chi2 test of service quality attributes showed no statistically significant difference between male
and female expectations, which does not confirm Westwood’s et al. (2000) claim that women
value different aspects of air travel compared to men.
Next, service quality attributes and service quality dimensions (Appendix 3) were tested and no
statistically significant correlation was found (Spearman test). The results are shown in Table 4,
and compared to the results by Gilbert & Wong (2003).
From Table 4 it is clear that there are differences in reliability and responsiveness. In Gilbert &
Wong’s results, responsiveness is rated as third most important dimension, however, in survey
results it is only forth. Flight schedule is more important for survey respondents (ranked third).
Facilities are ranked sixth in both cases, but there is difference in importance in general (Gilbert
& Wong’s mean is 6.0427, whereas survey mean is higher – 4.9220). The comparison also
shows that safety and reliability are the most important dimensions, whereas customization in
both cases is least important. Differences in target groups, among other factors, can explain the
differences between the survey results and results by Gilbert & Wong (2003). In addition, there
have been many changes in airline industry during the last decade, so the expectations and
perceptions may have simply changed overtime.
There was no statistically significant correlation between service quality dimensions and the
purpose of flying (Appendix 3). Furthermore, Spearman correlation showed that reliability and
customization are negatively correlated (Spearman coefficient has a value of -0.61 and p-value is
less than 0.001, Appendix 3). A possible interpretation for this is that respondents who value
reliability of their air travel do not believe that the customization adds any additional value to
already reliable service.
However, Chi2 test showed that statistically significant difference between perception of service
quality dimensions by male and female respondents exists in only one dimension: Employees
appearance and attitude –dimension (Appendix 3). Female respondents tend to care less about
this dimension compared to male respondents (Figure 14):
Westwood et al. (2000) suggested that there is a difference between male and female travelers in
terms of expectations and perceptions, however, in this study only one difference was found.
Nevertheless, different target group or nationality could explain this, as Westwood et al. (2000)
aimed her research on female business travelers, the segment rather weakly represented in this
study’s respondent pool.
The last part of the analysis comprises the summary of the open questions answers. Data mining
analysis of the open questions was done using Webropol Data Mining tool and the results can be
found in the Appendix 2. Not much can be concluded from the results of data mining, most
probably due to rather limited number of respondents.
When the respondents were asked to name one airline that they consider superior to others, such
words as service, Lufthansa, staff were used by the majority of the respondents. In word cloud
analysis, Lufthansa and Norwegian were connected to such words as reliable, schedules and staff.
Interestingly, whereas food quality was not considered as extremely important in attributes
analysis, it was often indicated in open questions answers as one of the features that can make an
airline superior to others. Another features mentioned were courteous staff, on-time arrival,
entertainment systems, which were not found significant in attributes analysis.
As for another open question (what services should be improved or recommended to carriers),
word cloud analysis confirmed that the information communicated to customers in case of flight
delays is essential (words information, changes and delays are grouped and linked to each other).
Another group of words indicates importance of aircraft seats and entertainment variety for the
respondents. In addition, there is an interesting connection in another group, indicating a degree
of customer dissatisfaction with Finnair. As Finnair is the most used airline among survey
respondents, it shows that whereas people tend to be unsatisfied by Finnair services and would
need an improvement, the lack of competition in Finland’s air transportation still pushes
dissatisfied customers to use the company repeatedly. Nevertheless, Finnair should not rely on
such loyalty, as according to Jones & Sasser (1995), it is false loyalty, and as soon as travelers
will have other options, the transition to another carrier is unavoidable.
5.3.
Service Process Revised
From the discussion in chapter 5, it can be seen that the attributes in the Post-arrival Services
step received significantly different evaluations from the survey respondents (Figure 13):
Promptness and accuracy of baggage delivery (93.5% of the respondents evaluated this
attribute as ‘extremely important’ or ’very important’)
The airline has other travel-related partners such as car rentals, hotels and travel
insurance where you can get discounts or earn extra miles (only 3% of respondents
evaluated this feature as ‘very important’ and none thought of it as ‘extremely important’)
Such striking difference makes it reasonable to treat these attributes differently also on process
step level. Thus, Post-arrival Services step can be divided into two new steps a for better
understanding of customer expectations: Baggage Delivery and Post Arrival Services (Figure 15).
thus, there are three most important process steps for the customer, where the value creation
happens at its peak: Ticket Purchase, Arrival/Departure as well as Baggage Services. As
discussed earlier, this is in line with researchers (such as Parasumaran et al., 1985) who claim
that the customers expect basic services to be delivered at high quality levels before the
additional services become important.
The revised service process can be seen in Figure 16, and the number of steps in increased to
nine: