Airline Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty: Impact of In-Flight Service Quality
Airline Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty: Impact of In-Flight Service Quality
Airline Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty: Impact of In-Flight Service Quality
DOI 10.1007/s11628-009-0068-4
ORIGINAL PAPER
Received: 24 June 2009 / Accepted: 25 June 2009 / Published online: 11 July 2009
Ó Springer-Verlag 2009
Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of the in-flight
service quality on airline customer satisfaction and loyalty. This study analyzed the
data from passengers of two classes: prestige (business) and economy. The results
suggest that there are different factors of in-flight service quality that are important
according to the customer seat class. In the case of the prestige class, there were six
service quality factors of importance: alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage,
responsiveness and empathy, reliability, assurance, presentation style of food, and
food quality; while the economy class showed five important service quality factors:
responsiveness and empathy, food quality, alcoholic beverage, non-alcoholic bev-
erage, and reliability. These findings imply that airline companies’ in-flight service
should have different delivery strategies based on the customer seat class.
1 Introduction
Today, the service industry has become the most important segment of the world
economy (Lee et al. 2007). In the USA, the service industry constitutes around 60%
of the annual GDP and nearly 70% of new jobs, leading the worldwide expansion of
the service industry (Mckee 2008). Thus, many researchers have studied service
quality and tried to identify the factors which affect customer satisfaction and
M. An Y. Noh (&)
Department of Management, 209 College of Business Administration, University of Nebraska,
P.O. Box 880491, Lincoln, NE 68588-0491, USA
e-mail: acipco@hanmail.net
M. An
e-mail: sigechu@hanmail.net
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294 M. An, Y. Noh
Service quality has been studied over the years by many researchers. Garvin (1984)
defined service quality as the subjectively perceived quality of service received by
customers. Grönroos (1984) stated that service quality is the outcome of an
evaluation process in which the consumer compares his or her expectations with the
perception of the services that he or she has received. On the basis of previous
studies, Parasuraman et al. (1985) reviewed and summarized service quality in three
themes ‘‘first, service quality is more difficult for the consumer to evaluate than
goods quality; second, service quality perceptions result from a comparison of
consumer expectations with actual service performance; third, quality evaluations
are not made solely on the outcome of a service, and they also involve evaluations
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Airline customer satisfaction and loyalty 295
of the process of service delivery.’’ The above has been widely accepted as the basic
definition of service quality and has also been applied to other areas of research.
Two main conceptualizations of service quality exist. One is based on a
disconfirmation approach, and the other on a performance-only approach. Early
researchers adopted the disconfirmation model, which seeks to estimate the size gap
between the customer expectations and their actual perceptions (Santos 2003).
Parasuraman et al. (1985) suggested that consumers’ evaluation of service quality is
based on the gap between their expectations and performance. With this approach,
Parasuraman et al. (1988b) developed their widely applied multi-dimensional
service quality measurement tool, SERVQUAL. It consists of five factors (tangibles,
reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy) and contains a two-part, 22
scale items regarding expectations and performance.
These five factors have been tested through numerous empirical studies in
various industries by many researchers. Carman (1990) investigated the validity of
these five factors and stated that these factors cannot be applicable to all service
industries without any modification although they are well organized. Likewise, the
SERVQUAL model has been proved to be applicable to different industries through
some modifications (Asubonteng et al. 1996).
Although SERVQUAL has been widely applied in a variety of industries, some
criticism exists in the literature of the disconfirmation approach. Cronin and Taylor
(1992), who revealed a higher R2 in a performance-only measure as an alternative
approach, stated that a performance-based measure of service quality might be an
improved means of measuring the service quality construct. The expectation–
perception framework is of questionable validity because it has conceptual and
definitional problems such as the conceptual definition of expectations and
measurement validity of expectation (Teas 1993). The normality of a stimulus
tends to be estimated by comparing it to the evoked norm after the fact, rather than
to prior expectation (Kahneman and Miller 1986). A trade-off between perceived
price and perceived quality leads to perceived value, and perceived value is a
primary factor influencing purchase intention (Chang and Albert 1994). A
performance-only measure is superior to the disconfirmation approach because
the former is more reliable and defensible than the latter (Page and Spreng 2002).
This study used the five service quality factors of Parasuraman et al. (1988b;
hereafter PZB)—tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy—
and Cronin and Taylor’s (1992) performance-only measure, to investigate factors
influencing in-flight service quality of airline companies.
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The services provided by airline companies have both fixed and flexible
characteristics (Chang et al. 2003). The fixed characteristics are subject to seat size,
cargo storage, type of airplane, and airplane maintenance. The flexible character-
istics of airline service include the in-flight meal service which has both tangible
traits and intangible services from departure to arrival such as the service by flight
attendants.
Airline customers tend to be loyal to particular airline companies due to the traits
of airline service such as mileage programs. Even customers who are not satisfied
with service quality can keep on using a particular airliner rather than switching to
other airliner (Jones et al. 2002). In addition to service quality perceptions,
transaction and switching cost factors also have a significant impact on service
loyalty (Lee and Cunningham 2001).
The recognition of airline service quality is much harder than that of other service
companies such as financial institutions whose work processes consist of separate
but interrelated tasks of one organization. However, airline services are performed
simultaneously by a variety of processes by many entities such as TSA, airport
authority, catering companies, etc (Chang et al. 2003). Therefore, a seamless
coordination of a variety of activities by many organizations is needed for the
improvement of the airline service quality.
The representative service of airline companies is in-flight service. For any business
delivering service in interactive encounters with customers, personalization—‘‘the
social content of interaction between service or retail employees and their
customers’’—is for perceived service quality and customer satisfaction (Mittal
and Lassar 1996). Unwelcome service failure such as delays often generate strong
negative impacts from customers (Butcher and Kayani 2008). Because in-flight
service is directly provided to passengers through interactive encounters with
customers, the passengers are likely to be sensitive to the quality of this service.
Thus, the image of an airlines may be directly related to the quality of in-flight
service, even more so than for other types of service.
Among in-flight services, in-flight meal service has a great deal of importance
for the evaluation of the airline companies’ service quality, due to the fact that it
takes the largest amount of time interacting directly with customers. Accordingly,
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Airline customer satisfaction and loyalty 297
The purpose of this study is to identify the factors which impact the in-flight service
quality and to investigate which of those factors influence the customer satisfaction
and loyalty. Figure 2 presents the research model.
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298 M. An, Y. Noh
To evaluate the service quality of in-flight food and beverage service, the
questionnaire was developed based on the 22 items of PZB and 11 additional items
for the traits of in-flight food and beverage service. We also developed 16 items to
evaluate customer satisfaction about the service and loyalty to the airline company.
This study investigates the factors which consist of in-flight food and beverage
services and the influence of those identified factors on the customer satisfaction and
loyalty. The data were collected from the passengers of a leading global airline
company headquartered in South Korea. Even though airline passengers’ expec-
tation and perception can vary by nationality as shown by Sultan and Simpson
(2000), this airline is considered to be a model company in the air transport industry
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Airline customer satisfaction and loyalty 299
Gender
Male 310 62.8
Female 161 32.6
No answer 23 4.6
Age
Under 20 9 1.8
21–30 95 19.2
31–40 171 34.7
41–50 143 28.9
51–60 52 10.7
Over 60 24 4.6
Annual income ($)
Under 30,000 107 21.7
30,000–50,000 160 32.4
50,000–70,000 84 17.0
Over 70,000 126 25.5
No answer 17 3.4
Total 494 100.0
in terms of its business scale and global air-routes. All passengers were the
customers using the North America–Korea route or the Europe–Korea route which
need more than 10 h of flight time. A total of 150 questionnaires were collected
from the prestige (business) class and 370 questionnaires from the economy class.
We excluded 25 incomplete questionnaires and used a total of 494 usable
questionnaires—139 from the prestige class and 355 from the economy class.
To identify the factors influencing service quality and identify the relationships
between these factors and customer satisfaction and loyalty, various statistical tools
were employed. First, frequency analyses were used to get the demographic
information about the sample as shown in Table 1. Second, reliability and factor
analyses were performed to identify the factors that influence service quality and
finally, regression analysis was used to identify the relationship between these
factors and customer satisfaction and loyalty.
The sample used for this study consists of 494 respondents. The sample is classified
by gender, age, and annual income as shown in Table 1. The gender ratio indicates
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300 M. An, Y. Noh
that about two-thirds of the passengers in the sample are males. The majority of
passengers in the sample are in the 31–50 age group (63.6%), indicating that they
are primarily business people with relatively high income. This is especially true for
Korean passengers, considering the current Korean per capita GDP of $20,000.
The most preferred food of passengers was Korean food as the data were
collected from a Korean airline. As for the main destination, the ratio of the
passengers using the North America–Korea route was similar to the ratio of the
passengers using the Europe–Korea route.
This study classified the collected data into prestige class and economy class
because passengers’ age, level of income, and occupations are considered to
influence the evaluation of service quality. Prestige class passengers generally have
higher income and are in managerial positions in their organizations, and also their
age tends to be older than economy class passengers. Therefore, we can expect that
prestige class passengers have much more experience in high quality food and
beverages than economy class passengers, and as a result, they might evaluate in-
flight meal service much more sensitively than economy class passengers. Thus, we
performed factor analysis by separating the data into two groups. As shown in
Table 2, the results were different between the two groups as expected. We drew six
factors from the prestige class passengers and five factors from the economy class,
respectively.
The results of factor and reliability analyses of the prestige class are shown in
Tables 2 and 3 (six factors over Eigen value one). The sum of variances of these six
factors was 69.4% of the total variance, and the variance rate of each factor was
under 20%. We obtained discrimination validity because each factor had an
exclusive concept. Convergence validity was also derived from the items which
collectively explain each factor. The results of factor analysis measured correctly
what we wanted to evaluate because it had both construct validity and convergence
validity. We used the evaluation items of PZB (1988b) regarding intangible service
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Airline customer satisfaction and loyalty 301
As seen in Table 2, five factors were derived from the economy class passenger
data. As shown in Table 3, the sum of variances of five factors constituted 69.1% of
total variance and each factor’s variance was under 20% of the total variance except
for only responsiveness and empathy (24.5%). These five factors had discrimination
validity because of their exclusive concepts and also had convergence validity.
Accordingly, the evaluation items correctly measured what we intended to measure.
Content validity about evaluation items was the same as explained in the analysis of
the prestige class data.
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From four intangible factors of service quality in the PZB (1988b) study,
responsiveness, empathy, and assurance were grouped and derived as one factor
except reliability which was derived as a different factor. It appeared that the
economy class passengers were not as sensitive, in evaluating intangible services, as
the prestige class passengers. This result is not consistent with the result of the PZB
(1988b) study.
In the case of food services, seven evaluation items resulted in one factor. This
result is different from the result of factor analysis for the prestige class, which
showed two separate factors of food service: presentation style of food and food
quality. In addition, the items to evaluate alcoholic beverage and non-alcoholic
beverage were separately derived as two different factors.
Table 4 shows the results of regression analysis in which six factors derived from
factor analysis were used as independent variables and customer satisfaction with
in-flight meal service as the dependent variable. As shown in Table 4, the quality of
alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage considerably impacts the customer satisfac-
tion. Food quality influences customer satisfaction more than presentation style of
food, a result which means that airline companies should focus on the improvement
of general food quality such as taste, freshness, and menu.
The result of regression analysis for customer loyalty is shown in Table 5. The
factor of responsiveness and empathy significantly impacts customer loyalty, a
result which means that the empathetic services by flight attendants play a crucial
role in choosing airline companies by the passengers. In addition, the prestige class
passengers are thought to have more interest in alcoholic and non-alcoholic
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Table 6 Result of regression analysis for the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty—
the prestige class
Variables Coefficient of Coefficient t Significance Multi-collinearity
non-standard of standard
beverage than just food. Table 6 shows the regression result for the relationship
between customer satisfaction with in-flight service and customer loyalty. The
relationship is significant but relatively weak as indicated by the value of R2.
Table 7 shows the result of regression analysis in which five factors were used as
independent variables and customer satisfaction as the dependent variable. Food
quality had the most impact on customer satisfaction. Next to food quality, alcoholic
beverage influences customer satisfaction.
The result of regression analysis for customer loyalty is shown in Table 8. The
result shows that the influence of food quality on customer loyalty is unexpectedly
not greater than alcoholic beverage and intangible service quality. The economy
class passengers seem to feel their loyalty to airline companies more based on
empathetic services by air-flight attendants than in-flight services because they
travel for long hours in the clamped condition. Table 9 presents the result of
regression analysis for the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Again, customer satisfaction with in-flight service and customer loyalty are
significantly related but relatively weak as for the prestige class.
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Table 9 Result of regression analysis for the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty—
the economy class
Variables Coefficient of Coefficient of t Significance Multi-collinearity
non-standard standard
The results of six regression analyses on the prestige and economy class data are
presented below.
(1) Prestige class
As shown in Fig. 3, the direct influence of in-flight service quality on customer
loyalty is much greater than the indirect influence through customer satisfaction.
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Airline customer satisfaction and loyalty 305
5 Conclusion
This study delineated six service quality factors (i.e., in-flight alcoholic beverage
and non-alcoholic beverage, responsiveness and empathy, reliability, assurance,
presentation style of food, and food quality) for the prestige class service, while the
economy class shows five quality factors (i.e., responsiveness and empathy, food
quality, alcoholic beverage, non-alcoholic beverage, and reliability). Regression
analyses also showed different results between the prestige class and economy class.
These results indicate that the recognition of service quality is somewhat
different according to the seat class, mostly due to the fact that the prestige class
passengers have different demographical backgrounds from the economy class
passengers. The main service quality factors which impact customer satisfaction and
loyalty are also different between the prestige class and economy class.
Generally, people with higher income and positions in their organizations tend to
experience higher quality service and thus are more sensitive to the evaluation of
service quality. This study showed that the recognition of service quality can be
different among those with different income and professional status. Therefore,
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