The 6th International Student Conference in Tourism Research (ISCONTOUR) was held at the campus of the IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, Austria, on May 14-15, 2018. The annual ISCONTOUR was collaboratively founded by Christian Maurer, Professor at IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, Austria, and Roman Egger, Professor at Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Austria. Therefore, the conference is alternately held at both venues.
The aim of ISCONTOUR is to provide international students and graduates of Bachelor and Master Programmes with a platform where they can submit and present tourism related research papers based on their approved Bachelor and Master Theses. In particular, ISCONTOUR strives to encourage students and graduates to engage in academic research and foster the knowledge transfer between academic education institutions and the tourism industry. The first day of the ISCONTOUR 2018 started with the IFITT Doctoral Summer School, which was an integral part of the ISCONTOUR this year and aimed at early-career researchers, both at Master’s and Doctoral level who can familiarize themselves with various research methodologies and are introduced to the world of academic publishing. The first day continued with the Research Methodology Workshops. On the second day of the conference, the submitted research papers were presented.
In total 36 full research papers and additional 5 extended abstracts for the IFITT Doctoral Summer School by more than 60 authors from 15 countries were submitted to the ISCONTOUR 2018. Each submission went through a thorough double-blind review process with at least two members of the ISCONTOUR 2018 Research Programme Committee assigned as reviewers. The authors then received the comments of the reviewers and had to revise the papers accordingly. Only papers of authors who adhered to this process were accepted to the conference. As a result, 29 full research papers and 4 extended PhD abstracts were accepted for presentation at the conference and are included in these proceedings. The conference covered a wide variety of topics, ranging from marketing and consumer behavior, tourism experiences, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, information and communication technologies, and destination management. These papers are not only an indication of the variety of the tourism system, but also show how relevant and impactful applied research projects conducted by students and graduates can be for tourism development and society at large. We hope these proceedings will serve as a valuable source of information on applied tourism research for students, scholars and practitioners.
Above all, we would like to thank all authors who submitted their papers to the conference. We further appreciate the considerable time put in by all members of the ISCONTOUR 2018 Research Programme Committee who helped us ensure that the content of the research papers was of high quality. We are grateful for the support we receive from the management board, rectorate and colleagues of both the IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems as well as the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences.
We are also indebted to the conference keynote speakers Jing Ge, Dimitrios Buhalis, Roger Hage, Mario Meir-Huber, Markus Gratzer, Astrid Dickinger and Marc Stickdorn and to the research workshop presenters Othmar Lehner, Lidija Lalicic, Dan McCole and Martin Waiguny. Thank you also to our IFITT Doctoral Summer School Chair Lidija Lalicic (Director of IFITT Next Generation). Last but not least, we want to express our gratitude to the sponsors and supporters of ISCONTOUR 2018, namely the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT), Semantic Technology Institute Innsbruck (STI), Niederösterreich Werbung, Lower Austria Convention, incert, More than Metrics, Farmholidays Austria, Sonnentor.
We hope that ISCONTOUR 2018 will continue to establish an international community that motivates more students and graduates to engage in applied tourism research and submit their papers to ISCONTOUR 2019.
Christian Maurer & Barbara Neuhofer
ISCONTOUR 2018 Conference Chairs
Lidija Lalicic
IFITT Doctoral Summer School 2018 Chair
Salzburg / Krems, May 2018
ARIKAN Irfan, IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, Austria
AUBKE Florian, Modul University Vienna, Austria
BAGGIO Rodolfo, Bocconi University Milan, Italy
BAUER-KRÖSBACHER Claudia, IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, Austria
BAUMGARTNER Christian, IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, Austria
BERGER-GRABNER Doris, IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, Austria
BRUCKER Eva, Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Austria
BUHALIS Dimitrios, Bournemouth University, UK
CANTONI Lorenzo, Universitá dell Svizzera italiana Lugano, Switzerland
CARBONI Inga, College of William and Mary, USA
DOUGLAS Anneli, University of Pretoria, South Africa
EBSTER Claus, University of Vienna, Austria
FENSEL Dieter, University of Innsbruck, Austria
FILIMONAU Viachaslau, Bournemouth University, UK
FUCHS Matthias, Mid-Sweden University, Sweden
FURTMÜLLER Elfi, University of Innsbruck, Austria
GE Jing, University of California Berkeley, USA
GRETZEL Ulrike, University of Southern California, USA
HATAK Isabella, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
HUANG Rong, Plymouth University, UK
JOOSS Mario, Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Austria
KASTNER Margit, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
KRUGER Martinette, Tourism Research in Economic Environs and Society, South Africa
LADKIN Adele, Bournemouth University, UK
LALICIC Lidija, Modul University Vienna, Austria
LASSNIG Markus, Salzburg Research, Austria
LIEBRICH Andreas, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland
MARCHIORI Elena, Universitá dell Svizzera italiana Lugano, Switzerland
MAURER Christian, IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, Austria
MATTEUCCI Xavier, Modul University Vienna, Austria
MURPHY Jamie, University of Eastern Finland, Finland
NEUHOFER Barbara, Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Austria
PESONEN Juho, University of Eastern Finland, Finland
PETERS Mike, MCI Management Center Innsbruck, Austria
PIKKEMAAT Birgit, Institute for Innovative Tourism, Austria
PÜHRETMAIR Franz, Kompetenznetzwerk IT zur Förderung der Integration von Menschen mit Behinderungen, Austria
RAINOLDI Mattia, Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Austria
REINO Sofia, University of Bedfordshire, UK
REITSAMER Bernd Frederik, MCI Management Center Innsbruck, Austria
ROMERO ANIA Alberto, Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain
SCHACHNER Max, IMC University of Applied Sciences
SCHEGG Roland, HES-SO Valais, Switzerland
SCHOENBERG Alina, IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, Austria
SIGALA Marianna, University of South Australia, Australia
SOLVOLL Solvi, Nord University Business School, Norway
SOMMER Guido, Cologne Business School (CBS), Germany
STANGL Brigitte, University of Surrey, UK
STECKENBAUER Georg Christian, Deggendorf Institute of Technology, Germany
TISCHLER Stephanie, IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, Austria
TUSSYADIAH Iis, University of Surrey, UK
VIGLIA Giampaolo, University of Portsmouth, UK
VOLO Serena, Free University of Bolzano, Italy
WAIGUNY Martin, IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, Austria
ZEHRER Anita, MCI Management Center Innsbruck, Austria
Gao Han Yang
Wan Yim King Penny
Eddy U Mary Elizabeth
Institute for Tourism Studies, Macao
{Absinthe.ko, Pennywan, Mary}@ift.edu.mo
Abstract
Retailing plays a significant role in Macau tourism industry. Meanwhile, the demand for well-prepared employees increases as well. Understanding students’ expectations and perceptions towards internships and bridging gaps are important for attracting students to enter into the industry after graduation and retaining them. Therefore, this paper aims to study retail students’ expectations and perceptions towards internship, and identify whether there are mismatches between them. Qualitative data was collected through in-depth interview with 26 year-4 retail and management students in Macau. This research shows that although some students feel satisfied with their internship, more than half of the retail students expressed that there were huge gaps between their expectations and perceptions of internship. In particular, bad company’s atmosphere and lack of supervision are the major mismatches. Based on the findings, practical suggestions are given to main stakeholders, including students, high education institutions and internship providers in order to improve the current internship program.
Keywords: Internships; retail; hospitality; rxpectation; perception; mismatch; students; Macau.
A well-organized internship program has become an appealing tool for schools to attract potential students, especially for those who provide tourism and hospitality courses. Internship has been embedded in many universities’ curriculum (Cheong, Binti, Shen, & Yen, 2014) as there is a common understanding that it will help graduates to acquire more knowledge about industries and prepare them to enter the workplace.
Internship program is crucial to the hospitality students and tourism development in Macau since tourism is Macau’s major industry. Visitor arrivals totalled 3,053,690 in December 2017, up by 8.5% year-on-year, which means that Macau’s tourism is facing a booming period. Tourism boom is mainly due to the liberalization of casino licenses in 2002. Further, the Individual Visitation Scheme, which was implemented in 2003, provides an opportunity for Mainland Chinese travellers to visit Hong Kong and Macau individually without joining group tours like before. Since then, the number of casino concessioners increased from 1 to 3. Many international and famous hotels and casinos such as Venetian, Wynn, Sheraton and Four Seasons entered into Macau market. The new comers not only developed their hotels and casinos but also other shopping and entertainment facilities. The retail industry has played an important role in Macau’s tourism industry. According to Macau Statistics and Census Service (2016), the proportion of interviewed retailers that reported a year-on-year growth in sales in November rose by 4 % from October to 39%. In addition, tourists today desire for a higher standard of services because they earn more money than before and have gained many travelling experiences (Dominici & Guzzo, 2010).
To respond to the market needs, high education institutions in Macau have offered a 4-year bachelor degree in retail marketing and management since 2006. This internship program occurs in year 3 and lasts for six months. Through the internship programs, students can acquire the first-hand experience in the real world during their study, while at the same time, they can put the knowledge they learnt from universities into practice. Moreover, internships often can offer some potential recruits to companies. It is especially important to Macau’s hospitality industry due to the acute shortage of human resources (Chan, Wan and Kuok, 2015).
However, prior studies have reported that there are often mismatches between interns’ expectations and perceptions towards the internship program (Lam & Ching, 2007; O’Connor & Bodicoat, 2015). Internships might not necessary help graduates enter the industry after their graduation due to the undesirable internship experiences (Porter & Kramer, 2002). Fox (2001) indicted that one bad internship experience can let students lose their interests about this industry and turn them away from this industry quickly. This mismatch calls for more concern of the quality of internship programs that will influence students’ decisions of their future careers.
Understanding students’ expectations and perceptions towards internships and bridging gaps are important for attracting students to enter into the industry after graduation and retaining them (Knouse & Fontenot, 2008). Despite the important played by the retail industry in Macau’s hospitality and tourism businesses, there is limited study to investigate the internship program of the retail major, and the expectations and perceptions of retail students of the internship program. The existing literature focuses more on hotel and tourism management students (McKercher et al., 2003; Poria et al., 2011, 2010; Poria et al., 2009).
This study therefore examines the gaps between students’ expectations and perceptions towards internships. Retail and marketing management students in Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) are selected as a case study. There are three main research aims of this study:
It is hoped that this study could contribute to the advancement of the internship program in retail and marketing management major and could provide some useful insights to the higher education institutions and their internship partners about ways to improve their internship programs.
Zhang (2013) stated that hospitality students from universities have expectations for a higher salary and fewer working hours, compared with full time employees who work in the same company, since interns think they are still students. Furthermore, Richardson and Butler (2012) indicated that the majority of students thought challenging, interesting internship jobs were the most important considerations. In Macau, students also highly expect what they will do during the internship period is likely to be interesting, since they think they would always meet new persons by working in hospitality industry (Wan & Kong, 2011). Further, students focus more on work-life balance (Maxwell, Ogden & Broadbridge, 2010). They are unwilling to work overtime or in a night shift. They just want to be relaxed since they do not need to take lessons all day at schools (Fan & Feng, 2012). In addition, they prefer fewer working hours (around 50 hours per week) during their internship periods, and they do not want to be under a great deal of pressure (Lub, Nije Bijvank, Matthijs Bal, Blomme, & Schalk, 2012).
Roth et al. (2009) indicated that in general, students are aware of the uniqueness of internship opportunities. Some are motivated to work for the industry after graduation and gain more confidence themselves (Stake & Mares, 2005). After internships, some interns reported that they gained better understanding of the industry in which they would seek employment after colleges (Kash, 2009). On the other hand, if unsatisfied internship experiences are gained, students might leave negative perceptions on the job nature, career advancements, management staff treatment and the given rewards. For instance, in hospitality industry, students are often treated as an uncostly solution to the labour shortage problem (Wang et al., 2014). In Macau, students found out that in general, working in hospitality industry is stressful mainly because they are required to perform shift work and asked to work long hours (Wan & Kong, 2012). Further, Kardash (2000) pointed out that internship programs do not keep pace with the real world of the whole hospitality industry. Thus, students are unlikely to make the connection between theories and practice independently during and after the internship period (Hergert, 2011).
Current research has indicated that student’s expectations and perceptions towards internship had significant gaps. For instance, students think companies will provide training courses for them during the internship period, while companies expect students should be well-prepared before they work in their companies (Hurst & Good, 2010). Employers consider students can fit this situation quickly and get along well with colleagues (Jaarsma, Muijtjens, Dolmans, Schuurmans, Beukelen & Scherpbier, 2009). However, students find out that it difficult for them to build good relationships, or even communicate with colleagues (Barron, Maxwell, Broadbridge & Ogden, 2007). In order to enhance students’ learning experience, schools need to create and develop a feedback collecting system to collect students’ comments in order to help them solve problems (Solnet, Kralj, Kay & DeVeau, 2009). However, the period of feedback collection maybe is too long after the internship to lose timeliness (Canziani, 2014). Students maybe feel helpless if they are faced with some problems which are not easily solved. This is also a mismatched part.
The prior literature found that there were significant gaps between expectations and perceptions of students towards internships. The expectancy theory is proposed by Vroom (1964), stating that individuals will behave in a certain way because they desire the result they expect will be achieved. Expectancy theory is one of most commonly used theories of motivation in the workplace (Campbell & Pritchard, 1976; Heneman & Schwab, 1972). Chiang and Jang (2008) realized that an individual’s performance is based on individual factors such as personality, skills, knowledge and experience. Fox (2001) indicated that students would lose their interests about the industry if they had a bad internship experience, which means that their expectancy about the internship does not be achieved. Expectation-confirmation theory (ECT) stated that “satisfaction is determined by interplay of prior expectations and perception of delivery” (Jiang & Klein, 2009). A large amount of researches have found that due to bad internship experiences, students’ ambition and their willingness to seek employment in hospitality industry declined. (Richardson, 2008). Schoffstall (2013) reported a similar finding. Graduates may be unwilling to work in hospitality industry. Students in Macau also shared same feelings. Wan and Kong (2012) indicated that because of the bad image and working atmosphere of the company, students have low intention to enter the industry. Furthermore, they are even likely to generate negative word-of-mouth, which can have adverse impact on colleges and companies (Lynn, Hales & Wiener, 2007).
The aim of this paper is to identify interns’ expectations and perceptions towards internships in retail and marketing management major. While most prior studies on hotel and tourism management students were conducted through quantitative research method (Lam and Ching, 2007; Li, 2013; Papadimitriou, 2014; Veal, 2006), this study adopted a qualitative method because this method allowed to collect more in-depth information to discover what participants’ opinions are about their internships, any gaps between their expectations and perceptions, and suggestions for improvement in the program. More importantly, qualitative research approach fits for those areas which are still under-researched (Wan & Chan, 2013). Therefore, qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with the year 4 retail and marketing management students in IFT to obtain their views on their internship experiences as well as expectations and perceptions before and after their internships.
In this study, in-depth interviews were conducted with 26 retail and marketing management major students in year 4 who completed internships in 2016. The interviews were conducted between 15th and 28th February 2017. After the 26 interviews, the point of data saturation was reached, which means there were not any new answers to the interview questions (Wan & Chan, 2013). The interviewees were briefed about the research topic and were told that interview results would be in an anonymized format and would only be used for research purposes. The interviewees were asked to sign the consent forms before the interviews.
The face-to-face interviews were conducted in some personal and quiet areas, such as in school’s study rooms, in a restaurant, in interviewee’s home and in school’s library. The main purpose of doing this in-depth interview with retail and marketing management students was to understand what their expectations were before internships, what their perceptions were after internships, and whether there were mismatches between their expectations and perceptions. A pilot test was conducted with a peer to help improve interview questions.
Fourteen open-ended and close-ended questions were asked during the interview period in order to achieve purposes of this study. The interviews began with some warm-up and transitional questions such as “which companies did you apply for” and “which company is your first choice”, and “How did you find your internship.” The main purpose of asking these kinds of questions is to guide interviewees to focus on the topic so they could answer the most important questions in more detail. After that, some direct open-ended questions were asked. Examples of the opened-ended questions were: “What were your expectations toward your internship before doing your internship”, “What were your perceptions toward your internship after finishing your internship”, and “are there any differences between your expectation and perception towards your internship. After asking this kind of questions, some follow-up questions were asked based on interviewees’ answers. For example, “why do you think there are some differences between your expectation and perception towards internship” or “would you mind giving me some examples for…” or “would you mind explaining more about…?” The final open-ended question was asked to encourage interviewees to give some suggestions to help improve the internship program. If the interviewees had no specific suggestions, interviewer said thank you to interviewees and finished interviews. The interviewer was careful not to give explanations containing potential directions during the interviews. Each interview lasted approximately 15–20 mins. Candy was given to interviewees as an incentive.
The interviews were all recorded with interviewees’ permission. All interviews were conducted in Cantonese or Mandarin depending on the preferences of the interviewees, and transcripts were translated into English later. The English transcripts were double checked based on Chinese records which were taken during the interview period to ensure accuracy.
Content analysis is considered as a method to help identify the relationships between categories and themes (Wan, 2012). “Content analysis is treated as a suitable research method for making replicable and valid inferences from texts to the contexts of their use” (Wan, 2012, p. 743). Moreover, large amounts of textual information could be included and this technique provides researchers with opportunities to identify these messages systematically by detecting the essential structures of communication content (Mak, Wong, & Chang, 2010).
The content analysis followed three general steps: the first step was open coding. The interview transcripts were read carefully word by word to identify the key themes rather than calculating the frequency of occurrence. Based on the understanding of interview contents, answers were classified. If an item was similar with existing classification, it was classified under existing themes. On the other hand, if it was not associated to existing themes, then this item was classified as a new theme. The second step was axial coding. In this step, the relationships among the open codes were identified and grouped into the same themes. The final step was selective coding, which means that the core categories were identified.
Getting along with colleagues. Building up good relationship with colleagues was the most popular expectation for interviewees, with the figure accounting for 50% of the ideas they mentioned. The main reason was that they did not want to put themselves in bad mood. One interviewee said, “I don’t want to put me in a bad mood during my internship period because this internship is 6 months, which is a pretty long period” (Interviewee #2, female). The second reason was that interviewees thought that internship provided a good opportunity for them to meet the industry people, which could benefit their future. One interviewee said, “I hope I can make some new friends during this internship and build up social interpersonal network” (Interviewee #16, female).
Providing supervisors for interns. Interviewees were also concerned whether companies provided them with a supervisor or not, as expressed by 30.8% of the interviewees, because they thought they might be unfamiliar with company’s issues. Comments included the following: “This company focuses on high quality service. I don’t want to make troubles because of my unfamiliarity” (Interviewee #7, female).
Learning the knowledge that interns want to learn. A large percentage (50%) of interviewees expected that by choosing their own internship company, they could learn the knowledge they want to learn from that company. They chose the companies for their internship mainly because they were interested in them. One interviewee said, “I drink tea on daily basis, so I want to learn more knowledge, such as tea culture” (Interviewee #4, female).
Furthermore, others chose these specific fields because they learnt some knowledge about it in school before. One interviewee reflected on her internship: “I took wine studies in college before, and I want to learn more” (Interviewee #19, female). Others who work in normal retail company also expected that since there were different departments, they can work in different departments to learn different things in short period.
Self-confidence boost. 11.5% of interviewees expected that internship could help them to improve their self-confidence. Comments included the following: “I have never work as sales person, and I dare not communicate with others” (Interviewee #1, male). “I am a boy but I am shy. I want to be brave enough to talk with strangers” (Interviewee #6, male). The other reason interviewees thought internship can help them improve self-confidence was that they can learn how to communicate with customers (11.5%).
Less work loads. Many interviewees indicated that they did not want to have heavy work load (11.5%). The main reason was that they felt very tired studying in colleges. One interviewee said, “I don’t want to have tons of works, just like I did when I was studying in school” (Interviewee #10, female). The second reason was that interviewees thought they were interns rather than full-time staff. One interviewee reflected, “I am an intern, I just come here to learn instead of helping companies solve labour shortage problem” (Interviewee #26, male).
Better than expected. More than one quarter (34.6%) of the interviewees had positive perceptions after completing their internships. Most indicated that company had a well-organized internship program. Typical comments were as follows: “Company provides three attachments for interns. Sale Assistant attachment is mainly about selling products. And then for teammate attachment, we need to supervise the working process of my colleagues. For management attachment, we mainly need to help managers decorate the place” (Interviewee #15, female).
Positive internship experiences were also due to relaxing company atmosphere and good relationships. An interviewee reported: “My colleagues are very nice, they are willing to help me” (Interviewee #10, female). Another interviewee also had similar feelings: “We are just like a big family. We always hang out together” (Interviewee #21, female).
Internship also helps broaden students’ horizons. The following two comments reflected the widely share feelings on this subject: “I learn a lot about retail industry, and I know what happened in the real industry.” (Interviewee #25, male) “There are clear differences between theories we learnt from school and real situations” (Interviewee #15, female).
Broken promises & Different job duties. 19.2% of interviewees said they felt disappointed about their internships because company promised them they had the opportunities to work for 3 months in the Hong Kong branch, but at the end, it was only 3 days. An interviewee noted: “We just walk around to visit Hong Kong office, and only some staff did presentation to us” (Interviewee #3, male). Another difference was some interviewee indicated that the actual job contents were different, accounting for 11.5%. One interviewee said, “I read job duties on school’s Moodle. But my actual job is different. I just work as a sales person” (Interviewee #4, female).
Bad company’s atmosphere. 23.1% of interviewees did not like company’s atmosphere. The main reason was that senior managers were always mad at the interns. As one interviewee reported: “Our manager sometimes is mad at us using bad language” (Interviewee #4, female). One interviewee reflected on an example in her workplace as well: “The manager has discrimination. He is always bullying others” (Interviewee #2, female). The second reason was that relationships are complicated. As an interviewee revealed, “They are sociable and mature and they always compete with others to get more commissions” (Interviewee #7, female). Another interviewee said, “They always ignore me, perhaps because I am just an intern” (Interviewee #8, male).
Lack of supervision. Some interviewees said they desired to have a supervisor to teach them but companies did not offer it (11.5%). This interviewee’s comments were representative: “They have very high expectation for me. They think I have the high work ability. I mean they think before I do this job, I have already known how to do it. And they think I can handle everything by myself, I don’t need any help” (Interviewee #8, male).
The main reason of lacking of supervision was that other colleagues were too busy to take care of interns. One interviewee said, “Company is located in Venetian, there are lots of tourists. My colleagues are too busy to have time to help me. So I only can learn something from mistakes I made before” (Interviewee #14, female). The second reason was full-time staff thought interns would influence their salaries. As an interviewee reported, “My colleagues have commissions, they do not want to waste time to help me” (Interviewee #8, male. The third reason was company did not think interns could be their potential employees in a foreseeable future. As an interviewee revealed, “I just work in there for 6 months, they do not want to waste time and money” (Interviewee #25, male).
Heavy work load. Some interviewees (11.5%) complained that they had heavy work load during internship period. The main reason was that company did not have adequate human resources. Comments included the following: “There are 4 employees, including me in this company. There are 2 managers, and they seldom come to our store. So, my colleague and I have to do tons of work” (Interviewee #6, male). Another interviewee had same feelings: “The marketing department is very small, and there are only three people in this department. I have to do different kinds of work” (Interviewee #9, female). Another reason was that there were a lot of customers every day. One interviewee said, “Our store is in Venetian. So it is common to work overtime and we don’t have adequate time to rest” (Interviewee #14, female).
No differences. More than one quarter of interviewees indicated that they thought there were no differences between their expectations and perceptions towards internships. The main reason was that they thought internship was interesting and happy. For example, they built up good relationships with their colleagues during internship period. One interviewee shared her feelings: “My colleagues are easy to get along with and we always have a great time together” (Interviewee #11, female).
The second reason was internship had positive impact on improving self-confidence. One interviewee said, “I become more outgoing, and I am willing to make friends and talk with those who I am not familiar with” (Interviewee #18, male).
The last reason was internship provided interns with opportunities to learn various things. Comments included the following: “Sometimes, I have opportunities to in charge of small events. Although I work in a retail store, I learnt how to organize an event, and the process of planning an event” (Interviewee #16, female).
Lack of supervision. Nearly one quarter of interviewees expected company could provide supervisors for them, but there were no supervisors and they had to learn things by themselves. As one interviewee said, “They treat me as a professional full-time staff, and they think I had been familiar with everything” (Interviewee #14, female). “This store is not very big, and there are not many customers. So my colleagues do not think it is necessary to teach me” (Interviewee #17, female).
Less opportunities to learn back office issues. 11.54% of interviewees said they desired to learn back office work, but there was limited opportunity for them. Interviewees said, “It promised that company will provide opportunities for us to learn marketing stuff, not only selling products” (Interviewee #2&17, female and male respectively). Another interviewee also shared her experience as an example: “I expect we will have a supervisor to teach me marketing knowledge rather than learn how to make afternoon tea for other people” (Interviewee #4, female). In fact, 7.69% of interviewees complained that they did same jobs on daily basis, which was quite mundane. Following comment was shared by an interviewee: “I hope I can try different works. However, what I do is almost same and dull, just sell clothes over and over again” (Interviewee #9, female).
Bad company's atmosphere. Some interviewee thought there were huge gaps between their expectations and perceptions mainly because of bad company’s atmosphere, accounting for 11.54%. The following two comments reflected the shared feelings on this subject: “I always feel unhappy because the manager mad at me almost every day. He does not care about my emotion” (Interviewee #3, male). “My boss sometimes cannot recognize his mistake, when I tell him this might be wrong, he will mad at me” (Interviewee #19, female). Another reason was colleagues were not easy to getting along with. As one interviewee reflected: “The relationship was complicated and it is hard to make friends with them. Maybe because I am just an intern” (Interviewee #8, male).
Heavy work load. Three interviewees indicated that they had very heavy work load and it was very common for them to work overtime. One interviewee said: “I need to work for 10 hours per day, and I have to work for 7 to 8 days in a row, and after that I can have one day off. And I have to work overtime every day” (Interviewee #12, female).
Overview of students’ expectations towards internship. Based on the qualitative data, getting along with colleagues is the most popular expectation of internship. The duration of internship is 6 months, which is a quite long period, which means that it is essential to build up good relationships with colleagues. This confirms the findings of previous study (Harter, Schmidit & Keyes, 2003) that good relationships with colleagues can positively impact students’ moods and quality of working performance. Further, building close interpersonal relationships with colleagues can generate positive emotions (Shiota, Campos, Keltner & Hertenstein, 2004). More importantly, wide social networks also can be beneficial to students’ future. These might be the reasons that the majority of interviewees highly expect that they can get well with colleagues. Moreover, having an opportunity to learn various kinds of knowledge is also expected. This result is identical with the previous research in which Davies (1990) and Fox (2001) indicated that internship was a good opportunity to learn more. Students can choose to do their internships in different kinds of retail companies. This might be the reason that students expect internship can help extend the scope of knowledge.
There are some new findings from this research. Firstly, having a supervisor to directly coach them is very important to interns, mainly because they are just students and they are unlikely to be familiar with the company’s issues. In addition, some interviewees are not social and outgoing, which means that they dare not communicate with strangers. This might be the reason that interviewees hope they can learn some communication skills; meanwhile, their self-confidence might be improved.
Overview of students’ perceptions towards internship. Moving to the question about students’ perceptions of internship, this study found that the majority of interviewees had bad perceptions because of bad companies’ atmosphere. Colleagues, especially some senior managers are unfriendly and they do not treat interns as one member of companies. This result is identical with the previous research in which Wang et al. (2014) pointed out that after attending unsatisfactory internships, many students have negative perceptions of treatment by management staff. Some managers think after finishing internship, interns just leave the company. It means that managers may think it is likely to waste time to do training for interns and even get along well with them since interns may not be their employees in the future.
Moreover, lack of supervision is a new finding mentioned in this paper. Students give priority to this mainly because they are unfamiliar with companies’ issues and they do not want to make trouble. However, Macau is facing economic downturn, so many companies have to cut budget. Thus, it is difficult for companies to have extra money to provide supervisors for students. Apart from that, some stores are located near tourism spots and employees spend a lot of time to sell their products to their customers; therefore very little time is given to teach and guide interns.
After completing internship, many interviewees complain that they have heavy work load. The first reason is that company’s scale is not large, so the company did not have adequate manpower. Another reason is that stores are located in high traffic flow areas, and every staff is assigned to perform a lot of work.
Overview of differences between expectations and perceptions toward internship. Based on interviews, this research found that the biggest mismatch between students’ expectations and perceptions of internship is the lack of supervision. The reason why students expect companies will provide supervisors is that they do not have opportunities to gain practical experience at school. Meanwhile, the reason companies do not offer students supervisors is that they think students have prepared well before they started doing the internship. This result is identical with the previous research in which Hurst and Good (2010) indicated that companies expect schools have already helped students prepare well before they work in the companies.
Moreover, bad company’s atmosphere is also considered a mismatch. Closely-knit relationship is important not only to a company, but also to students, as students will spend half year in this company, which is a quite long period. However, real situations are complex and students find it difficult to get along with colleagues mainly because companies do not consider interns “real” employees.
Many interviewees complain that companies do not have a well-organized internship program. Intern companies treated interns as full-time staff. Therefore, students always perform same jobs over and over again, and some interns even had heavy work load. Some companies want to hire an intern just because they need employees in some areas. These companies do not consider hiring interns as a way to attract potential employees in the future (Fox, 2001). The reason why this happened is that retail industry faces an acute shortage of labour. According to Macau DSEC (2016), the vacancies in retail trade shows an upward trend, and the turnover rate of employees in retail trade has also increased. It means that labour shortage is a serious problem of the Macau’s retail industry. Although labour shortage is an intractable problem for retail industry, student should not be treated as a tool to help companies tackle this problem. Otherwise, companies are likely to lose potential employees in the future and even receive negative word-of-month from interns.
High Education Institutions. Results show that some students did not know what they should do during their internships. Therefore, we suggest that more internship briefings should be organized. Colleges need to design a well-prepared internship briefing to help students gain better understanding of the whole internship program. For example, schools should introduce more detailed information to students to help students know what they will do during the internship period since some interviewees said they do not know what retail exactly does. Otherwise, students are likely to feel unsatisfied and be unwilling to enter retail industry anymore.
Based on interviews, students said that in current internship briefings, the school always invites some students who had completed their internships in hotels overseas to share their experiences. It is not useful for retail students due to the two different work settings. Thus, we suggest that schools should invite more students who did their internships in retail companies to share the internship experiences. In such sharing sessions, more real information, such as actual job contents and company’s relationships to students should be given.
Furthermore, some colleges, for example higher education institutions, create career days for graduates to seek employment, which provides students with good opportunities to know more about companies. Therefore, schools also can create an activity for internship job seeking. Each company can have a booth to introduce their company to students. If students have questions, they can use this opportunity to ask.
In addition, the current internship visits conducted by lecturers are considered not very effective in letting the Institute recognize the real situation of students. Moreover, internship visit is unlikely to benefit current interns. Therefore, schools need to do more internship visits in order to know what really happened during internship period. Besides, it would be better if schools ask students to do internship visit rather than lecturers mainly because facing lecturers, interns feel more pressure and might not tell the truth. After collecting all comments from interns, schools could launch a meeting with all internship partners to tell companies the real thinking of interns. Meanwhile, colleges could explain the benefit of making certain changes rather than individually telling specific internship partners what specific interns thinking.