A Service Quality Survey for Domestic Airlines

Abstract

This study explores passengers' expectations and perceptions of service quality for domestic airlines in Taiwan. Based on the service process and referring to SERVQUAL and the Gallup service quality model, a large-sample survey was conducted and the samples were used to establish a complete service quality evaluation framework. We first evaluated passengers' expectations of importance and perceptions of satisfaction level. Second, we examined the gap between passengers' expectations and the actual service received. Finally, an importance-performance analysis (IPA) was used to construct service attribute evaluation maps, The empirical study results indicated that cabin service were considered the most significant attribute, and reservation service was the most satisfactory attribute, although a gap between passengers' expectations and perceptions was found. The IPA and ANOVA analysis provided managerial implications for improvement for each carrier. The main contributions of this study are that we provided results of a large scale survey and offered simple and practical ways to improve the service quality of domestic airlines.