Markovian application to product switching in Kenya’s hotel industry: a survey of shower gel and guests’ soap

Abstract

Product switching is the process of changing from the routine use of one product or brand to steady use of another but similar one. Previous studies on product switching have not looked at the concept in the hotel industry in terms of the showering options involving shower gels and guest soaps. In this study we assessed the showering preferences of hotel guests and employed the Markovian model to determine their preference insistence, switching patterns and future market shares of shower gels and guest soaps in the long run. Data were collected using a mobile phone application known as Magpi and was purposefully drawn from 400 students of university of Nairobi Kenya Methodist University and Kenyatta University who had ever spent in any hotel in the last one year. The data generated were cast into Transition Matrix and further analysis was done using SPSS and Excel. The study found out that guest soap was the most available showering agent in Kenya‟s hotel industry where it commanded 64.3% of the market share while shower gel had only 25%. Among the clients who used guest soap only, 79.5% claimed that it was the only showering agent provided in the hotel, while 22.2% used shower gel for the same reason. guest soap seemed to have the highest percentage of people reporting challenges with its use. 45.5% said they had experienced some inconveniences with its use against the 6.1% who reported challenges with the use of the Shower gel. Loyalty to guest soap was the weakest with only 18.7% of its initial users remaining with it while rest would switch to the Shower gel or the use of both gel and soap. Shower gel had the highest retention rate of 81.6%. In the long run, the fifteen steps ahead forecast revealed a steady state probabilities of the Shower gel, guest soap and the use of both. The findings showed that shower gel will command the future market share at an estimated rate of 67% while Guest soap will be relegated to a paltry 10% of the market share