The Role of Service Quality in Ensuring Customer Satisfaction in the Airline Industry

Abstract

Globalisation and intense market competition have affected the business environment of the 21st century. The changes have mainly occurred at the customer level, where expectations in terms of service quality have increased, whilst customer loyalty has not reached the same level of expectation. This change has also been felt in the passenger air transport industry, with passenger airlines increasing their efforts to identify and implement new ways of improving the quality of services they provide to customers. However, air transport, be it cargo or passenger, faces considerable challenges arising from the increasingly dynamic and uncertain environment in which it operates. This paper is part of an empirical study aimed at developing a model for measuring and analysing the quality of air passenger services in order to improve the quality of customer service. This paper therefore aims to present some important aspects of the influence of quality on customer satisfaction in a major international airline.

Keywords

• air transport industry
• customer satisfaction
• customer loyalty
• service quality