Service quality effects on air passenger intentions: a service chain perspective

Yu-Chiun Chiou, Yen-Heng Chen
2012 Transportmetrica  
This study divides entire airline services into eight service stages and uses a second-order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to constitute service quality and to examine the causal relationships between two consecutive service stages from a service chain perspective. Two conceptual frameworks -overall framework and service chain framework are proposed. The former incorporates the constructs of service quality, sacrifice, servicescape, service value, satisfaction, switching barriers, and
more » ... ioural intentions combined with seven hypothetical causal relationships. The latter depicts seven hypothetical causal relationships between two consecutive service stages. The proposed models are validated by a case study of Spring Airlines, a low-cost carrier (LCC) based in China. The empirical results support all hypotheses except hypothesis 7 that service quality positively impacts behavioural intentions. Notably, test results for the interrelationships between two consecutive service stages suggest that a lack of satisfaction at a specific service stage will affect customer perception of the consequent service stage. Therefore, to improve the service quality for a service stage, the service quality of all upstream service stages must be improved first. This study also found that service quality has a large effect although not direct on behavioural intentions while sacrifice has the smallest effect. A low-fare strategy may not be effective when an airline fails to deliver high-quality service.
doi:10.1080/18128602.2010.548837 fatcat:ebo45txnpbgvvdusoa2wql7psa