Posted: February 9th, 2015

Diary Report

Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

Assessment 3 – Service Experience Diary Report (20%)

Due in your tutorial in week 7.

You are to act as a “mystery shopper” and document your service experience with an organisation or event (e.g., local festival, small business, at University; food, enrolment, library). The service experience diary is designed to help you understand customer expectations and why as consumers we are sometimes satisfied or dissatisfied with the service experience. By recording and analysing your own experiences, particularly in reference to the theories, tools and techniques of services marketing, you should begin to discover what is truly needed to satisfy a customer. The approximate length of the report is 2000 words. No more than 1/4 is to be the diary component.

The Diary section may be written in first person but you must still ensure that you use correct English; this includes correct spelling, grammar and punctuation.

You are required to:

1. Visit or experience a service organisation or event. For example, this may be going to a restaurant, undertaking a training session at a gymnasium, receiving a service at University such as a meal or using the library, or receiving a hair cut at a hairdressing salon.

Diary

2. Briefly (a couple of sentences) provide some background on yourself (e.g., demographics such as where you live, psychographics such as strong interest in health and sport etc.) and any situational influences that may be relevant to this service experience.
3. Document your pre-purchase stage. This may include the process you undertook to find information on the organisation, how you plan to get there, your expectations of the visit (what you expect to see, time taken, cost, etc.), and any perceived risks.
4. Document your actual visit/experience, (the consumption stage). Indicate the day and time of the visit and the weather conditions (if relevant) on the day and the effect on the experience. Indicate the composition of your group (if applicable). Express what happened during the visit and how you felt (express your emotions). Refer to ‘emotions in service encounters’ Powerpoint slide in chapter 10 lecture notes. Include all interaction you had with personnel and the inanimate environment.
5. Conclude this section by providing a satisfaction rating, a value for money rating and whether you would recommend this service to a close friend or family member. It is strongly recommended that you look at the chapter in your text book relating to customer satisfaction and service quality. You will find it helpful if you look at the entire chapter and use the criteria they discuss. Do not ask your tutor or the lecturer for the chapter number but look in the text book.
6. You may start to refer to theory in this section and then discuss it more fully in the analysis section of the report. This is not a mind dump; the content must be orderly and as an author you must proof read your work.

Analysis

7. Consider a more fitting title of this section tailored to your topic, for example if appropriate you may consider the title: ‘Analysis and recommendations for restaurant businesses’.
8. Analyse your overall judgement and feelings about the service providing organisation in terms of services theories and concepts. Based on your experience you may wish to highlight the strengths and weakness of the attraction/organisation. This may be based on theories such as ‘expectations’, ‘satisfaction’, and ‘service quality’ or the 8Ps. You may wish to identify any opportunities and threats that this organisation may encounter. Again you must relate these items you have identified to relevant theories. Do not simply make this a ‘shopping list’ of attributes.
9. The articles provided by your lecturer or tutor may be used but you must use a minimum of 4 academic peer reviewed journal articles that you have sourced. There are several reasons for this but the main one is that if you use material given to you it does not show that you have researched the area for yourself.
10. This analysis phase should take up the remaining 3/4 of the word limit. Use 1.5 spacing and write in the 3^rd person (i.e., the organisation, the customers etc.) and use page numbers.
11. English usage as well as spelling, punctuation and grammar, will be considered when marking as too will the correct conventions in report writing such as numbering and naming tables and figures and other report writing conventions.
12. You must use business report format (i.e., headings and sub-headings), including a table of contents, executive summary, recommendations, conclusion and list of references.
13. Wherever possible make reference to the theories, tools and techniques of services marketing to achieve a decent grade. All published materials utilised should be listed in the reference list and cited throughout the body of your report using the Harvard system of referencing. Use a minimum of 4 academic peer reviewed journal articles (in addition to those supplied by your lecturer and tutor).
14. Prepare and submit a hard copy report to the lecturer or tutor on the day of your tutorial. The report should consist of a cover page with the title of the assignment, the student’s name, student identification number, and tutor’s name; and written evidence that you used TURNITIN for example the originality report which is produced by TURNITINä. Also attach an assessment declaration form specifically designed for this piece of assessment. This form can be downloaded from WebCT.