The chapter mainly focuses on the concepts of service quality and passenger loyalty in terms of the aviation industry. Therefore, the literature of studies which have been published will be reviewed as for the dimensions of inflight service quality. What mentioned above will be of great assistance in identifying the factors of great importance that can be taken into consideration to measure service quality. After that, a review of a variety of studies will be highlighted to elaborate on passenger loyalty. Then, a theoretical linkage between inflight service quality and passenger loyalty will be reviewed. Finally, the moderating effect deriving from brand equity will be discussed to see how much it can affect the relationship between inflight service quality and passenger loyalty.
Passenger Loyalty
According to the research outcomes which have been published and discussed before, passenger loyalty most of the time is referred to as the intention to purchase goods or services from a certain organization or company. Nonetheless, this approach merely covers the dimension of loyalty exclusively as for behavioral aspect, at the same time overlooking the dimension of attitudinal aspect. As a consequence, this study mainly concentrates on the seemingly missed part as mentioned above and correlates them to the idea of passenger loyalty.
It is perceived that the forming of loyalty takes several phases to develop and build (Oliver, 1999). The phases can be divided into categories from different aspects of diversity. The first stage revolves around the preference over other competitors’ features and characteristics, which can also be thought of as beliefs. The second mainly focuses on the affective preference towards the goods, products and services provided by a certain organization, which can also be seen as the attitude. The last elaborates on the concept of a higher intention to purchase good, products or services from a certain company and it is the strong intention that leads customers/passengers to choose a certain company instead of taking other competitors’
products or services into any single consideration. What has been mentioned above has come to form a concept that customers/passengers would have the tendency to develop the sense of loyalty to a service mainly in a cognitive fashion in the beginning; after that at the second stage, the development of loyalty is correlated to the emotion or feelings as “like” or “dislike” toward a certain service. Lastly, the process may go into the last stage, which can be considered as the conative sense (Back, 2005; Oliver, 1999). Along the pathway of the forming of each stage,
passenger loyalty and commitment can be built. A great variety of factors which may impose influences on passenger loyalty to a certain extent can be identified at each stage (Evanschitzky
& Wunderlich, 2006). In a sense, from the service information which can be gained by the passengers forms cognitive loyalty. According to studies which have been discussed before, cognitive loyalty seems to be the factor with the least impact as for passenger loyalty (Pedersen
& Nysveen, 2001). According to the evaluative responses made by passengers as to the aspects of service experiences and especially the perceived service performance compared to the pricing, cognitive loyalty can be formed (Evanschitzky & Wunderlich, 2006). On the other hand, to put it in a much more understandable fashion, if a customer is to make a purchase merely out of a propensity, it means we have stepped into the area of affective loyalty. In other words, affective loyalty mainly focuses on the attitude toward a certain organization and the goods or products derived from it. Lastly comes the last stage of customer loyalty, conative loyalty, which has shown as the strongest antecedent when it comes to evaluating behavioral loyalty. Conative loyalty, briefly speaking, mainly concentrates on the intention to make a purchase from a certain organization. It may be derived from convincing or persuasive counterargument competitive messages.
At the same time, the research which has been published before has discussed the factors which may impose influences on passenger loyal to a certain extent. Table 2.1 shows the details involved inside.
Table 2.1.
Factors Imposing Influences on Passenger Loyalty Behavioral Measures:
1. Intentions to make a purchase 2. Word of mouth communications 3. Sensitivity to prices
Airline Service Quality
Nowadays, airline companies have been faced with difficulties and challenges in terms of the adaptation of the quality concept since air transportation will be not fully completed without the joint efforts from airlines, passengers and the government and its policies (Gourdin 1988).
Passengers have a direct contact with the airline company so it is often seen that the blames will be on the airlines alone despite the efforts done by the management dedicated to improving the overall service quality.
For the purpose of introducing airline service of high quality, it is quite essential to recognize the main characteristics of this service.
The term “service” has been widely discussed according to the studies which have been published before. Frankly speaking, the great importance of service quality in the service industry can’t be questioned or disputed at all since it is one of the factors that will impose direct influences on the performance and revenues of a company. Over the past years, passengers have come to form higher expectations as for the quality of services they are to receive (Brew, Ford, & Himmelberg, 1989) and airline companies have been struggling and sparing no efforts to meet their increasingly high expectations. The phenomenon mentioned above implicitly suggests that there is still some room for the management with airline companies to gain a full understanding of how to define service quality.
According to the research which has been published before, there are 2 types of aspects in terms of transportation service, which are referred to as core and peripheral aspects.
Services such as baggage handling and ticketing, which can be categorized as the services facilitating and supporting the completion of the process, are regarded as peripheral services.
On the other hand, core services are composed mainly of the basic transportation flight itself (Bitner, 1990; Gronroos, 1990; Ozment & Morash, 1994; Zeithaml, Parasuraman, & Berry, 1990).
The following Table 2.2 shows examples of variables of different kinds standing for the transportation services. However, the study mainly deals with the core services such as those provided by cabin crew onboard.
Table 2.2.
Definitions of Airline Service Variables A- Airline Core Services:
1. Services for Passengers: any service form which is linked to inflight passenger comfort, safety, security and convenience, such as the attitude of the cabin crew members and the taste of the inflight meals.
2. Flight Services: any service form which is linked to the operational aspect onboard, such as the proficiency of the cockpit crew.
3. Maintenance Services: any service form which is connected to the maintenance of the status of the aircraft, which is to ensure the perfect condition of the carrier.
B- Airline Peripheral Services:
1. Ground Support: any service form which is linked to traffic control, aircraft servicing and luggage handling.
2. General Administrative Support: any kind of aspect which is to facilitate the development of the airline company, such as legal services and purchasing.
C- Airline Communication:
1. any kind of activity that aims to promote and advertise and thus elevate the image of the airline company.
D- Airline Capacity Utilization:
1. Load Factor: percentage of the number of the seats onboard
2. Passenger Enplanements: the total number of passengers who fly with a certain flight.
Note. Air Carrier Financial Statistics. Adapted from “Bureau of Transportation Statistics,” By United States Department of Transportation, December, 1990.
Kamins & Assael, 1987). A great number of dimensions that revolve around service quality are
“experience properties” which can be perceived and known only when the customer is making a purchase or experiencing the service provided (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985, p.48).
Currently, there have been a number of studies that center around the influence of service quality on consumers’ behavioral intentions (Boulding, Kalra, Staelin, & Zeithaml, 1993 ;Cronin & Taylor, 1992). Nevertheless, there are still some limitations of these studies mentioned above, which will be depicted briefly as follows.
To begin with, the full range of potential behaviors which service quality may have the tendency to contribute to can’t be fully captured and understood in the operationalization of behavioral intentions in the studies mentioned above. Take Cronin and Taylor (1992)’s study as an instance. Cronin and Taylor (1992) mainly centered on the purchase intentions which are to measure the construct with a single-item scale. The service quality covers a great range of factors, and thus it is quite questionable how they could find out the precise and accurate outcomes merely using a single-item to evaluate such a widely-covering variable. Additionally, consumers’ complaint intentions while they might possibly have any problems with a certain company’s services (Singh & Lumsden, 1990) didn’t seem to have been taken into prudent account.
However, Knutson et al. (1988)’s research study which concentrated on frequent fliers strongly implied that the connection between service quality expectations and repeat purchasing behavior is quite clear to see. Knutson and his colleagues (1988) also discovered that the service quality criteria which repeating hotel guests took into consideration were exactly the same as those when they first chose to stay at a certain hotel. Additionally, the price segment, which can be briefly categorized as economy, mid-priced and luxury, seemed to be taking the control over the level of these quality expectations. Despite the differentiation by price segment mentioned above, the criteria as for evaluating the quality and continuous repeat purchase seem to have the tendency to remain constant without the influence of price segment.
To put what mentioned above into conclusion, an individual who seems to perceive a high level of service quality which is connected with a relaxation recreation experience is to show higher level of loyalty toward a certain company and may also show the signs that the particular individual is willing to make purchases from the organization providing the perceived satisfactory services.
The Moderating Role of Brand Equity
As for the field of branding research, there have been 2 authorities, Keller (1993) and Chaudhuri (1995), on the domain utilizing two different aspects, which are financial and consumer-based, to clarity and interpret brand equity. When it comes to consumer-based aspect, brand equity is mainly regarded as an overall evaluation of a certain customer’s response to a brand. On the other hand, from the aspect of the financial side, if a financial value can be created by brands, that’s where the brand equity is derived from (Kim, Sherman, & Taylor, 2008; O’Neill & Mattila, 2010). Accroding to Aaker (1992), brand equity can be clearly defined as “the set of assets (and liabilities) linked to a brand name and symbol that adds the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or that firm’s customers” (p. 16). In the beginning, he classifies brand equity into five different dimensions; however, one of the dimensions, other proprietary brand assets (e.g., patents, trademarks, and channel relationships), is often not considered as an appropriate approach in the marketing research since it quite diverges from the aspect of customer’s perceptions concerning a certain brand (Yoo & Donthu, 2001). Thus, nowadays, most of the researchers only break down the topic of brand equity into four dimensions, which are brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality and brand loyalty.