Effect Of Internet Based Communication Tools and the Relationship Between Consumers Centric Marketing Practices On Consumer Satisfaction For The Hotels In Rwanda. Case Study of 2 and 3 Star Hotels and 4 And 5 Star Hotels Categories in Kigali. (Published)
The main purpose of this research project to evaluate effect of internet based communication tools and the relationship between consumer centric marketing practices on customer satisfaction for the hotels in Rwanda. Rwanda hospitality industry is becoming competitive with hotels investments increasing even from the world top brands like Marriots entering the market. Due to this, the existing hotels have to step up their approach of business operation and advance from Customer relationship management to consumer centric marketing (CCM) if they have to measure up for the intense competition and improve their performance. To achieve this, the researcher focused on finding out whether Internet-based communication tools with their individual consumers help in achieving customer satisfaction and extent to which this influences the hotel performance and to determine if there is significant relationship between CCM practices and general performance of the two hotels categories in Kigali. The research design was descriptive and target population of 958 respondents from which a sample of 282 respondents was got. A simple random and convenient sampling technique was used for employees and customers respectively. Data was collected using open and closed ended questionnaires. Collected data was then coded and put in statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) spreadsheet and computed for both descriptive and inferential statistics.The results indicated that consumer centric marketing practices was more practiced in 4 and 5 star hotels as compared to 2 and 3 star hotels. However in both, there were diverse opinions on the practices which showed that the practice is not uniform in all departments sampled. Also there was a positive significant relationship between CCM practices and general hotel performance (p<0.05).
Keywords: Consumer Centric Marketing, Customer Relationship Management, Internet Based Tools.