Reference no: EM131146131

Introduction:

In a carnival cruise employees play an important role in the maintenance of the vessel as well as the reputation of the cruise as the customer satisfaction on a cruise is directly dependent on the employee work and as important as management. Often employees laze to work on the ships or do no care much for the work they have to do or resort to a few criminal offenses, reasons being many including a few like being away from their homes for long and missing their families, not having enough encouragement or motivation for the work they do, not enough work breaks, no appreciation for the work done, overload of work, no proper administration of work division among many others.
Purpose Statement:

The purpose of this research is to examine what demographics action course carnival cruise must start upon to bring a change in the employee morale after a steady increase in the number of complaints increased on the employees and the decrease of the customer base due to inefficiency complaint about the crew staff. This research will assist the organization with future strategic decisions in order to improve employee morale.

Problem Statement:

Carnival cruise Pvt. Ltd. Has seen a steady decline in the customer number as well as the reputation of the company due to a few issues left non attended and also due to a few misjudgments made along the way. This decline has been motivated by many factors such as customer dissatisfaction, competition in a saturated market segment as well as overall customer avoidance to change. Carnival cruise needs information on what demographics should be targeted to regain and increase market share as well as what strategies should be employeed in the targeted demographics.

Approach & Analysis:

To begin the research project, it was necessary to determine what kind of exploratory data I would want to collect. Since I didn't have a target demographic, gender, or even department, I decided to conduct in-depth interviews/surveys to gather this broad data. I created the survey with eight questions that ranged from how the staff felt about losing customers to what problems they faced on the cruise.

Data collection approach

According to (Neidhart, 2012) Carnival's popularity have been affected by a numbers of incidents in the past few years. To begin with , the sinking of the costa Concordia at coast of Italy lead to a lot of losses due to personal injuries, damage to the ship and even loss of live as a result of the incident in the year 2012. The company had to pay for the damages. Again in year 2013, carnival triumph lost power after an engine room got fire and passengers were stranded at the see due to poor condition of the ship. Lately in the year 2016, a number of passengers were crewed by descending elevator while working in shaft. It was not until the blood poured down is when they realize some of the members were injured. The company have associated these problems with lack of employees' morale.

According to (Dasu&Johnson, 2003) collection of exploratory data will give a clear understanding on the effects of these incidents to the carnival reputation. Therefore in this type of data collection and free association are key laddering techniques to perform activities using online focus group discussion. Co-operative digest (1940) point out that Focus group enables to gather information relating to the thoughts and feelings of the company on ways to improve staff morale. During research I will determine if other companies have the same problem of lack of morale by employees as it a challenge to Carnival Company. I will therefore identify research questions by identifying gathered information in order to formulate investigation questions. I will also identify the source as well as actual sample participant that could be used even in further research.

A number of incidents have affected Carnival's popularity in recent years. A few of these incidents include:

? In 2012, the partial sinking of the Costa Concordia off of the coast of Italy costing the company millions in damages to the ship, personal injury liability, and costing some their lives. (Sloan, 2012)

? In 2013, Carnival Triumph losing power after an engine room fire stranding passengers at sea in poor conditions, later being deemed the "poop" cruise. (Griffin & Bronstein, 2013)

? In 2016, a crew member was smashed by a descending elevator while working in the shaft on the Carnival Ecstasy while passengers listened to his screams and the eventually witnessed his blood pouring down the front of the elevator. (Mullen, 2016)
In order to further our understanding of the effects incidents such as these had on Carnival, we collected exploratory research data using an online focus group and laddering techniques to perform activities including free association and picture sorting. The focus group allowed us to gather information relating to the thoughts, feelings and benefits our subjects correlated with a variety of subjects including Carnival's brands, vacationing, and more specifically, cruising. During our research we attempted to determine how or if others have solved similar problems faced by Carnival, gathered background info in order to refine the research question, identified info that should be gathered to formulate investigative questions, identified sources for actual questions that might be used as measurement questions, and identified sources for and actual sample participants that might be used in future sample design of remaining research.

Data collected

Seven individuals all from different ages, background and ethnicities made up focus group. Proximate time for focus group was about two hours. In order to keep for the discussion to pick, the following question were administered to focus group.

i. How do feel about the company losing customers?

ii. What do you thing might be the cause of the company losing more customers?

iii. What should be for the company to gain its reputation again?

iv. Do you thing lack of morale by the staff is contributing factor to the problems?

v. What can the company do in order to improve staffs morale?

vi. Will improvement of staff moral increase the company's profit?

vii. How is morale associate with company's performance?

viii. How does high motivated staffs improve customers' attraction?

In addition, participants were asked to give their opinions on what most companies are doing in order to improve employees' morale. Participants were asked question on how they feel about other companies and why they respond the way they did according to each picture.

Findings

It was coincident that all the participant didn't like the way the company lost customers. Participant felt bad because losing customers means losing profit and general loss of job and good reputation of the company. From participant responses, I found out that the main causes of the company losing customers were; lack of employees morale, poor maintenance of the ship recurring incidents of accidents which demoralizes most customers. For example sinking of the ship which lead to loss of many lives. Bad customer services, having bad food, being force into the schedule, among others reasons. in order for the company to gain its reputation again, the participate suggested that the company should improve cleanness in the ship, develop good customer relation, ensure that the ship is mechanically sound in order to reduce the recurring incidents of accidents and to improve on the quality of food. Another participant pointed out that the company must improve on work efficiency to stop delays.

It was unanimous that all participant agreed that lack of staffs' morale was a great contributing factor to the company's problem. This is because happy employees means happy customers. Lack of employees' morale lower productivity and leads to customers' dissatisfaction. This is clearly evidence by abrupt customers decline and loss off profit by the carnival company. The focus group recommended several ways to the company to improve staff morale. In order to raise employees morale carnival corporation company must keep employees feel that their work is important than just a job .This will make everyone feel that his work is of high purpose and they will strive in order to earn more profit to the company. Employees will be encourage to work harder in order to maintain the ship to be clean and safe. In addition, the focus group noted that carnival management should also take time to celebrate accomplishments. It is very important to reflect on what has been achieved as this will make employees feel appreciated of what they have done and develop the desire to work more in order to realize the set company objectives and mission. Moreover, the participants recommended that the company also should grant time off to employees to pursue projects they are passionate about. This very important to note that personal projects acts source of innovation to the company as people are excepted from normal responsibilities

Furthermore, the focus group pointed out that mixing up the company's usual way of doing things helps in building the morale of the employs when they depart from their routine work. They then to discover new thing and help relieve from boredom. This will motivate the employees to even work extra hard in ensuring the ship is safe hence attracting more guest therefore increasing the profit. Furthermore, one participant suggested that the company should not forget to have fun. Fun is one of motivating factor to employees as they bring them together and have good working relation. Two participant recommended that, good working relation will enable employees to cooperate and work together to achieve a common goal. In this case, Carnival Company will be able to have good public image therefore attracting more guest hence increasing profit. The focus further suggested that high motivated staff will automatically attract more customer because as they are motivated, their services will improve. It's clear that when employees are happy they then to influence customers to be happy hence encouraging them to come for the services of the company.