An exploration towards the quality of service in the aviation sector & its influence on consumers’ satisfaction & retention;

An exploration towards the quality of service in the aviation sector & its influence on consumers’ satisfaction & retention;
A case of Saudi Arabia Airlines

Introduction
This research study is intended to uncover and investigate a very interesting and contemporary research area i.e. exploring quality of services that have been offered Airline sector particularly case of Official Airline Company of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia i.e. Saudi Airline. This study will shed light on various related aspects of the concept service quality i.e. this is expected to highlight the significance of the service quality management for organisations and its relation to the sustainability of the business.
The competition is increasing in the airline industry; the emphasis on value addition has been more towards increasing services offered by the airlines towards its consumers. New airlines have emerged over the years and are growing substantially, enlarging their market shares, expanding their destinations. This has increased pressure on already established airlines as they need to be vigilant against these new competitors who are willing to shed their profit margins to gain market share. As a result, customers’ retention is essentially more critical than ever before, while acquiring new customers is considerably tougher as a consequence. Furthermore, some aspects of the current status of Airlines industry will be mentioned in this study i.e. quality dimensions currently being provided and the set culture of the Saudi Airline from customer’s perspective.
Both, effectiveness and efficiency of Saudi Arabia Airlines will be highlighted in this study by examining the service quality dimensions being provided by the Airline for its customers. This study will particularly focus on the “on board (on flight)” aspect of the Airline for investigating the level of service quality being provided by the Airline. The perception and views possessed by the customers will hold vitality and will determine the service quality nature and extent of the target organisation in this study. Saudi Arabian Airlines is state owned Airline and initiated operations in 1945. Quality has a direct impact on many aspects, such as customer satisfaction, sales, brand, and the reputation of the organisation (Gronroos, 2000) due to which this research is of greater significance. More importantly the role of customer satisfaction will be vital in this study because service quality will be measured against the level of satisfaction possessed by customers of the target organisation. In the next section research aims and objectives will be outlined so that clear roadmap and destination can be developed and viewed in the context of this particular study.
Aims
The aims of study are to explore the level of on flight service quality offered by Saudi Arabian Airlines and investigate the relevancy to customer satisfaction and retention. Analysis will provide a relevant set of recommendations for improving the current level of service quality by analysing customer satisfaction, and also spotting and matching the actual drawbacks in services.
Objectives
Following are some objectives designed for this study:
a. To study pertinent literature on service quality and specifically for the airline sector.
b. To study and analyse the relationship between service quality and customer retention and customer satisfaction
c. To review impact of service quality on customer satisfaction for the case of Saudi Arabian Airlines.
d. To facilitate recommendations for improving service quality on the basis of data gathered and analysed.
Research Questions
Following are the key research questions for the study:
a. On flight services offered by Saudi Airlines are satisfactory?
b. On flight service quality offered by Saudi Airlines enables customer retention?
c. Service quality standard offered by Saudi airline are consistent with standard best practices?
d. How can on flight service quality standards of Saudi airlines be improved?
Literature Review
Role of Organisational culture in Service Quality
Service Quality has certainly been studied and reviewed since long in management literature studies and initial studies date back to 1980s and 90s when popular researchers such as Parasuraman et al, Lovelock, Gummesson and Gavin started to explore this research area in fair detail and came up with useful models i.e. Gap Model, Service Quality Dimensions and Generic Quality Model (Malhotra & Mukherjee, 2004). Accordance with the author “Antony and Ghosh, (2004) quality of service has been referred to going ahead of what customer expect from a service and giving value additions.
Quality of Service is imperceptible which makes its assessment difficult. Measurement of service quality basically relies on perceptions and appearances’ management (Harvey, 1998). Carney, (2011) found that managers precisely in healthcare sector believe that it is crucial to behave professional and committed for the purpose of providing high level of service quality for example creating a culture that endorse and assist this behaviour at every stage so that the estimated tension between effectiveness of cost and quality of service can be managed. Additionally, an emerging line of research indicates that a positive association is there between culture of organisation and measure of service quality (Ladhari, 2009). Many cultural effects are observed, in the delivery and management of service quality, to have dynamic influence and believed to be a strategic factors like commitment to quality, strategic thinking, cost of care, worth for money, engagement, professionalism, care deliver and moral values (Carney, 2011).
Eventually, it is related to those workers who can make an impact on the thinking and perception of patients or customers where service quality concerns. Consequently, it is considered to be highly significant for an employee to be kind, understanding, caring, and understanding and knowledgeable which can be certain through emerging and functioning a productive organisational culture (Ladhari, 2009). By establishing a gentle as well as compliant kind of association with workers, service quality management can be attained. Performance of workers that are working in any corporation can be influenced due to organisational culture. Consequently, association among workers and organisation also become clear. Thus it has concluded that organisational culture is the main factor that can drift the service quality management level with the help of several variables (Mohsin, 2011).
In case if failure of service or inaccuracies appeared it will raise questions towards consistency of their service quality decisions. Additionally, apparent look as well as costume appearance is also essential factors that are included in the tangibles dimension of service quality. Satisfaction performed a vital and complicated role in the establishment and regulation of service quality management specifically in case of healthcare management. The relationship between service quality offered and differences of customer satisfaction has been critically reviewed in the literature. According to O’Reilly, (2007), customer satisfaction is based more on the specific instance of service while service quality is more of complete analysis of the service offered. The collective customer satisfaction feedback gives a positive feedback for the overall improvement of service quality.
It has observed that quality services are influenced in customer’s satisfaction. Naik, (2010) claimed that due to exclusive dimension (intangiblety, heterogeneity, insepdability and pershabilty) of service quality is difficult to assess it. Furthermore, it hass also stated that all of these diminsion esaablished association with the customer satesfaction.
Views and approaches given by numerous specialists of this respective area are also assessed. Model of quality was also analysed by researchers. Not a single unanimously accepted model has been established and discovered from the results. Despite of this failure, SERVQUAL model and the GAP model of quality have achieved a lot of support. One of the basic and key characteristics of these two models is that it facilitates the management in identification of differences in service quality on various points and in its peripheral orientation, viz. orientation focused towards the consumer (Crick & Spencer, 2011).
However, in this study SEVQUAL model will be used and this model was presented by (Parasuraman et al, 1985). In services literature this model is quite popular and dominant (Jia et al, 2008; Ma et al, 2005) and various industries has applied this model i.e. banking, public sector and healthcare which is a visible indication that researchers have been using this model in different areas as foundation part (Parasuraman et al, 1990). For evaluating services this model initially presented ten dimensions i.e. courtesy, understanding, security, access, communication, responsiveness, credibility, reliability and tangibles. Later on due to overlapping nature the dimensions were reduced to five only i.e. tangibles, empathy, assurance, responsiveness and reliability (Parasuraman et al, 1988). This shows that in the context of this study SERVQUAL will be a useful tool.
In the development of customer’s desires the aspect of customer satisfaction is a vital component especially for future purchases and customer loyalty (Mittal & Kamakura, 2001). Moreover, it has been argued that positive word of mouth spreads when an organisation serve high level of service quality i.e. good experiences and endorsements occur from the side of customers to their family, friends and people in social circle. Jamal & Naser, (2002) found an interesting finding in this regard and stated that in the Middle Eastern countries and societies where collectivist culture is on the higher side and social interaction is very frequent this word of mouth aspect works effectively in the favor of organisations or vice versa. Even though the simplest definition of customer satisfaction has been validated for many years i.e. “difference between performance and expectation”, still there exists variation between satisfaction and quality in different industries, sectors, countries and organisations. Parasuraman et al, (1991) in the context of satisfaction has stated that when an individual experiences a service of low quality, it is after that he or she reaches on a decision which reflects their satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
However, in the literature pertaining to satisfaction, different drivers and resisting factors have been mentioned that needs to be considered by organisations. Neutral factors in this regard were presented by Cadotte & Turgeon, (1988) that are important role players in neutralizing the elements of dissatisfaction towards customers. Moreover, in order to measure quality of a service the analysis of customer satisfaction is key variable. A satisfied customer reflects good service and therefore there is a relationship between the two terms that it related in some way or the other (Liljander & Strandvik, 1993).
According to Parasuraman et al, (1988), the relationship has been reviewed and stablished in different studies and most of the researches have concluded that positive customer factions is indicative of good service quality offered by the organisation. Similarly Spohrer & Maglio, (2008), concluded that between service quality and satisfaction there exist a two- way relation. By considering and realizing the importance of customer satisfaction several organisations started to establish patterns of customer loyalty as a measure to study relationship with customer. However, assessment of customer’s loyalty remains a complex concept. In this sense Caruana, (2002) stated that behaviour is a complete indication of customer loyalty entirely towards the brand instead of mere thoughts.
Research Methods
For the purpose of carrying out the assigned or undertaken issues, research areas, projects and tasks research individuals tend to exercise range of research methods for their support and help. There are two main research methods available in the literature for researchers’ i.e. qualitative and quantitative methods (Yin, 2009). The effectiveness and limitations of these methods will be explored in this research so that a clear picture can be obtained on which methods are appropriate and which methods will provide limited usability in organisational life. For researchers the context of the study is important and similarly the use of research methods also require the alignment with specific situations in hand which shows that effectiveness of research methods for researchers is not simple. Such as in this study the particular context involves the on flight functions and services of the chosen Airline organisation.
Quantitative Research
Quantitative research can be manipulated for attracting the employment relationships and covering vast data set pertaining to range of issues in professional organisations, for individual surveys and for patterning the actions as well as verdicts in research field. In order to accomplish research especially in performance appraisal, comparative analysis of statistics and data sets this type of method provides assistance with the help of observations and surveys for fulfilling the research goals in the long run (Tracy, 2010). More instant and cost effective results can be deduced by researchers by employing this method. Therefore for researchers, prevention for depth of the research for attaining the extensiveness is supposed to be the disadvantage or limitations of this method. It could be say that this type of method relies more on the interpretation of the researchers. Another major restriction of this method for researchers is that this method provides a numerical description of results rather than detailed narrative. So it will give less explanation of human perception (Nuttal, 2011).
Qualitative Research
Qualitative research method is most suitable for researchers and individuals urging to extract social issues and information related to human feelings, behaviours and perceptions. However, it is also probable that researchers might use subjectivity for the good sake of the organisation and employee which can make this approach feasible i.e. only in specific situations. Nevertheless, for MNCs and larger organisations the time cost normally is not bearable while performing some tasks and its advantages then gets restricted when conducted in organisations that are big in size. However, at the same time researchers have argued that qualitative method helps the organisation in improving its overall level of communication and investigate the issue or problem in greater depth hence reaching on accurate decision (Creswell, 2011).
Qualitative research provides researchers with rich information in a relatively shorter time period for being assessed. However, in medium or big organisations researchers cannot afford and rely on this research method where the employee/ population base is humongous and time available is insufficient for carrying out their tasks (Gorard, 2013).
The application of both the research methods has been subjective to the research topics and has been also based on application and outcomes. Some researchers have endorsed and highlighted one particular method and some have endorsed other particular method i.e. critical perspectives are available in literature towards research methods that can be used by researchers.
Research Design
The research design is the very critical to the application of the research question. The most pertinent selection of research design enables the researcher to review the problem more critically and address the research question in depth. For the current research the most suitable method would be mixed research approach, where both qualitative and quantitative research instruments will be applied.
The reason for selection of mixed research approach is that it gives the benefit of using both methods of research to get a complete review of the analysis. Considering the limited time frame of the research mixed research will be particularly useful as it will enable the researcher to analyse different aspects of the research questions. Using one area of research will require considerably large sample and complex analysis which at the moment will be difficult for the researcher.
The research will be using questionnaire as the key quantitative research instrument, while interviews will be used for the qualitative research. The questionnaire is a very effective tool to get user responses on a set of predefined standard questions that generate the most appropriate responses. The questionnaire for the research will be close ended and will be based on Likert scale of 5.
For the interviews, the interviews will be semi structured and face to face and will be based on open ended questions. For the questionnaire and the interviews the questions will be prepared based on the literature review developed and coverage of research questions.
Sample Selection
The sample for the questionnaire will be previous customers of Saudi airlines. The sample will be selected based on convenience. Questionnaire will be posted online via survey monkey or appropriate similar tool and participants based on researchers individual contacts will be invited and more will asked to join the survey to get a minimum of 150 and maximum of 200 complete responses of the questionnaire.
For the interview on flight staff will be interviewed minimum of three and maximum of five. Formal request will be made to management of Saudi airline for availability of staff and interview timings.
Data Analysis
The data obtained from questionnaires will be analysed by using SPSS using t-test statistics or percentage analysis using Ms Excel. Efforts will be made to present and significantly analyse the data as per best possible methods within time constraints. Further the responses for the interviews will be summarised and discussed in the light of pertinent research questions and literature review.
Resources Needed
Since this study is going to be conducted in the context of Airline industry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on a much debated organisational issue i.e. service quality management. This indicates that along with the need of digital and physical library (the access to both sources is available for researcher), this research will require the use of online medium of communication and technological instruments for connecting and reaching out to the Saudi Airline and its customers. Reaching out to the company is also imperative in this organisation because the official point of view of company representatives will validate the research findings and outcomes also it will authenticate the comparison and analysis being made. Since, this research is intending to explore and investigate the customer retention and satisfaction as a result of service quality being facilitated to them by the case organisation. this makes it imperative to consider the stance of company officials which will be done using the online medium in quick time and will allow the researcher to save much time and cost. Similarly, the availability of Internet will be required both in the university and at home so that continuous work can be achieved. Dimensions of the SERVQUAL model are five, they are; tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The five dimensions are all combined determines the level of service quality provided to the customer. The researcher is proposing to adopt these dimensions as components to build-up the questionnaire. Number of questions will be drafted from each dimensions and phrased in an understandable format. The questionnaire, therefore, is expected to identify the highest accuracy the satisfaction, attitudes and positions of the target audience for their experience with Saudi Airlines. Each dimension will cover 20 per cent from the questionnaire.

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