How to adapt the requirements of an expedition to meet customer competences
Vähä-Karvia, Sampsa Eero Juhani (2021)
Vähä-Karvia, Sampsa Eero Juhani
2021
All rights reserved. This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202105189293
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202105189293
Tiivistelmä
There is an overall need to find a good fit between offered hiking products and the customer demand. The trend of ever raising interest in outdoor recreation makes this issue very topical. Objective for my thesis was to expand the operations of my commissioner, Polku Nature Tours. Polku Nature Tours is a Finnish hiking and bush craft course operator. I concentrated on producing a winter hiking product for them and giving general ideas on improving their hiking products. I also provided a difficulty rating for their expeditions.
I concentrated on three factors within the thesis: customer communication; different ways to adjust the level of challenge for the participants; and reflecting. In communication part, I concentrated on the aspects that happen before the expeditions starts. Adjusting part focused on actions that you can do during the hike as a leader and reflecting combined these two phases together by forming a continuous cycle of reflecting on the quality of communication and whether customer demands were met or not.
As methods for research-based development work, I used benchmarking, interviews and test expedition, which included participant observation and a small questionnaire. I planned and implemented in collaboration with my commissioner a test expedition with 6 customers and 8 participants in total. To analyze my data, I used coding to define themes that became the main results of the data analysis.
As results, I found out that effective communication and thorough planning are crucial in a successful expedition. Both factors help you as a guide to adjust the level of challenge of the expedition to match with your customers’ competences. Reflecting continuously on your operations enables you to plan better and communicate more effectively. Using adventure educational approach to organize their expeditions proved to be worthwhile for my commissioner.
I concentrated on three factors within the thesis: customer communication; different ways to adjust the level of challenge for the participants; and reflecting. In communication part, I concentrated on the aspects that happen before the expeditions starts. Adjusting part focused on actions that you can do during the hike as a leader and reflecting combined these two phases together by forming a continuous cycle of reflecting on the quality of communication and whether customer demands were met or not.
As methods for research-based development work, I used benchmarking, interviews and test expedition, which included participant observation and a small questionnaire. I planned and implemented in collaboration with my commissioner a test expedition with 6 customers and 8 participants in total. To analyze my data, I used coding to define themes that became the main results of the data analysis.
As results, I found out that effective communication and thorough planning are crucial in a successful expedition. Both factors help you as a guide to adjust the level of challenge of the expedition to match with your customers’ competences. Reflecting continuously on your operations enables you to plan better and communicate more effectively. Using adventure educational approach to organize their expeditions proved to be worthwhile for my commissioner.