels. In recent years, there have been many branches that have launched out to a hospitality market mainly in Thailand and Asia. The Dusit group has luxury hotels and resorts not only in all Thailand's major destinations such as Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Phuket but also has overseas properties such in Dubai, Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Philippines. The vision of Dusit group is 'bringing world-class standards of comfort and convenience under the authentic service quality of the Thai Hospitality'. The objective of its website is to provide information for customers who have used facilities in hotels and resorts in Dusit group and also for travelers who plan on traveling. Again, this paper focuses on which approach is suitable to evaluate 'customer loyalty' and 'e-CRM' of Dusit hotels and resorts in Thailand through website which figures out the way customer think and how they interact in social world. Do customer attitudes and returning customers have an effect on website or are they based on e-CRM of Dusit.com?
The appropriate methodology for this essay is the qualitative approach which uses the online questionnaire survey with the help of a focus group and sampling to collect subjective data. The survey seeks answers by asking a series of words or written questions (Bob, 1999). Different types of survey: written surveys (questionnaires) or oral surveys (interviews) to gather data. Surveys include mail, telephone, intercept, and e-questionnaires which researchers can use face-to-face-interviews, the self-completion questionnaire and telephone interviews approaches to collect data ( Seale, 2004). Questionnaires are flexibly and widely used in social research techniques (Blaxter et al., 2001) for descriptive research reflected to attitudes, views, opinion in practices or explanatory research which can examine relationships in action (Saunders et al., 2003). The researcher utilizes questionnaires so as to quantify how customers think and feel about Dusit hotels and resorts. Do they return to use hotel products and services when they enter the Dusit.com website? Does e-CRM have an effect on customer loyalty? In an opposite view, what do they exactly know about the website and are they satisfied with it. Which hotels have provided e-CRM as a tool to generate customer satisfaction, to gain customer relationship and loyalty? Taylor and Hunter (2002) studied the impact of loyalty with e-CRM software and e-service. They used the web-base questionnaire to collect data and used a list of all current customers of the sponsoring e-CRM organization as the population. The original list had 8,900 names but they could use 3,810 names of the existing e-mails to be the final sampling frame and the total sampling frame is 2,356 deliverable e-mails. In brief, they received the feedback at least 50% of the sampling which is a large database and it helped the researchers to receive wide data and to analyse more efficiently. In the same way, Customer history is used as the database of population of this case as similar as Taylor and Hunter's case. Accordingly, the Dusit group has been using e-CRM to build the customer relationships. Then, in Dusit hotels and resorts has more activities marketing to gain their customer loyalty. Hence, it has enormous efficient data to study how e-CRM effects to customer loyalty and what they think. In simpler terms, this method is easy to design, deliver, and collects wide data from the similar group of particular set of questions. It reduces the high cost of the research processes but could collect global data traversing. It is unlimited time and place. In addition, online questionnaires could determine a valuable sample of a specific group from a large population. Another benefit, the alternative graphic design of the online questionnaires grasps the interest of the sample group better than have been used paper questionnaires.
The focus group is one of many useful qualitative methods, which can grasp the customer emotion in each background. Also, this method can be used as a self-contained means of data collection or a supplement to other methods, depending on how it fits into an overall research plan and epistemological basis (Brewerton and Millward, 2004). Vaughn et al (1996) observed researchers setting a focus group in classification in order to elicit feelings, attitude, views, and perceptions of specific category (cited in Puchta and Potter, 2004). The focus group method can protect the real data from the interaction between groups in rich data collection (Jennings, 2001). Therefore, for this case, the focus group is used as a supplement to provide a more in-depth explanation of the issue in question. For instance, the focus group session consists of three groups: the first two groups are the target marketing of Dusit.com which is business travelers, leisure travelers known as existing customers and the last group is customers who apply a member program and would use products and services or facilities of Dusit hotels and resorts in the future. Then, the scope of customer attitudes is limited and it is deeply in individual opinions in which type of customers. Therefore, this method offers the opportunity to observe the processes by which people are interested and perhaps infer something about the culture, climate of the society in which they live. In addition, using focus group divides enlargeable data into explicit data conducive to accurate measurement and leads the researcher to gain efficient data collection.
Sampling is a small number of the set such as people, objective, events, or situations, it is "carefully selected, and its characteristics are used to estimate the characteristics of the true (and much larger) population" (Locke et al., 2004:49). As Gray's view, he stated 'a population is the total number of possible units or elements' and it is impossible to study and evaluate the whole population because it is too large and there is a lack of research resources. Saunders et al. (2003) defined simple random sampling as the amount of selected sample from the sampling frame using either random number tables or a computer. Also, they mention that random numbers helps the researcher to select a sample without bias. Systematic sampling is a common way, but the least expensive sampling method and most useful for selection sample from the large sampling frame (Finn et al., 2000). For example, the population of e-CRM's existing customers of Dusit hotels and resorts is formed the total number of units in the sampling frame and determining fifty percentage of total unit as the sampling side and design the sample by a sort of an alphabet and rate emphasis on the last occupancy as a greater value. Fink (1995: 1) stated "A good sample is a miniature of the population-just like it, only smaller" (cited in Gray, 2004: 83). Therefore, this technique helps the researcher to select a good sample in a small group and study comprisable similarity of the characteristics in a large population.
Furthermore, the interview method is a possible approach used with other techniques in any stage of the research process and multi-method data collection (Brewerton and Millward, 2004 cited in Seale, 2004). For the on line questionnaire, the potential feedback might be less fifty percentage of the sampling group because e-mails might be undeliverable. Then, making a double check with interviewing and ethnography gives the researcher more valuable data. "Interview is a conversation, the art of asking questions and listening" and it builds situations to understand the individual view of each attitude of interaction (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000: 633). The interview is commonly divided in to three main structures: structured, semi-structured, unstructured interviews and each structure has its own distinction and limitations (Finn et al., 2000). The structured interview provides the standard question and designs a set of specific question while semi-structured and unstructured interview also have particular questions but unstructured interview allows the interviewer to ask direct questions. On the other hand, the structured interview is a flexible form and might not be relevant in an actual interview. Semi-structured and unstructured interviews are more suitable methods using in this case because both methods could be used to express interviewee's idea depending on certain events. In simpler terms, interviewees are given the opportunity to talk more freely about events, their behaviours and attitudes related to an issue of the research (Payne and Payne, 2004 cited in Saunders et al., 2003). Interviewers can use similar structures but it is useful i.e. a face-to face survey with open-ended questionary interviews, researcher can obtain obviously and exclusively data from the interview which interviewers and interviewees coherently create significant and narrative interview subjects of issue area.
Ethnography is another qualitative research approach used. "Ethnography usually involves a substantial amount of interviewing and this factor undoubtedly contributes to the widespread use of the interview by qualitative researchers" (Bryman and Bell, 2003: 341). Ethnographic research is the study and description of different human social interaction as the expression of daily life value focused on cultural investigation and observation of the natural societies (Marshall and Rossman 1999 cited in Finn et al., 2000). Qualitative ethnographic social research conducts to observe and understand the entail of self and others in social processes and "authropologists have uses a number of ethnographic methods to collect, analyse, and represent information" (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000: 456). "The most powerful influence on the transformation of qualitative research into some kind of postmodern research attitude opposed to the more or less codified application of specific methods" Flick (2002: 148). To illustrate this method, researchers can use the selection of specific cultural group driven by interest. Interest in participant observation has affected more in a personal background (Silverman, 2000). The internet has been widespread toward different cultures. The content, text, messages, image, symbolic of e-CRM trough the website might be misinterpreted and misunderstood conducting to obtain different meaning. Hence, ethnography offers researchers the opportunity to determine a scope of understanding of each cultural prospective, gives rich and in-depth exploration, a description of realistic nature of specific social culture. Also, it aims to design a way to work with natural society of culture, symbols, and norms leaded to make discussions with existing theory in order to develop new theory (O'Leary, 2004).
Content analysis is a statistical method applied to a non-statistical material trend adopted according to technology has changed the economics of the social science (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). Both Content and semiological analytic techniques are use in this case in order to measure quality of the thoughts in e-CRM content of customers on the website such a systematic analysis. Finn et al (2000: 134) stated "content analysis is thus a quantitative means of analyzing qualitative data" and approaches to content analysis range from the purely quantitative where frequencies are counted within categories though to an approach that focuses on meaning in which inferences are drawn from the data and the data is considered in context". Content analysis is, therefore, one seeking to understand data as symbolic phenomena and, as such, has much in common with semiological analysis" (Krippendorff, 1980 cite in Finn et al., 2000: 135). Semiotics or semiology is the study of physical things i.e. pictures, signs, texts, lines of ink, maps carring 'meaning' of the structure to represent their functions (Hardy and Bryman, 2004). The meaning that things provide is use-based and grounded in cultures, group experiences, or even symbols (David and Sutton, 2004). In the same way, Hodder (2000) suggested that problems of interpretation of written text of all kinds, such text are of importance for qualitative research because information in spoken from differs in when documented, as text is re-read in different context giving new and different meaning. As Clark et al (1998) points out, if content analysis can be used appropriately, it can throw up interesting new hypothesis, or because a completely new idea or concept may be revealed as important, or because on reflection a much deeper meaning may come through. E-CRM's Dusit group on the internet has dealt with customer enquiries and communicated with cultural idea through pictures, texts, signs as its images, likewise, the images of Switzerland as a peaceful country, chocolate and Swiss watches or England as a sense of tradition, history, and culture, or Thailand as the land of smile. Content analysis works with a language and "the language is the most powerful cultural tool for denying cognitive access to alternatives" (Hardy and Bryman, 2004: 561). Semiologic analysis aims researcher to examine, identify the interactive relationships between signs and people. In addition the semiotics creates another way to know each other's communications without able understanding in depth of an individual personal attitude.
The source of research data is generally divided in two types of data sources: primary and secondary sources essentially used in data analysis of data colleting process. The primary data refers to "the new data to be collected in the proposed research" (Veal, 1997: 64). The primary source is original materials usually used as research-based which is new and up to date in accurate details (White, 2002: 84). Primary data is not only the raw value data but also the analysis of that data and/or the grouping of statistical information from the responses. Thereupon, primary data shows both quantitative and qualitative data. In this case, a researcher searches the primary data from closed and opened questions on e- questionnaires, interviewing, focus group, ethnography, content and Semiologic analysis. Conversely, According to Bryman and Bell (2003: 212-213), the secondary data is called "other's researchers' data" and "secondary data analysis is the analysis of data by researchers who will probably not have seen involved in the collection of data, for purpose that in all likelihood were not envisaged by those responsible for data collection". Veal (1997: 69) stated secondary data is collected and sorted by government and organizations as routine functions of management, including sales figures and visitor numbers, income and expenditure, staffing accident reports, crime reports, and health data. Hence, secondary data draws on 'existing' sources not 'original' data. Researcher can search secondary data about the summary of numeral occupancy from Dusit group and more other details from previous research or literature. For secondary data, the researcher may be aware of, such as, the facts and credibility i.e. statistic, source of document or the bias of literature and accessibility to the sources.
Many researchers use 'the methodological triangulation' combining of different methods in order to 'crosscheck' the validity of data. Clark et al., 2002:39 defined the term triangulation as "the use of more than one research method to examine a particular phenomenon may improve understanding of that phenomenon and each technique may reveal facts of phenomenon that would not be yield by the use of alternative methods". For example of this paper, focus group can be used to check the validity of on line questionnaires helped with sampling to provide the limited scope of the population. Another way, using ethnography with interviewing or content and semiological analysis could produce more authentic data of individual. In practice, both quantitative and qualitative methods have different strengths and weakness depended on aims of the research. Begley (1996) mentioned hence, combining between qualitative approaches or between quantitative and qualitative approaches aims researcher to reduce failure, produce more advantages, and replace each weakness of each method (cited in Gray, 2004).
In conclusion, the issue of "to evaluate customer loyalty toward e-CRM" is more valuable when supported by qualitative methods. This topic is directly concerned with finding the attitude, value, and belief of select a group. However, it also slightly relies on measuring quality of validity and reality in numeral and systematic analysis. Then, content and semiological analyses are applied techniques which allow researcher in order to obtain more efficient data. Various qualitative methods used in this paper are suitable in each case. In the real world of research, there is no best type of doing research (O' Leary, 2004). A researcher can use triangulation as a combinable method supporting or combining between quantitative and qualitative methods to gain a balance of use-based data. In deed, the most important outcome of the use of research project is it depends on the researcher's aim or objective, determining which method is more appropriate and able to adopt in research topic on own judgement (Buchanan 1980 cited in Mark et al., 2002) and "all methods must be opened, consistently applied and replicable by other's (Oakley, 1999: 252 cited in Gray, 2004).
References
Blaxter, L. et al., (2001) How to research. Second edition. Licensing Aqency.
Bob, L. (1999) The Handbook of Contemporary Hospitality Management Research. John & Sons Ltd. London.
Brewerton, P. and Millward, L. (2004) Organization Research Method. Sage Publication. London.
Brotherton, 1999, B. (1999) The Handbook of Contemporary Hospitality Management Research. John Wiley & Sons. Chichester.
Bryman, A. and Bell, E. (2003) Bussiness Research Methods. Oxford University Press. Hampshire.
Burns M. P. (1999) An Introduction to Tourism and Anthropology., Routledge London.
Clark, M. et al., (1998) Researching and writing Dissertations in Hospitality and Tourism. Thomson, England.
Crouch D. ed. (1999) leisure/tourism geographies. Routledge. London.
David M. and Sutton D. C. (2004) Social Research: The basics, Sage Publications Ltd London.
Denzin N.K. and Lincoln, Y. (2000) Handbook of Qualitative Research. Sage. London.
Easterby-Smith, M. et al., (2000) Management Research. Sage Publications Ltd, London.
Feinberg, R. and Kadom, R. (2002) E-CRM web service attributes as determinants of customer satisfaction with retail Web sites. International Journal of Service Industry Management. 13(5), pp. 432-451
Finn, M. et al., (2000) Tourism and Leisure Research Method: Data collection, analysis and interpretation. Longman. Essex, England.
Flick, U. (2002) An Introduction to Qualitative Research. Secon edition. London.
Gephart, R. (1999) Paradigms and Research Methods [Internet] University of Alberta. Available from:http://www.aom.pace.edu/rmd/1999_RMD_Forum_Paradigms_and_Reseach_Methods.htm [Accessed 14 March, 2005]
Gray D. E. (2004) Doing Research In The Real World. C&M Digitals (P) Ltd. Chennai.
Griffin J. (2002) Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Haralambos, Micheal et al (2000) Sociology: Themes and Perspectives. Collins. London.
Hardy, M. and Bryman (2004) Handbook of data analysis. Sage Publications. London
Hodder, Ian. (2000) The interpretation of documents and material culture. In: Denzin N.K. and Lincoln, Y. (2000), Handbook of Qualitative Research. Sage. London.
Jennings, G. (2001) Tourism Research. John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, Australia.
Kumar, R. (1996) Research Methodology. Sage publications, London.
Kotorov, R. (2003) Customer relationship management: strategic lessons and future directions. Business Process Management Journal. 9(5), pp. 566-571
Locke, L, F. et al., (2004) Reading and Understanding Research. Second edition, Sage Publications, California.
Marvasi, A. B. (2004) Qualitative Research in Sociology. Sage Publications, London.
Mark, E. and Richard, T. (2002) Management Research: An Introduction. Sage Publications, London.
Nichollas, W. and Rob (2000) Your Reasearch Project. Sage Publication, London.
O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. Sage Publications, London.
Puchta C. and Potter J. (2004) Focus Group Pratice. Sage Publications Ltd, London.
Remenyi, D. et al., (2003) Doing research in business management. Second edition, Sage Publications Ltd. London.
Saunder, M. et al., (2003) Research Methods For Business Students. Pearson Education Limited, England.
Seale, C. (2004) Research Society and Culture, Second edition, Sage Publications Ltd. London.
Siverman, D. (2000) Doing Qualitative Research. Sage Publications Ltd. London.
Taylor S. A. and Hunter G. L. (2002) The impact of loyalty with e-CRM software and e-services, International Journal of Service Industry Management. 13(5), 452-474.
Turban, E et al. (2005) Introduction to Information Technology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. USA
Veal, A. J. (1997) Research Methods for Leisure and Tourism. Pearson Education Ltd. England.
White, B. (2003) Writing your MBA dissertation. British library cataloguing in publicationadta.
Williams, M. (2003) Making sence of social Research. Sage Publications, London
Yin, C. K. (1999) Consumer behaviour loyalty: a segmentation model and analysis, Journal of Business Research. 44(2), pp. 75-92.