Multiple Conceptual Modelling of Perceived Quality of In-flight Airline Services

Abstract

KEY WORDSin-flight airline service quality; perceived value; recommendations (word of mouth); airline seat comfort; INTRODUCTIONThe growth of globalization today gives air transport an ever more important role. In the past two decades, the air travel industry has faced significant changes reflected in higher quality standards, various pricing strategies, and growth of air transport traffic, among other changes [1]. According to the 60th Edition of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) World Air Transport Statistics (WTS) for 2015, the yearbook of the airline industry performance, in 2015 world airlines carried 3.6 billion passengers on scheduled services; an increase of 7.2% over 2014, representing an additional 240 million air trips. In addition, airlines transported 52.2 million tonnes of cargo [2].Although the global economic performance remains a concern, the strength of the economic cycle will play a key role in the continuous expansion of demand growth for air travel in 2017. However, experts warn that the questions over the durability of the economic upswing, rising oil prices [3], financial crisis in Greece, recent weakness in regional trade activity in the Asia-Pacific area, and the renewed terrorism threats and continued geopolitical tensions have the potential to dampen the performance on these markets [2]. These are all reasons that further encourage the examination and monitoring of air travel services. The growing competition, rising demand, and described potential threats require constant delivery of high-quality services within the airline industry. Simultaneously, continuous improvements are essential for airline profitability and sustained development. Therefore, a better understanding of the relationship between determinants affecting passenger's service quality perception, their perceived value, and consequently their behavioural intentions are of the utmost importance, and the focal point of the present research.Researchers have studied various dimensions of airline services quality from the passenger's perspective, most of which investigated passengers' perception of airline service quality in relation to their behavioural intentions, taking into consideration the theory of airline services value, price, feedback, and passenger satisfaction [4,5,6,7,8]. Since transport service is a chain process, passengers' air travel experiences can be observed from the perspective of airport ground services and in-flight services [1]. The latter has gained considerably less attention among researchers. That is why the present study pays attention to specific areas, such as in-flight airline services quality in relation to perceived value and passengers' recommendations (word of mouth -WOM) (which, in our case, is regarded as a proxy for passengers' behavioural intentions), as well as passengers' perception of airline seat comfort. The quality of airline seats Human -Transport Interaction Preliminary Communication

The Role of In-Flight Service Quality on Value for Money in Business Class: A Logit Model on the Airline Industry

“…As a result of this study, it was found that in-flight service quality positively affects value for money. This finding supports previous studies (Chen and Liu 2017;Lee et al 2018;Šebjan et al 2017). All predictors, according to Wald's statistics, had a significant effect on value for money.…”

“…It was also discussed that the quality of food and beverages is greatly affected by the staff service (Messner 2016). Finally, consistent with previous studies (Tsaur et al 2002;Milioti et al 2015;Šebjan et al 2017;Tsafarakis et al 2018), the least significant attribute was found to be in-flight entertainment. Therefore, we can conclude that even though in-flight entertainment systems are important for business travelers, they are not prioritized sufficiently.…”

“…Several studies in the airline industry have also investigated the concept of perceived value. When the literature is examined, some studies explained perceived value as value for money (Kashyap and Bojanic 2000;Rajaguru 2016;Šebjan et al 2017), and others explained perceived value as an overall model (Hapsari et al 2017;Chen and Liu 2017;Forgas et al 2010). Kashyap and Bojanic (2000) argued that the perceived value is predominantly critical in passengers' decisions, so businesses should provide value-oriented services.…”

“…In this study, the research problem was constructed based on the causal relationship between in-flight service quality and value for money (Šebjan et al 2017;Leonnard 2018). Thus, the aim was to investigate the effects of judgments about in-flight service quality on value for money.…”

Pembentuk Word of Mouth pada Perusahaan Penerbangan Bertarif Murah di Indonesia

“…Perceived value yang dirasakan oleh penumpang merupakan akibat dari kualitas pelayanan dengan perceived price yang mereka terima ( Šebjan, Tominc & Širec 2017, Park, Robertson & Wu 2006. Perceived value akan meningkatkan kepuasan penumpang.…”