E-SERVICE QUALITY, PASSENGER SATISFACTION AND PASSENGER LOYALTY RELATIONSHIP IN AIRLINE INDUSTRY

Abstract

With the start of the use of internet technologies in all areas of human life, customers have gravitated to perform many processes associated with customer products or services on companies’ websites and this led to a change in the customer profile. Today's customers are not willing to just get the cheapest products or services through the website, but also demand the quality of service standard which can respond to different expectations. From this point forth, in order to respond to customers' requests and needs and to keep up with the competition, companies, started to use the internet technologies intensely. This situation is also true for the airline companies, providing services to these companies in the international airline industry; the existence of a quality website is of the utmost importance. So, an airline companies being able to understand the relationships among e-service quality, satisfaction and loyalty have become compulsory in order to maintain profitability. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the interrelationships among e-service quality, passenger satisfaction and passenger loyalty in the airline industry. Within the scope of the research, a survey prepared by using 5 point Likert scale has been conducted. Surveys have been applied to 421 domestic and 400 international passengers in various airports in Turkey. For data analysis; Regression analysis was used. According to the survey results; it has been concluded that both the e-service quality affects the passenger satisfaction and the passenger satisfaction affects the loyalty of the passenger positively. In addition, the findings demonstrated that significant differences exist between the passenger satisfaction regarding their flight type. What is more, according to the findings; the airline managers have been made a number of suggestions.