1Centre for Intellectual Property Rights, Anna University Coimbatore, India.
2School of Management, VLB Janakiammal College of Engg. and Technology, Coimbatore, India.
The airline industry exists in an intensely competitive market. In recent years, there has been an industry-wide shakedown, which will have far-reaching effects on the industry's trend towards expanding domestic and international services. The Indian Airline market is characterised as a hugely potential and under penetrated market. However, almost all airlines have shown losses in the recent past and things don't look to improve unless some revolutionary changes are initiated by the government as well as by the airlines owners.
Research evidence suggests that customer satisfaction has a direct effect on the financial performance of a company. Moreover, satisfied customers have a higher propensity to stay with their existing service provider than the less satisfied ones and are more likely to recommend the service provider to others, leading to improved bottom line for the company. Therefore, it is imperative that Indian Airline operators gain a better understanding of the relationship between the service related factors, passenger satisfaction, reuse intentions and recommendation of services to others. In this paper we explore these relationships. The empirical phase of this research is aimed at identifying the underlying factors that determine customer satisfaction, repurchase intention and recommendation of airline services to others. Data is proposed to be collected using self-administered questionnaires from the airline service users.
The research is conducted to Study the effects of customers' perception on service quality to the customer satisfaction level, Study the effects of conformity between service quality and external communication on the customer satisfaction level, Study the variables for differentiating the levels of customers' satisfaction and dissatisfaction and Study whether the customers from various segments have differences in expressing their satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Also the various factors that influence passenger satisfaction are proposed to be identified.
