To evaluate customer loyalty toward e-CRM on Dusit

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.

om 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 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.