CUSTOMER SATISFACTION TOWARDS SERVICE QUALITY

Customer Satisfaction Towards Service Quality Of Premium Airlines: Emirates Airline Based Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of customer satisfaction towards service quality of Emirates Airline. 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 beverage, and reliability. These findings imply that Emirates Airline's in-flight service should have different delivery strategies based on the customer seat class.

Table of Contents

Abstract2

Chapter One: Introduction5

Background5

Research Aim and Objectives6

Significance Of The Study7

Organisation of the Study8

Chapter Two: Literature Review10

Introduction10

Customer satisfaction10

The Components of Satisfaction11

SERVQUAL16

The advent of SERVQUAL16

SERVQUAL model18

Summary21

Customer Satisfaction in the Airline Industry23

External changes that have affected Emirates Airline between 1997 & 200724

Political24

Economic25

Social26

Technological27

Legal27

Environmental28

Critical evaluation of the strategies used by the Airline between 2002 & 200728

Strength29

Weakness29

Opportunities30

Threats31

Impact of stakeholder pressure on strategies32

Evaluation of future strategies33

Quality, Competition and Airlines36

Service quality40

Perceived value43

Satisfaction43

Relationships between the variables44

In-flight meal service quality47

Service Quality48

Service Quality as the Antecedents of Customer Satisfaction48

The background literature on service quality50

Summary52

Chapter Three: Conceptual Development & hypothesis formulation53

Introduction53

Research framework54

Hypotheses testing56

Regression analysis—the prestige class56

Regression analysis—the economy class58

Summary59

Prestige class59

Economy class60

Chapter Four: Research Design and methodology62

Methods62

Findings64

Service quality determinants vary according to service quality of Airline industry (P1)65

There is a gap between the key determinants of service quality identified by Airline industry management and Chinese customers' experience of delivery of these determinants (P2)70

Demanding and informed Chinese customers are creating an environment of improvement leading to excellence in all segments of the Airline industry sector (P3)76

The star grading scheme and associated standards is largely producer-driven (P4)80

Chapter Five: Results and analysis82

Discussion82

Understanding customer behaviour83

The criticality of quality of information85

Need for a common standard of quality service across the sector86

Limitations88

Chapter Six: Conclusions and Implications89

Conclusion89

Implications90

Implications for service managers90

Implications for further research91

References92

Chapter One: Introduction

Background

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 loyalty in various industries to increase service performance (Parasuraman et al. 1988a; Carman 1990; Cronin and Taylor 1992; Asubonteng et al. 1996; Davis 1999; Lee and Cunningham 2001; Jones et al. 2002; Santos 2003). However, there is a paucity of research on the service quality of the Emirates Airline industry, despite the fact that the Emirates Airline industry traditionally has a high level of competition, a situation which makes Emirates Airline strive to find ways to improve their service quality to gain competitive ...