Next we review some of these options that are the basis for our questionnaire. Apart from German wings, Lufthansa itself has begun to charge extra fees for seats next to the emergency exits. German wings offers three price packages and every package includes a price for seat bookings. Differences also arise concerning the costs for luggage. Lufthansa tickets include one piece of hand luggage maximum 8 kg as well as one regular suitcase at 23 kg. At German wings, one piece of hand luggage also maximum 8 kg is free in every category.
Air Berlin has a similar model: Ryanair allows hand luggage to 10 kg. At Lufthansa, food and beverages are still included in the ticket price. The other two categories offer this service for free. Air Berlin offers its passenger drinks and a snack for free, whilst Ryanair charges for snacks and drinks individually during the flight [ 3 ].
The focus of this empirical research airplane passengers and the customer service aspects of flying with an airline, because, as noted above, customer satisfaction is one of the most important success factors for sustainable success in the aviation branch. For this reason we gathered data from passengers flying because for private and for business reasons, with the goal of discovering what might be key elements of optimal customer service.
Airline passengers view positively the ability to build their own ticketing packages in the booking process. Airline passengers appreciate individual and natural friendly communication during the flight more than anything else for example, a free on-board magazine to collect data on airline passengers and their attitude on different forms of customer service a survey for online and offline use was conducted.
The online survey instrument was administered using the online survey software Lime Survey.
Using an online survey has many advantages. It is costefficient in creating and distributing. Furthermore, distribution is possible on a large scale. Also people feel mostly more confident to answer an online survey as they feel it more anonymous than a paper questionnaire they fill in with pencil close to the people who evaluate the questionnaires later [ 4 ]. The disadvantages, on the other hand, include a lack of control over distribution ways and participants.
Post your comment
Nor do participants have the possibility of asking questions about unclear parts in the survey [ 4 ]. In addition, the online survey was available in English and German only. Respondents must have been relatively fluent in one of the two languages in order to be able to take the survey. Linguistic and cultural misunderstandings might have occurred. However, as we concentrated on the German market, including people with migration background and people from other countries, this is a relatively minor limitation. To also include airline passengers who prefer the paper and pencil method, we went to the airports in Berlin and Frankfurt a.
We chose these sites as Berlin is the airport of the capital city and Frankfurt is one of the most important and busiest airports in Europe. Convenience and snowball sampling methods were used for the online survey, and for the offline part airline passengers were contacted directly in the entrance hall of the airport. To ensure that political, economic and other factors were the same for both survey types, we contacted the airline passengers when the online survey was active. The online survey was distributed via social media, blogs, personal messages and groups.
The link to the online survey was active for a period of one week, as in the pre-test period the participants advised us to go for such a short period of time. Their argument was that people receiving a link with a longer duration period often plan to fill in the questionnaire later, but then forget about doing it.
- Comic Canny Kansas Characters?
- Contact Cards, Not Business Cards (Face-to-Face Networking Book 2).
- Sustainable Customer Service as Success Factor in the Airline Sector!
Preference of the bundle system compared to one fixed price for economy or business class. Socio-demographic variables included age, gender and current career status as control variables, to see whether they play a significant role for the preferred customer service and for the background behind. The ageing structure and division used follows a survey on behalf of the German Ministry for Economy and Technology. It divides passenger in youth and young adults 14 to 29 years old , adults 30 to 59 years old and seniors 60 plus years old [ 5 ].
We prepared this part in a more detailed way to be able to measure, for example, if a frequent business traveller expects and prefers different customer service compared to a person who only flies a few times a year when going on holiday. The pre-test group also suggested adding a question about the things you do during your flight as it might change the value of a drink, food or magazine offered if you want to use the flight for preparing some things for your job.
For the evaluation of the frequency of flying we used the scale of the survey on the attitudes of Europeans towards tourism for the European Commission from For the average duration of flights we refer to Eaves [ 6 ]. Going deeper in the area of the evaluation of services when travelling by airplane we asked about the bundle system that more and more aviation companies have introduced and about the preferences of the passengers in general. We were also interested in whether sustainability and CSR make a special difference. Then we wanted to know which airlines were felt to offer the best service.
The Early Warning System Challenge by Kolumbus - RuhrSummit
Related to this, there were several questions where we wanted to participants of the survey to say more about their habits and needs. In the question about the rating of special airlines we put together a list of the 15 biggest airlines of the world, the top 5 German airlines in regarding the number of passengers and the most popular airlines on Facebook ranked by the number of fans in The last three sections concentrated on the phase before, during and after the flight.
For each we asked the participants to rate the services offered in this phase. The services asked about were determined by internet research and the comments from the pre-test group. Overall, the survey was structured in a way to keep it simple and interesting for the respondents. The mixture and change between different types of questions had the purpose of keeping effort and time spent to an acceptable level for respondents, but at the same time to get as much useful data as possible. For the quantitative data analysis the survey results are summarized and illustrated in graphs and tables.
They give an overview of the survey results.
Product details
The data results are limited to descriptive statistics. Testing possible correlations or conducting regression analysis is not considered useful here, as the sample size is too small to obtain significant results. To analyse this part adequately, a qualitative content analysis was carried out. As it is highly interpretative, the danger of misinterpretation when using content analysis is a given.
Buy for others
Analysing a survey response by its written content only is difficult because follow-up questions to clarify a response or to get a more in-depth answer are not possible. Nevertheless, when using qualitative content analysis only selected aspects of the data are focused on, often set by the research question.
This has the advantage that the rich data is narrowed down to the aspects relevant to the research question [ 7 ]. This is achieved by first developing a coding frame which includes so-called main categories and subcategories [ 7 ]. It acts as a filter that emphasizes the data covered by the categories, ignoring the irrelevant parts. Our main goal was to get a picture of the customer service aspects and elements the participants evaluate as the most important. Based on the research focus and a first review of the responses, the relevant topics mentioned in the responses were noted down and clustered [ 7 ].
This is a combination of concept-driven deductive and data-driven inductive determination of codes. No specific tendency has been diagnosed regarding age, gender or career status, which is why the perspective on the survey results is an overall one [ 8 - 16 ]. The majority of participants are aged between 30 and 59 years shown in the Figure 1.
Regarding the gender, the survey benefits from a balanced mixture of both female and male participants shown in the Figure 2. Most of the survey participants were employees or entrepreneurs shown in the Figure 3. Corresponding to the most represented age group years , the majority of the participants flew for the first time during the years — This finding allows the conclusion to be drawn that most of the participants have experienced flying over a period of years shown in the Figure 4 and will therefore be able to answer the questions adequately as well as to compare former business concepts with current ones [ 17 - 25 ].
The survey reveals that most participants flew recently, which in combination with the finding about the first flying experience suggests a fair knowledge about flying procedures shown in the Figure 5.
by Kolumbus
Most of the survey participants are frequent flyers, since they travel more than 10 times per year shown in the Figure 6. Most of the flights caught by the participants are short haul flights shown in the Figure 7. Again, it is not surprising that the most common activity during the flight is working, bearing in mind that most of the survey participants are flying for business reasons Figure 9.
Nevertheless, other activities such as reading yet also possibly being related to work or eating and listening to music are among the most popular answers. What do you normally do during your flight? More than one option possible. This is one of the most important findings of the survey: Do you prefer the bundle system offered nowadays compared to one fixed price for economy and business class? Regarding the preferences before, during and after the flight, the survey participants independently named one major criterion within each category.
During the flight, the crucial element is a friendly cabin crew also 92 answers. As for the time after the flight, most participants perceive a problem-free and fast check-out as most important service 91 answers [ 26 - 32 ].
- No customer reviews?
- Sustainable Customer Service as Success Factor in the Airline Sector | OMICS International;
- ;
Are sustainability standards part of the customer service? Clearly, only 14 participants did not see a connection between high-quality services and sustainability issues.
Among those who did, 46 thought of using fair trade products on board was a sign of high quality service, followed by 39 who chose recyclable packaging. The ranking of known airlines shows Lufthansa being the favourite airline of the participants. It is important to stress that the participants were asked to rank the airline only if they had travelled with the company Figure A Review in Cavicchi, A. Case Studies in the Traditional Food Sector. A stakeholder approach, Food and Wine Events in Europe: Do portion size brand extensions meet consumer needs?
New food product development.
On the Complexity of Being a Critical Consumer. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 29 1 , pp. Experiences and Mobilities, pp. Development, Management and Markets. Are they a threat to the major multiples? Johnston, Robert; Kong, Xiangyu Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, 44 7 , p.
A Zimbabwean netnography of food tourism. Tourism Management Perspectives, 5, 68— International Journal of Administration and Governance 1 4 , pp. Grin Verlag Perullo, N. II and Gilmore, J. Welcome to the experience economy, Harvard Business Review, Vol. Towards a structural model of the tourist experience: An illustration from food experiences in tourism. Tourism Management, 25 3 , — Food, place and authenticity: Local food and the sustainable tourism experience.
Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 17 3 , — Nutrition 20 9, pp. Handbook on the experience economy. Toronto, Channel View Publications eds. The future of food tourism: Channel View Publications , pp. Sections of this page. Email or Phone Password Forgotten account? See more of Marketing Scholars: Call for Papers, Research News and more on Facebook.
Academy of Management Campus building. International Society of Political Psychology Non-profit organisation. Academy of Marketing Science School. Journal of Advertising Research Magazine. Cambridge Scholars Publishing Publisher. ResearchGate Information technology company.