دانلود رایگان مقاله مورد رضایت مشتری با کمپانی کم هزینه و شرکت هواپیمایی با خدمات کامل

ABSTRACT

Using a survey of 382 passengers, this research examines customer satisfaction and its antecedents and consequences in the context of the airline industry. The relationships among airline tangibles, quality of personnel, satisfaction with the airline, the intention to repurchase and intention to recommend the airline are examined. The findings indicate that tangibles and personnel quality positively affect satisfaction, and satisfaction positively influences intentions to both repurchase and recommend. The key contribution is to test the moderating effect of the airline type: a low-cost vs. a full-service carrier. The results reveal a significant moderating effect of airline type on two relationships: personnel quality – satisfaction and satisfaction – repurchase intention. Specifically, the positive effect of quality of personnel on satisfaction is weaker for the lowcost versus full-service airline, while the positive effect of satisfaction on repurchase intent is stronger for the low-cost airline. The study also discusses implications for airline carriers.

7. Limitations and future research

Several limitations apply to this study and pave a way for future research. The research focuses on two specific service quality dimensions: airline tangibles and quality of personnel. Future work should M. Kos Koklic et al. Journal of Business Research xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 7 test other service quality dimensions as predictors of customer satisfaction, such as terminal tangibles or image (Mikulić & Prebežac, 2011). It would also be worthwhile to examine other potentially relevant antecedents, such as innovative brand experience (Lin, 2015), customer equity (Wang, Kim, Ko, & Liu, 2016), in-flight ambience (Loureiro & Fialho, 2016) or customer emotions (Rychalski & Hudson, 2016). Similarly, additional antecedents of behavioral intentions should be considered. Although customer satisfaction has surfaced as the strongest determinant in many studies, other factors, such as trust, may be relevant. Specifically, Forgas et al. (2010) argue that a greater degree of trust is required in case of low-cost carriers to offset their weaknesses resulting from lower price. One limitation that is also frequently identified in other airline customer satisfaction research (e.g., Lin, 2015; Mikulić & Prebežac, 2011) was the informal snowball sampling method, which could have led to a non-representative sample. The structure of the sample is also a limitation, as it does not fully represent the gender and age structure of global airline passengers, which tends to be somewhat older and more heavily weighted towards males (IATA, 2015). Furthermore, the respondents mostly reported on their experiences with the European airlines, which limits generalization of findings to non-European providers. Self-selection bias also potentially exists, as participants may have been more likely to respond if their travel experience was either extremely good or extremely poor (Prayag, 2007). Thus, it is possible that only low-cost carriers well exceeding or failing a certain quality level were reported on. There was a lack of information on whether the respondents were evaluating a short- or a long-haul flight. The importance of taking this aspect into consideration in the future studies is demonstrated by the finding that passengers perceive low-cost and full-service airlines passengers as more similar in case of short-haul flights (Ramsay et al., 2013). Hence, future research should replicate the results with other samples, including business travelers, also controlling for the flight length. Furthermore, this research measured behavioral intentions, which do not always predict actual behaviors (Ajzen, 2005). Hence, future researchers should attempt to work with a specific airline to obtain actual passenger behavioral/purchase data, if possible. Future research could also investigate the proposed relationships in an experimental setting, where only manipulated variables are varied, and all other aspects of the experimental design remain constant. The role of price, including whether it serves as a moderator, is also worthy of future investigation.