Maximizing Customer Satisfaction

Service quality, in terms of customers’ perception, arises from a comparison of what customers expect that companies should offer with the companies’ service performance they perceive (Parasuraman et al, 1988). In order to maximise customer satisfaction, companies need to know what service components are important in customers’ perception and try to deliver good service quality with suitable proportions of those components.

According to the ranking of thirteen important attributes of low-cost airlines (Choon 2008), online questionnaires were specifically conducted to understand Thai customers’ expectation of each major components of domestic budget airlines in Thailand (Appendix x). The questionnaires were answered by 80 Thai respondents which comprise personal information in terms of geographic and product consumption as follows:

- Approximately 52% of them are female and 48% are male

- Approximately 79% of them are 23-30 years old which is a age group of university students and first jobbers

- 78% of them have low to middle income (below 50,000 THB per month)

- 75% of them used to take Nor Air and 55% of its users have taken Nok Air between 2-5 times

- Most respondents take budget airlines for leisure purpose at 69%

In summary of questionnaire results, along with the customers’ expectation of budget airlines, the main service components of budget airlines can be grouped into four types of service components relying on potential to be satisfied and dissatisfied (Lockwood, 1994)

According to the primary research results, there are four apparent issues on the service components of low-cost airlines which should be improved when comparing between the customers’ expectation of service quality and Nok Air’s actual level of s...

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...popular and tourism routes with increasing frequency, especially in high demand periods such as weekends and holiday. However, this adjustment may affect operational processes and costs that Nok Air needs to concern about.

Works Cited

Marketline, 2009. Airlines in Asia-Pacific: Industry Profile. Available from: http://www.marketlineinfo.com/library/DisplayContent.aspx?D=airline+industry&Ntx=mode%2bmatchall&Ntk=All&Nty=1&Ntt=airline+industry&N=210+4294669542 Datamonitor.

Parasuraman, A, Zelthaml, V.A. AND Berry L.L., 1985. A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research. Journal of Marketing, 49, pp.41-50.

Doganis, R., 2006. The Airline Business. 2nd Ed. Oxon: Routledge.

Gillen, D. and Lall, A. 2004. Competitive advantage of low-cost carriers: some implications for airports. Journal of Air Transport Management, 10, pp. 41–50.