The fast growth number of air transportation and air passengers require better service from airports. Previously, academic literatures are seldom concentrated on airport service quality because of lack of competition among airports. There is unexplored field on the airport service. Airport service is a “green field” that waiting to be explored. This study is to determine the factors contribute to airport service quality influence passengers’ satisfaction and develop a theoretical framework for improve airport service quality. The study used the secondary data collected from literatures related to airport service. The study successful determined factors of airport service quality and develop a theoretical framework.
Keywords
Airport, Service Quality, Passenger Satisfaction, Passenger Expectation, Theoretical Framework
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Air transportation is growing fast due to rise of low cost carriers. People are more likely to travel with air transport because flight fees are cheaper than it used to be. Airport as a destination and transfer hub to passengers is playing an important role in air transportation. Airport in industry is facing rapid changing as well. Passengers are used to be lack of right to choose airport destination, as mostly routes are determined by airline. However, now passengers could enjoy choosing their airport destination freely. Airport need to response rapidly to the changes of air passenger in order to meet their demands. Seyanon (2012) stated air passengers have various options among airports and airport marketers have increasing changing among themselves to meet the need of customers better than in the competition.
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In that view, passengers satisfaction is increasingly important that may affect reputation and long term profits of airports. According to Subha, Bina & Archana (2012), passenger satisfaction is an essential goal for each airport providing airline service in domestic and international destination. Gummesson (1994) stated that (as cited in Subha et al., 2012) excellent passenger service is one of the greatest assets for an airport in today’s competitive environment. Airport service quality is become important and be an index or benchmark for passengers to take in count as a destination. Passenger satisfaction occurs when airport service quality fulfill or exceed the passenger expectation.
Previously, most of the studies in air transportation are focus on evaluating airlines service quality. Seyanon (2012) stated the reason is because of lack of competition among airports, the marketing and services literature has shown little interest in airports and especially on air passengers. Furthermore, the terms of airport service quality are hardly to be defined. Dimensions to study airport service quality are different due to every airport operation and design is slight different. Thus, Yeh and Kou (2003) stated that (as cited in Jiménez & Suárez, n.d.) there is no universal an exact definition for airport performance.
Fodness and Murray (2007) stated the nature of expectations underlying airport service quality perceptions is unclear. Airport receives air travelers from different countries around the world; different countries possess different types of culture. Therefore, passengers will have different perceptions with a same situation; it has increase difficulty for airport management to tackle passenger satisfaction. Thus, this study is to determine the factors contribute to airport service quality influence passengers’ satisfaction and develop a theoretical framework to facilitate improvement of airport service quality.
2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Airport Service Quality
Service quality is perception of customer toward a product or service delivered by firm. Customer compare their expectation with the actually situation, when the firm deliver product or service that reaches or exceeds customer’s expectation, quality of service will be high and customer may prefers to repurchase the product or service.
In airport industry, there are many types of measurements on service quality. Lee and Kim (2003) stated there has been a flux of researches concerning airport passenger service, making it nearly impossible to review the affluent body of literature on the subject. Airport Council International, or ACI (as cited in Lee & Kim, 2003) identified 217 subjective service attributes and 52 objective ones. Example of subjective attributes are ‘Overall Customer Satisfaction,’ ‘Walking Distance/Time,’ ‘Terminal Comfort,’ ‘Punctuality,’ ‘Staff Appearance,’ ‘Staff Appearance,’ etc. Objective attributes include ‘Response Time to Phone Call,’ ‘Ticketing Waiting Time,’ ‘Seat Congestion,’ ‘Car Park Congestion,’ etc. They suggested subjective attributes be measured by video recording and/or directly observing.
Correia and Wirasinghe’s study (as cited in Chou, 2009) develop a methodology based on perceptions of air passengers that developed level of service (LOS) standard at airport passenger terminals. The underlying concept is the derivation of quantitative values for passenger perceptions of service based on airport survey. The check-in counter component is evaluated considering factors that have a bearing on the user perception of LOS: processing time, waiting time and space available per person. The study used data obtained from a passenger survey conducted at Sao Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport in Brazil. Finally, a multi-attribute analysis is done to obtain a composite evaluation of LOS at the check-in counter as a function of the waiting time, processing time, and space available.
Chou (2009) evaluated airport service quality in four dimensions: check-in, immigration process, customs inspection and overall from perceptions of passengers. The study developed questionnaire addressing expectation and perception and answered by sample of passengers at International Airport of Kaohsiung in Taiwan. The result from questionnaire indicated the gap between expectations and perceptions, and dimension got negative value mean perceptions are lower than expectation and improvement need to be carried out.
Fodness and Murray (2007) had developed a theoretical framework different from previous study, the passenger-driven framework indicate the areas truly vital to passengers that need to be improve in order to achieve competitive advantage. In Fodness and Murray’s research suggested three primary dimensions of quality service: servicescape, interaction and service, in each dimensions consist of different factors contribute to dimensions and influence airport service quality. The research provided fresh insights for the measurement and management of service quality at airports and contributes to an understanding of the role of time spent waiting in service encounter in several ways.
In this study applied Fodness and Murray’s (2007) methodology as basic for measuring service quality in the view of passengers with focus on passenger satisfaction in airport service quality. The reference was helpful to design service quality attributes on this paper. Based on Fodness and Murray’s methodology, this study developed three factors of airport service quality that are environment, personal interaction and service.
2.1.1 Environment
Environment factor indicate all the objects around the airport that physically exist and assist passengers to carry out activities in airport. Fodness and Murray’s study stated the servicescape includes the entire objective factor controllable by the service provider that facilitate customer actions during the service encounter and enhance their overall service quality perception. In order to get passengers’ perception on environment factors, Fodness and Murray (2007) indicated airports require passenger’s physical presence and often a significant time commitment, the physical environment of the airport can influence perceptions of the overall quality of the service encounter.
2.1.2 Personal Interaction
Personal interaction is reaction of service personnel toward passenger’s requests or demands and influence passenger’s perception on service quality. As cited in Fodness and Murray’s research, a second influence on service quality perceptions where customers’ physical presence is required for service delivery is interactions with service personnel (Bitner, 1990, 1992; Brady and Cronin, 2001; Brown and Swartz, 1989; Dabholkar et al., 1996; Elliott, 1995; Groonroos, 1982; Saleh and Ryan, 1991; Surprenant and Solomon, 1987). However, the application of SERQUAL to airport industry is seem not exist. Chou (2009) found that even though SERQUAL present general quality dimensions of service industries, it does not include the specific dimensions for each service industry, such as the air transportation service industry.
Although SERQUAL does not have specific dimensions for airport industry, perceptions of service quality for other industries may share some common dimension with airport services. In this study applied attitudes, behavior and expertise as underlying terms to develop factor of personal interaction. The first service attribute term that can be describe as personal behaviors that assisting passengers to access the services. The second term is regarding the service personnel’s problem-solving behavior. The third term is about service personnel possesses adequate knowledge to present one’s expertise to advise passengers on the services in airport.
2.1.3 Service
Services in airport are referring to facilities that provide convenience to passengers. Passengers need to be physically present in the airport in order to utilize the service and it emphasizes in term of time. Because Fodness and Murray (2007) found that the airport experience demands significant time commitment and for many passengers time is the ultimate scarce resource, the extent to which the airport facilities or frustrates their use of time can have a significant influence on perception of the overall quality of service encounter.
In this study emphasize duration of service, which indicate time needed for passenger to wait for delivery of service until the particular service is finish to delivery. The term of service here indicate processes require time or counted by time, such as check-in, customs immigration process, and customs inspection. These are the service attributes contribute to service factor. Airports need to keep service duration as short as possible that fulfills passengers’ demand that utilize their time in term of quality service.
2.2 Passenger Satisfaction
Subha, Bina and Archana (2012) stated that air transport is classify as intangible service industries as the industry exhibiting five distinguishing characteristics of service summarized by Clemes, Mollenkoph, and Burn (2000). Traditionally way to evaluate passenger satisfaction on service delivered is depends on passenger’s subjective perception on the service, whether they personally felt the service they received was satisfactory. Passenger satisfaction is completely depends on passenger’s view and it is unfair and inconsistent, because passengers from different background will have different expectation and point of view will slight different as well.
Generally, a business will successful and profitable when passenger satisfaction is satisfied, thus, passengers must be satisfied. Business cannot run without customer. Eboli and Mazzulla (2009) indicated there are two basic concepts of customer satisfaction surveys. Expectation is what customers expect from the service and perception is what customers receive from the service. Parasuraman et al. (1994) as cited in Le Bel (2005), expectations act as a standard of comparison to judge the service provider’s performance. Passenger perception is a judgment of satisfaction according to the actual performance received. To evaluate passenger satisfaction can be done by collecting customer perception only or carry out comparison between expectations and perceptions. Thus, passenger satisfaction exists when passenger perception on service is higher than passenger expectation.
3.0 METHODOLOGY
The primary method used in this research is collecting secondary data and re-interpret the data. The secondary data is collected from previous literatures related to airport service quality. According to result from the secondary data, re-interpret the data to determine factors of airport service quality and relationship between passengers’ satisfaction and airport service quality.
In the research of Chou (2009) evaluated airport service quality by constructing a SERQUAL method. Chou’s research had carried out questionnaire and interview to collect primary data. The questionnaires were distributed among five hundred passengers in International Airport of Kaohsiung in Taiwan with a response rate 35.2%. The survey in Kaohsiung International Airport was administered over 4 weeks and to increase credibility of the survey, it was performed on three different flight route based on cluster sampling: Europe, Far East and North America. Chou’s research had consisted of four dimensions that contributed to airport service quality which are check-in, immigration process, customs inspection and overall dimension.
In Fodness and Murray’s (2007) research, they determine dimensions of passengers’ expectation of airport service quality by conducted qualitative research on the passenger airport experience before they run quantitative study on measuring airport service quality. The qualitative methodologies used are in-depth interviews, focus groups and content analysis of verbatim comments. Passengers involved in the in-depth interviews and focus group were asked to share their expectation and experience at airport, and their attitudes and opinions toward the airports them familiar with. Quantitative research data was collected from a purchase list of 1765 frequent flyers with an annual income over $50,000. The sampling frame was covered nationwide with an equal percentage of males and females. Questionnaires were mailed to the 1765 survey and 753 or 33 percent were returned.
Subha, Bina and Archana (2012) have carried out a study on level of passenger satisfaction of services delivered in Chennai International Airport. The research used quantitative method that distributed questionnaires to 270 air passengers in Chennai International Airport. The respondents must fulfill certain conditions, respondents must have travelled in an international flight is last 24 months, aged 18 years and above. The 270 passengers’ opinion on the services rendered by the airport was used to analyze the factors of satisfaction. The factors are satisfaction on airport service, satisfaction on infrastructure, satisfaction on safety standard and satisfaction on service executive.
4.0 FINDINGS
4.1 Initial Finding
Environment
Personal Interaction
Service
Passengers’ Satisfaction on Airport Service Quality
Figure 1: Theoretical Framework
In this study proposed three factors: environment, personal Interaction and service influence passengers’ satisfaction on airport service quality. The factors and service attributes are listed in table 1.
Table 1: Factors and service attributes
Factor
Service Attributes
Environment
Clearness and availability if signpost
Availability of information display for flights
Cleanliness and lighting level of airport
Personal interaction
Access
Problem solving
Advice
Service
Check-in
Immigration process
Customs inspection
Airport facilities
The first factor, environment consists of three service attributes and tested by Chou (2009) in his research that environment factor is important and influence passengers’ perception. Figure 2 indicates score of expectations and perceptions from Chou’s research analyzed by used SERQUAL method.
Figure 2: Expectation and perceptions for environment factor, secondary data from Chou (2009) [1]
Figure 2 shows expectation and perception of service attributes contributed to environment factor. Clearness and availability’s score for expectation and perception are 4.00 and 3.75, and there is a gap of 0.25. The second service attribute is availability of information display for flights, the expectation and perception scores are 4.07 and 3.89 with a 0.18 gap. The third service attribute is cleanliness and lighting level of airport, which expectation score is 4.32 and perception score is 3.86, thus it have 0.46 large gap between it. It had indicated environment factor is important and contribute to airport service quality influence passengers’ satisfaction. The expectation of environment factor is as high as 4.13, means that passengers are concern environment in airport because passengers are expecting higher service quality in term of airport environment. While, airport service still have not meet passengers’ expectation because passengers’ perception is only got 3.83 and there is a gap of 0.30.
The second factor, personal interaction consists of four service attributes. The secondary data from Fodness and Murray (2007) that indicate personal interaction factor is influence airport service quality. Figure 3 shows reliability coefficient of personal interaction factor.
Figure 3: Reliability coefficient of personal interaction factor, secondary data from Fodness and Murray (2007)
Figure 3 shows that personal interaction is highly correlated. In Fodness and Murray’s research proved that passengers’ expectations of interaction with service provider directly influence airport service quality. Thus, it had identified personal interaction factor is contributed to airport service quality and influence passengers’ satisfaction.
The third factor, service consists of four service attributes. The secondary data of service factor is taken from Chou’s (2009) research as well. Table 4 shows the score of expectations and perceptions of service factor.
Table 4: Scores of expectation and perceptions of service factor
Service attributes
Perception
Expectation
Gap
Check-in
3.60
3.82
-0.22
Immigration process
3.70
3.87
-0.17
Customs inspection
3.63
3.67
-0.04
Airport facilities
3.74
4.10
-0.25
Mean
3.67
3.87
-0.20
Source: Chou (2009)
From table 4 shows that service factor has 3.87 high expectations from passengers, especially airport facilities’ expectation is 4.10. As a result, service factor is important and influence passengers’ perception on airport service quality.
5.0 DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION
Airport industry is different than used to be, high competitive market situation is forcing airports emphasize on fulfill passengers’ satisfaction. Management of airports must understand the requirement of passengers before make any improvement for airport service. Literatures on airport service quality and passengers’ satisfaction are seldom being focused. Airports are facing problem when making service improvement. Thus, this study has developed a theoretical framework that could be a reference for airport service quality. The study contributes the areas need to be focus that passengers are expecting higher service quality to be provided. The study discovered that there is a direct relationship between passengers’ expectation of airport service quality and passengers’ satisfaction.
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This study is only consisted of secondary data. Consistent measurement cannot be implemented because secondary data are gathered from different literatures; it has reduced reliability and validity of the study. In future studies, airport service quality has to be defined clearly, in order to develop a complete theoretical framework. Further study of the relationship between passengers’ satisfaction and other airport performance measures need to be carried out.
6.0 CITATIONS AND REFERENCES
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