دانلود رایگان مقاله تاثیر محیط خدمات هواپیما بر روی ادراک کیفیت غذا در پرواز

abstract

Airlines are currently striving to improve the quality and quantity of in-flight food, because research has shown that catering is a key attribute for a customer's satisfaction with airline service quality. But the role of an airline's service environment in forming customer perceptions about food quality has not yet been properly investigated. Using electronic word-of-mouth data from N ¼ 3996 airline passengers, this study deploys a linear regression model at multiple levels to relate perceived in-flight food quality with both the overall service environment and its formative components. The results clearly unveil the importance of an aircraft's service environment on perceived in-flight catering quality; perceptions of food quality are primarily influenced by the quality of cabin staff service, followed by entertainment and seat quality. Instead of continuing with the current practice of signing up top chefs to improve menus, airlines may instead consider putting their management focus on service improvements.

5. Managerial implications and conclusion

In order to create satisfied customers, an airline needs to integrate and coordinate various variables of the service environment, and deliver consistently (Jager de et al., 2012, p. 21). This empirical study shows that there is significant variation in the level of service quality across airlines (see Section 4.2; similar in Baker, 2013, p. 67). Even more importantly, the study reveals an interrelation between the service environment of an airplane and how passengers perceive the quality of in-flight food. This interrelation reliably exists on an individual passenger level as well as on the aggregated level of airline companies. If the in-flight service environment is good, passengers also tend to perceive the food quality as good. Because the correlation between the components of the service environment is strong, but not even (see Section 4.1), this is most likely not a misjudgment arising from passengers' reliance on the service environment as a surrogate indicator (Fitzpatrick, 1991, p. 888). Instead, it is suggested that an airplane's surrounding actively influences perceived food quality; the worth of in-flight food is assessed in its environmental context (see Section 3.1). Not a single outlier is found in the 23 airline setting examined. Out of an airplane's service environment components (seat comfort, cabin staff service, and in-flight entertainment), cabin staff service shows the strongest interrelation with food quality. This is logical because “service encounters are first and foremost social encounters” (McCallum and Harrison, 1985, p. 35). The interaction with the stewardesses and stewards onboard an aircraft replaces the usual interaction with the dining companions in a restaurant setting (see Section 3.1).