By Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence
From late 2017 to early 2018, Newsmax and TechnoMetrica collaborated on a study gauging consumers’ experiences with major cruise lines. Study participants were asked to evaluate their most recent cruise experience on a variety of key attributes and features. An overall Index is computed for each cruise line and vessel based on the individual attribute ratings. The rankings for the Newsmax Best Cruises Awards are determined by these indices.
The study methodology encompasses two phases of survey research.
In the first phase of the project, Newsmax and TechnoMetrica identified the features and characteristics of a cruise that are most important to passengers. Implemented in December 2017, the Phase I survey employed the MaxDiff method to determine the relative importance of the 16 potential attributes that we had selected for evaluation. Thus, survey respondents were presented with combinations of the 16 characteristics, and were asked to identify which features were the most and least important to them.
The online survey included the participation of 500 Newsmax readers who had taken at least one cruise in the past two years, or were planning to take one within the next year. Potential respondents were sent invitations via email.
Based on the results of the survey, we narrowed the 16 attributes down to 11. In addition, TechnoMetrica also developed the weights that should be assigned to each of the 11 features in order to compute an Overall Customer Experience Index for each cruise line and vessel.
Overall, consumers consider the opportunity to visit multiple destinations and itineraries as the most important feature of a cruise, followed close behind by dining and food, and value for the money. Rounding out the top five most important attributes were comfortable cabins and quality onboard customer service.
The Phase II survey spanned from January to March 2018, and garnered the participation of 4,369 Newsmax readers. Email invitations were sent to readers, and those who have taken at least one cruise in the past three years completed the survey.
In order to qualify for a ranking, a cruise line must amass at least 200 respondents during the Phase II survey. Out of the 17 cruise lines that were explicitly listed in the questionnaire, six garnered 200 respondents or more.
For individual vessels, each cruise ship with 50 or more responses in the survey qualified for the rankings. In the survey, 11 out of a potential 181 ships claimed at least 50 participants.
Respondents assessed the performances of their respective cruise line and vessel on each of the 11 attributes using a five-point scale (Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, and Poor).
We developed a Customer Experience Index for each attribute, using the following question: Thinking of your most recent cruise, how would you rate your experience on the following areas?
The Customer Experience Index is derived from the difference between the share of respondents assigning ratings of Excellent and Very Good, and the percentage who gave ratings of Fair and Poor.
For example, if 41% of respondents rated “value for money” as Excellent, 34% Very Good, 17% Good, 5% Fair, and 3% Poor, we calculated the Customer Experience Index to be 67% (75% less 8%).
Based on an analysis of the study data, we established a ranking of the six cruise lines and 11 cruise ships with the highest Customer Experience Index scores for each attribute.
In order to ascertain the Overall Customer Experience Index, we combined the sub-indexes for all 11 attributes using the weights developed in Phase I. Our Top Overall Customer Experience rankings of cruise lines and ships consist of the six lines and 11 vessels that hold the highest ratings in the overall index.