The Impact of Service Quality on Passenger Satisfaction and Loyalty in the Indian Aviation Industry

Abstract

Recently, air industry has been focusing on a continuous need and importance for improvement in the quality of services so as to provide maximum satisfaction to the passengers In fact, Being dynamic and customer centric in nature, airline business always has scope for innovation in the service operation. The efficiency of airlines majorly depends on service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The current paper therefore examines the variety of factors involved with quality of airline services which have direct and significant relationship with the satisfaction of airline passengers. Due to the rapid development and competition of service quality, both in developed and developing nations it has become crucial for the airlines to measure and evaluate the quality of service on a regular basis. There have been many characteristics identified by the brand managers working for airlines industry to consistently please their customers. Efforts have been taken for developing mechanisms in order to monitor customer satisfaction to promote their loyalty towards airline brands. This paper proposes a conceptual framework to investigate the impact of passengers perceived service quality, on satisfaction and loyalty. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to analyze the data collected from 154 passengers travelling on domestic airlines from Indira Gandhi International (I.G.I) airport Delhi. The results of the study indicate that service quality passenger satisfaction is significantly and positively related to loyalty. Also, passenger satisfaction has found to be an important mediator between perceived service quality and passenger loyalty.

Keywords: Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, Airlines, India

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