1. ARTICLE IN PRESS
Journal of Air Transport Management 9 (2003) 343–351
Airline services marketing by domestic and foreign firms: differences
from the customers’ viewpoint
Safak Aksoy*, Eda Atilgan, Serkan Akinci
Department of Business Administration, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey
Abstract
Based on a survey of 1014 passengers of five European airlines, this paper reveals differences between passengers on the Turkish
domestic airline and those on four foreign airlines on the same flight destinations with respect to demographic profiles, behavioral
characteristics, understanding of airline service dimensions, and satisfaction levels. Differences between the two passenger groups
are highlighted in terms of age, sex, education, occupation, sector affiliation, location of domicile, travel purpose, travel frequency,
service expectations, and satisfaction levels. It is concluded that the differences in consumer profiles and expectations are valuable
clues for domestic and foreign airline firms in understanding their consumers and in designing their marketing strategies.
r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Customer expectations; Services marketing; Domestic vs. Foreign
1. Introduction evidence has indicated that success in customer-focused
service development requires a deep understanding of
Understanding, creating, communicating, and deli- customer needs, expectations, and preferences (Gustaff-
vering customer value and satisfaction are at the very son et al., 1999) and that marketing strategies imple-
heart of modern marketing practice. The customer, mented by airlines to expand internationally must take
rather than marketing, is at the center of modern into account the different expectations and perceptions
business philosophy, and customer service satisfaction is of passengers (Sultan and Simpson, 2000).
the primary aim. In service industries such as the airline Demographic characteristics also play a critical role in
industry, the distinctive features of services require that shaping customers’ needs. Marketers take demographic
managers understand customer needs and expectations, characteristics as one of the major determinants of
and keep promises (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2000). How- consumers’ buying behavior and service expectations.
ever, most companies do not recognize the importance
of this approach until driven to it by circumstances
(Kotler, 2000). 2. Research design and methodology
The terrorists’ attacks on New York of 11 September
2001 put immense pressure on airlines in an already The focal points of study are consumer profiles,
tough market environment (Air Transport Association, consumer expectations, and consumer satisfaction with
2003). Operational efficiency (Smit, 1997) and good the objectives of:
marketing through an understanding of consumers
(Driver, 1999) had already been identified as key factors * noting and comparing the demographic and beha-
in the survival and competitive success of air carriers, vioral profiles of customers who prefer a domestic
and the events of 11 September 2001 have emphasized airline and those who prefer foreign airlines;
the importance of these factors. * understanding consumers’ expectations of airline
Passengers’ expectations are among the factors services and to relate this to their preferences for
influencing the service decisions of airlines. Empirical foreign or domestic airlines;
* identifying the fundamental service dimensions for
*Corresponding author. consumers who prefer foreign airlines and those who
E-mail address: safak@akdeniz.edu.tr (S. Aksoy). prefer a domestic airline; and
0969-6997/03/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0969-6997(03)00034-6

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344 S. Aksoy et al. / Journal of Air Transport Management 9 (2003) 343–351
* comparing the average satisfaction levels of passen- Table 1
gers flying with foreign airlines and those flying with Selected flight destinations and airlines
a domestic airline, and to discriminate among the Route Foreign airlines Domestic airline
identified service dimensions with respect to their
Istanbul–London British Airways Turkish Airlines
usefulness in predicting the satisfaction levels for each
Istanbul–Frankfurt Lufthansa Turkish Airlines
group. Istanbul–Amsterdam KLM Turkish Airlines
Istanbul–Paris Air France Turkish Airlines
The international terminal of the Istanbul Ataturk
Airport was chosen as the main data-collection point.
The airport is located at the crossroads of Europe and Table 2
Asia and served more than 10 million passengers in 2001 Number of respondents by flight destinations and airlines
(Tepe-Akfen-Vie Co., 2000). The domestic airline
Foreign airlines n Domestic airline n
studied was Turkish Airlines while Air France, British
Airways, Lufthansa, and KLM were the foreign carriers. British Airways 129 Turkish Airlines 173
London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Paris were selected Lufthansa 150 Turkish Airlines 156
KLM 65 Turkish Airlines 90
as the target routes for both the foreign airlines and the Air France 125 Turkish Airlines 126
domestic airline because travel to these destinations
takes approximately the same time—about 3 h from Total 469 545
Istanbul—and, therefore, requires similar service levels.
The target destinations and airlines were summarized in Grand total 1014
Table 1.
A self-completion questionnaire was designed to
collect information from the passengers of each airline
domestic airline groups were then tested for each
on their demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral
category. Significant differences (po0.05) are marked
patterns.1 The survey forms were prepared in English,
with an asterisk.
French, German, and Turkish to increase communica-
The data suggest that passengers traveling with
tion, convenience, and the response rate. The forms
foreign airlines were more likely to be male, older, and
consisted of three sections. The first aimed to capture
to have higher educational levels, as compared with
information on respondents’ frequency and patterns of
passengers on the domestic airline. Foreign airlines were
air travel. The second consisted of 39 statements preferred by managers (28%), whereas self-employed
covering the service expectations and satisfaction of
people (14.5%), workers (12.4%), and students (11.4%)
airline passengers. The final section focused on passen-
preferred the domestic airline. Passengers on foreign
gers’ demographic profiles—age, sex, occupation, loca-
airlines used air transport largely for business purposes
tion of domicile, and so on.
(55.2%), whereas domestic airline travelers were more
The questionnaires were handed to passengers waiting
likely to use air transport for visits (24.9%) and
at the boarding gates and business lounges of the
education (11.3%). Travelers on foreign airlines traveled
targeted airlines and flights. Upon completion, the
more frequently than those on domestic airlines.
forms were collected in the same manner. Overall, a The data were further analyzed to explain the possible
total of 1350 questionnaires was distributed and 1014
relationships between the demographic and behavioral
usable responses were collected, producing a 75.1%
characteristics in both groups. Chi-squared test results
response rate (Table 2).
showed significant relationships between these variables
for both groups (Tables 4 and 5). Female passengers
were generally younger (45.9% for foreign airlines and
3. Findings 55.9% for domestic airline) and less-frequent flyers
(21.7% and 11.7%, respectively) than male passengers.
3.1. Customer profiles Females traveled largely for family, friend, or relative
visits (61% and 30.3%, respectively).
Respondents were classified according to their sex, Male flyers that preferred foreign airlines were largely
age, education, occupation, sector, location of domicile, traveling for business purposes (85%), although not
travel purpose, and travel frequency (Table 3). Differ- necessarily on business class, whereas only 43.9% of
ences between the proportions of the foreign and male flyers who preferred the domestic airline were
1 traveling for business reasons.
For data collection within the terminal, permissions were obtained
from the Istanbul Governorship, the Airport Police Authority, Tepe- To analyze the direction and strength of the relation-
Akfen-Vie Co. (as the international terminal operator), and the ship between age and travel frequency, Kendall’s tau-c
respective airlines. test was used. The low value (À0.146) for the test

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S. Aksoy et al. / Journal of Air Transport Management 9 (2003) 343–351 345
Table 3
Passenger profiles by foreign and domestic airlines (%)
Foreign airlines Domestic airline Significance of the difference
Sex Male 70.5 61.9 0.004Ã
Female 29.5 38.1 0.000Ã
Age o20 1.5 4.1 0.014Ã
20–30 28.5 35.0 0.031Ã
31–40 27.7 27.5 0.964
41–50 22.0 16.8 0.041Ã
51–60 15.0 10.9 0.059
>60 5.2 5.7 0.765
Education Primary school 2.0 9.0 0.000Ã
Secondary school 4.1 10.2 0.000Ã
High school or equivalent 23.3 25.8 0.362
University 43.4 38.9 0.163
Masters 20.7 10.6 0.000Ã
Doctorate and above 6.5 5.5 0.490
Occupation Manager 28.0 14.1 0.000Ã
Self employed/own business 9.8 14.5 0.023Ã
Worker 6.9 12.4 0.004Ã
Student 6.9 11.4 0.016Ã
Engineer 8 6.7 0.418
Academic/teacher 4.8 5.9 0.441
Professional (doctor etc.) 7.4 5.1 0.144
Salesman 6.5 6.5 0.981
Other 21.7 23.4 0.423
Sector Manufacturing 18.8 12.3 0.006Ã
Health care 10.7 6.3 0.013Ã
Education/research 7.0 8.7 0.337
Construction/building 5.3 8.7 0.037Ã
Banking/finance/insurance 5.7 5.0 0.657
Information technology 6.3 5.6 0.649
Retailing 6.1 4.8 0.384
Public sector 3.5 5.2 0.187
Tourism 4.6 4.2 0.786
Mass media/press 2.6 2.4 0.839
Other 48.2 36.8 0.015Ã
Location of the domicile EU 56.5 73.3 0.000Ã
Other European countries 4.0 0.6 0.001Ã
USA 6.8 1.6 0.000Ã
Japan 0.9 0.4 0.350
Asia 1.9 1.4 0.472
Turkey 24.4 19.3 0.057
Other 5.5 3.4 0.112
Travel purpose Business 55.2 33.4 0.000Ã
Visit 15.2 24.9 0.000Ã
Vacation 18.8 21.2 0.350
Education 7.3 11.3 0.032Ã
Other 3.5 9.3 0.000Ã
Travel frequency Couple of times a month 21.1 8.0 0.000Ã
Once a month 19.5 10.3 0.000Ã
Once in three months 25.5 25.1 0.900
Once in six months 17.3 25.5 0.002Ã
Once a year 12.0 21.4 0.000Ã
Fewer than once a year 4.7 9.6 0.003Ã
Note: Ãindicates a significant difference between the foreign and domestic group proportions at po0.05 levels.

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346 S. Aksoy et al. / Journal of Air Transport Management 9 (2003) 343–351
Table 4 group, nine factors explained 60.9% of the total
Significance of relationships between variables (foreign airlines) variance, whereas eight factors accounted for 59.1% of
Age Sex Education Travel freq. total variance in domestic airline travelers. Tables 6 and
7 list the factors in the order in which they were
Age
extracted from the data.
Sex 0.000Ã
Education 0.089 0.833 The nine factors that emerged for foreign airlines were
Travel frequency 0.001Ã 0.000Ã 0.176 food and beverage services, personnel, cabin features,
Travel purpose 0.000Ã 0.000Ã 0.000Ã 0.000Ã Internet services, in-flight activities, country of origin
Note: Ãindicates a significant dependence between the two variables at and promotion, punctuality, speed, and aircraft (Table
po0:05 levels. 6). For domestic airlines, the eight factors were cabin
and personnel, country of origin and promotion, food
and beverage services, in-flight activities, Internet
Table 5 services, punctuality and speed, free alcoholic drinks,
Significance of relationships between variables (domestic airline)
and price (Table 7).
Age Sex Education Travel freq. Although there is some overlap in the results,
differences between the expectations of the two groups
Age
Sex 0.000Ã can be discerned. Expectations of foreign airline
Education 0.000Ã 0.313 passengers, unlike those of domestic airline passengers,
Travel frequency 0.193 0.010Ã 0.000Ã form several distinct service categories with little
Travel purpose 0.000Ã 0.000Ã 0.000Ã 0.000Ã confusion between various service attributes. For
Note: Ãindicates a significant dependence between the two variables at example, cabin features and personnel emerged as
po0.05 levels. different service categories for foreign airline passengers,
whereas domestic airline passengers amalgamated these
two dimensions into a single category. In fact, people
statistic indicated that the relationship between age and and physical environment are two different dimensions
travel frequency was negative and fairly weak. This in services marketing, and the former can directly
could be interpreted as indicating that increasing age influence customer satisfaction by performing the role
leads to a decrease in frequency of airline travel for both of marketers. Zeithaml and Bitner (2000) emphasized
foreign and domestic airline passengers. Frequent that frontline employees and those supporting them
flyers—once or twice a month—were found to travel from behind the scenes represent the people element of
for business purposes (84.7% of foreign airline passen- the services marketing mix and are critical to the success
gers compared with 64.9% of domestic airline passen- of any service organization. Physical environment can
gers). Whereas the majority of travelers for vacation be divided into ambient conditions, space/function,
(54.1% compared with 50.5%, respectively) and educa- signs, signals, and artifacts. In the airline services
tion (69.7% compared with 63.8%, respectively) had industry, cabin features are the most critical elements
flown within the last 3 and 6 months. in the physical environment, involving such attributes as
Passengers traveling for business reasons and having temperature, air quality, comfort of the seats, and
at least a university degree (79.5% of foreign airline cleanliness.
passengers and 79.1% of domestic airline passengers) The variety, quality, timeliness, and the amount of the
dominated in the 31–40 and 41–50 age groups. In food served during the flight were an important service
contrast, younger (under 30 years of age) and less- dimension for both foreign and domestic airline
educated flyers (high school and below) tended to travel passengers.
for vacations and visits. As a result of rapid developments in information
technology and the consumers’ adoption of Internet
3.2. Service expectations and underlying dimensions services, the web and e-commerce have revolutionized
the way in which services are delivered to customers and
To probe the service expectations of airline passen- have changed the traditional relationship between
gers, the respondents were asked to rate the importance customers and service providers. The benefits of
of 39 service attributes on a seven-point Likert scale electronic channels for services marketing are consistent
ranging from ‘not important at all’ (1) to ‘very delivery for standardized services, low cost, customer
important’ (7). A separate factor analysis was applied convenience, wide distribution, customer choice, ability
to each group of passengers. The principal components to customize, and quick customer feedback. In the
method, using varimax rotation, reduced the 39 airline services industry, the use of the Internet by firms
variables to nine factors for foreign airlines passengers to communicate information is related both to hard
and to eight factors for the domestic passengers, with information—in the form of schedules and the avail-
eigenvalues greater than 1.0. In the foreign airlines ability of fare information—and to softer general

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S. Aksoy et al. / Journal of Air Transport Management 9 (2003) 343–351 347
Table 6
Factors underlying service expectations of foreign airline passengers
Factor Factor interpretation (% variance explained) Loading Service attribute
F1 Food and beverage services 0.766 Amount of the food served during flight
(9.69%) 0.676 Variety of food served during flight
0.653 Timeliness of food and drink service
0.625 Quality of food served
0.583 Free alcoholic drinks
F2 Personnel 0.721 Cabin crew’s credibility
(9.22%) 0.658 Physical appearance of cabin crew (tidiness etc.)
0.639 Close attention by cabin crew
0.610 Cabin crew’s ability to answer questions
0.475 Cabin crew’s ability to speak foreign languages
F3 Cabin features 0.694 Cabin temperature
(8.63%) 0.690 Cabin ventilation
0.615 Comfort of the seats
0.601 Continuous innovation and improvements in services
0.572 Convenience in making reservation/booking
0.496 Cabin cleanliness
0.459 Attractive ticket fares
F4 Internet services 0.798 Adequacy and amount of information on airline’s website
(7.86%) 0.772 Ticket purchase opportunity via Internet
0.751 Availability of airline website on Internet
F5 In-flight activities 0.689 Various music options during flight
(6.88%) 0.635 Visual flight information in the cabin (speed, altitude etc.)
0.610 Films and broadcasts during flight
0.599 Telephone call option during flight
F6 Country of origin and promotion 0.786 Country of origin of the airline
(6.28%) 0.756 Being my national airline
0.505 Attractiveness of advertisements of the airline
F7 Punctuality 0.798 On-time luggage delivery on arrival
(4.82%) 0.685 On-time departures and arrivals
F8 Speed 0.804 Direct service to destination
(4.55%) 0.756 Frequent flights to destination
F9 Aircraft 0.822 New models of aircraft
(2.95%)
information about the service provider company supplies (Alamdari, 1999). Although the present
(Driver, 1999). In the present study, Internet services research was conducted on short-haul flights, in-flight
covering such functions as ticket purchasing and entertainment activities emerged as a distinct service
information search by customers were found to be an dimension for both foreign and domestic airline
important part of the whole service expectation package passengers, in particular, expectations of telephone call
for both groups of passengers. option, films and broadcasts, visual flight information,
The use of sophisticated video and audio systems as and various music options.
in-flight entertainment systems (IFEs) has become an National loyalty plays a key role in selecting an airline
important differentiating tool for airlines in the past (Bruning, 1997). Airlines differ in the way in which they
decade. There is a wide range of IFEs available, conduct their marketing communication and the extent
particularly on long-haul flights. These systems include to which they use advertising and other elements of the
video-on-demand, air map display, exterior view cam- promotion mix. The factor analyses in the results of the
eras, gambling, computer games, destination informa- present study have gathered such items as ‘being my
tion, financial services, shopping catalogues, music national airline’, ‘country of origin of the airline’,
channels, telephone, facsimile, and in-seat power ‘attractiveness of advertisements of the airline’, and

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348 S. Aksoy et al. / Journal of Air Transport Management 9 (2003) 343–351
Table 7
Factors underlying service expectations of domestic airline passengers
Factor Factor interpretation (% variance explained) Loading Service attribute
F1 Cabin features and personnel
(30.67%) 0.779 Cabin ventilation
0.647 Cabin temperature
0.621 Convenience in making reservation/booking
0.616 Continuous innovation and improvements in services
0.544 Comfort of the seats
0.495 Cabin crew’s ability to answer questions
0.491 Keeping you informed about all types of flight information
0.485 Cabin cleanliness
0.482 Cabin crew’s credibility
F2 Country of origin and promotion
(6.41%) 0.781 Being my national airline
0.751 Country of origin of the airline
0.532 Attractiveness of advertisements of the airline
0.522 Variety of duty free goods sold during flight
0.515 Special offers for frequent fliers (discounts, free ticket, etc.)
0.459 Visual attractiveness of the service material (ticket, etc.)
F3 Food and beverage services
(5.00%) 0.728 Variety of food served during flight
0.677 Quality of food served
0.656 Amount of food served during flight
0.653 Timeliness of food and drink service
F4 In-flight activities
(4.47%) 0.754 Films and broadcasts during flight
0.720 Various music options during flight
0.555 Visual flight information in the cabin (speed, altitude etc.)
0.498 Telephone call option during flight
F5 Internet services
(3.71%) 0.794 Ticket purchase opportunity via Internet
0.780 Adequacy and amount of information on airline’s website
0.759 Availability of airline website on Internet
F6 Punctuality and speed
(3.23%) 0.729 On-time departures and arrivals
0.658 On-time luggage delivery on arrival
0.592 Speed in check-in services
0.469 Direct service to destination
F7 Free alcoholic beverages
(2.96%) 0.750 Free alcoholic drinks
0.475 Cabin crew’s ability to speak foreign languages
F8 Price
(2.68%) 0.686 Attractive ticket fares
some other promotional attributes—highlighting an- comfort and timeliness, Rhoades et al. (1998) on on-
other dimension labeled as country of origin (of both the time performance and fares, and Chang and Yeh (2002)
airline and the passenger) and promotion, reinforcing on on-board comfort, airline employees, reliability, and
the points raised by Bruning. convenience of service. The results also give support to
Punctuality and speed showed little difference be- the argument that service quality expectations vary
tween foreign and domestic airline passengers. Price, between different consumer groups, such as by different
however, was an important service component for nationalities. In the context of airline services, for
domestic airline passengers, and had a significantly example, Sultan and Simpson (2000) have detected
higher mean value than that for foreign airline significant differences between the service quality
passengers. Aircraft, which was expressed by ‘new expectations of US and European passenger groups. In
models of aircraft’, appeared as a separate dimension addition to such broad corroboration, the present study
for foreign airline passengers, which can, perhaps, be provides empirical evidence that significant differences
related to higher security needs. exist not only between the mean values of service
These service dimensions corroborate the findings of expectations of passengers on foreign and domestic
Young et al. (1994) on in-flight comfort, operations, and airlines, but also between the underlying dimensions
efficiency, Waikar and Nichols (1997) on relative of their expectations. Reviewing the results of the

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S. Aksoy et al. / Journal of Air Transport Management 9 (2003) 343–351 349
two-factor analyses and based on the clustering of the Finally, female passengers traveling by foreign airlines
service attributes, it is concluded that passengers on gave more emphasis to punctuality than did males.
foreign airlines have a much clearer expectation of In the domestic airline group, expectations on price
airline services than do passengers on the domestic were significantly affected by occupation and sex.
carrier. Although the passengers of the domestic airline Managers had lower expectations on attractive ticket
showed higher expectations than the other group, their fares than did other occupational categories, and male
consciousness of service dimensions has displayed a passengers were more price-sensitive than females.
rather blurred pattern. This might be attributed to their Passenger demographics did not have any significant
inclination to expect ‘much of everything’ without a effect on expectations regarding punctuality and speed,
complete understanding of airline service features. free alcoholic drinks, and cabin and personnel. How-
ever, Internet facilities were significantly affected by age
and educational level. Domestic airline passengers who
3.3. Service dimensions by customer demographics were younger and more educated had higher expecta-
tions on this dimension. The analysis for the country of
Demographic characteristics play a critical role in origin and promotion dimension yielded similar findings
shaping customers’ needs. Marketers take demographic to those of foreign airlines passengers. The expectations
characteristics as one of the major determinants of of workers were significantly lower than those of
consumers’ buying behaviour. In this research, possible managers, professionals, and engineers. Primary- and
influences on airline passengers’ service expectations high-school graduates gave more importance to country
by their demographic characteristics were searched. of origin, and they valued promotions more than did
ANOVA procedures and other post hoc tests Bonferroni passengers of university status and above. Food and
and Scheffe analyses were employed between the beverage service expectations increased with lower
independent variable (demographics) and the dependent education levels. Regarding the in-flight activities, males
variables (factor scores for the service dimensions). (compared with females), middle-aged passengers
In the foreign airlines group, age was found to have a (compared with those aged 60 and above), and high-
significant effect on passengers’ expectations regarding school graduates (compared with university graduates)
cabin features. Passengers of 61 years and over had expressed higher expectations.
higher expectations than those aged 31–40 and those
aged 41–50 in terms of temperature, ventilation, 3.4. Satisfaction level and discrimination by service
cleanliness, and comfort of the seats. Sex was another dimensions
variable that significantly influenced passengers’ expec-
tations of cabin features, with females having higher As consumers’ satisfaction is located at the center of
expectations than males. The variation in passengers’ modern marketing thinking, marketing-oriented firms
expectations on cabin features with respect to occupa- continuously seek ways of keeping their customers
tional levels was also found to be significant. Personnel satisfied. Air travel industry is no exception in this sense
and speed did not differ by passengers’ demographics. and it is generally anticipated that airline firms will be
There was a clear age group distinction in terms of in- rewarded with renewed patronage as long as they
flight activities. The 20–30 age group was found to have succeed in delivering value and satisfy their passengers.
higher expectations than those aged 41–50 and those Passengers’ satisfaction based on their experiences with
aged 51–60. Other variables influencing in-flight activ- the respective airlines in this research was probed using a
ities were occupational levels (especially, managers as seven-point scale ranging from (1) ‘not satisfied at all’ to
compared with students) and educational levels. A (7) ‘very satisfied’. Mean values and standard deviations
decrease in educational levels was seen to lead to for the overall satisfaction levels of foreign and domestic
higher expectations in music options and films and airline passengers were calculated and the statistical
broadcasts during the flight. Males had lower expecta- significance of the difference between the two groups
tions than females (sig.=0.03). Expectations on aircraft was tested (Table 8).
differed by sex only, with male passengers showing Overall satisfaction levels of the two groups displayed
higher expectations than females. Country of origin and similar patterns, and no significant statistical difference
promotion dimension varied across the occupational was detected. This could be interpreted to mean that
categories with workers displaying higher expectations airlines are serving their customers’ needs, but there is
than academics. Expectations on food and beverage still some potential for augmenting their offers to delight
services differed by age and education (sig.=0.005 customers.
and 0.002, respectively). There were clear distinctions To identify key service dimensions, discriminant
between the age categories regarding Internet facilities analysis was conducted to determine which, if any, of
and punctuality, with the expectations of younger the nine service dimensions for foreign airline passengers
passengers being higher than those of older passengers. and of the eight service dimensions for domestic airline

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350 S. Aksoy et al. / Journal of Air Transport Management 9 (2003) 343–351
Table 8 Table 10
Overall satisfaction levels of foreign and domestic airline passengers Structure matrix regarding domestic airline passengers
Foreign Domestic Structure matrix Function
airlines (%) airline (%)
1 2
[7] Very satisfied 15.1 14.7 Price 0.661Ã 0.410
[6] Satisfied 52.3 50.9 Punctuality and speed À0.406Ã À0.133
[5] Somewhat satisfied 18.3 19.0 Internet services 0.393Ã À0.240
[4] Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied 6.9 5.7 Free alcoholic beverages 0.335Ã À0.293
[3] Somewhat dissatisfied 4.0 3.1 Cabin features and personnel À0.249 0.521Ã
[2] Dissatisfied 1.9 2.8 Country of origin and promotion À0.097 0.277Ã
[1] Not satisfied at all 1.6 3.8 Food and beverage services À0.115 0.273Ã
In-flight activities À0.022 0.171Ã
Mean 5.56 5.45
Standard deviation 1.21 1.39 Note: Numbers are pooled within-groups correlations between
discriminating variables and standardized canonical discriminant
t-value (and probability) for the 1.174 (0.241) functions.
Ãindicates that the respective variable is significant at po0.05 level.
difference
passengers into three satisfaction groups. Price, punctu-
Table 9 ality and speed, Internet services, and free alcoholic
Structure matrix regarding foreign airline passengers beverages had the highest discriminatory power for the
Structure matrix Function domestic airline group.
1 2
Cabin features 0.596Ã À0.138
Personnel 0.504Ã À0.101
4. Conclusions
Speed À0.373Ã À0.070
In-flight activities À0.246Ã À0.046
Aircraft 0.189Ã 0.058 Shrinking demand, intense competition in deregulated
Country of origin and promotion 0.059 0.806Ã markets, and rising costs have put a heavy burden on
Food and beverage services À0.218 0.397Ã airline firms, particularly in the past few years.
Internet services 0.115 0.352Ã
Punctuality 0.069 0.098Ã
Kandampully and Duddy (1999) have pointed out that
creating superior value for customers requires a detailed
Note: Numbers are pooled within-groups correlations between understanding of the customer’s entire needs and
discriminating variables and standardized canonical discriminant
expectations, not only as it is today but also as it
functions.
Ãindicates that the respective variable is significant at po0.05 level. evolves over time. They further add that a firm’s
competitive advantage is established by its ability to
satisfy customers’ present and future needs. The primary
passengers predicted satisfaction to a statistically purpose of this paper has been to look at the profiles
significant degree. For discriminant analysis, the factor and service expectations of airline customers of domestic
scores of the previously defined factors were taken as the and foreign carriers, and to provide valuable clues for
exploratory variables, and the dependent variable improved services.
consisted of the airline passengers’ overall rating of the The findings based on data collected from five
experience, which was collapsed into a three-group European airlines demonstrate that significant differ-
measure of satisfaction (satisfied, undecided, dissatis- ences exist between the foreign and domestic airline
fied). The results of the two multiple discriminant passenger groups on the same flight destinations with
analyses are shown for foreign and domestic airlines in respect to their demographic profiles, behavioral char-
Tables 9 and 10. acteristics, and understanding of airline service dimen-
The analyses yielded two discriminant functions for sions. Compared with those on domestic airlines,
each airline group. The first function for each group was foreign airline passengers were found to be older, better
found to be statistically significant (beyond 0.05) in educated, more frequent travelers, and more interna-
terms of Wilk’s l: The order of entry into discriminant tionally oriented. These customers were traveling gen-
analysis was used to determine the relative importance erally for business purposes and held managerial
of the factors in discriminating the three satisfaction positions. Significant relationships were also detected
groups from each other. The results show that cabin for foreign airline passengers as between age and sex,
features, personnel, speed, in-flight activities, and air- travel purpose, and travel frequency; between sex and
craft were the five variables having the highest travel purpose and travel frequency; and between
discriminatory power in classifying the foreign airline education and travel purpose. Similar relationships

9. ARTICLE IN PRESS
S. Aksoy et al. / Journal of Air Transport Management 9 (2003) 343–351 351
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