以服務鏈觀點探討航空旅客行為意向之分析

Abstract

隨著經濟景氣復甦航空市場蓬勃發展，全球航空公司均積極以各種行銷策略以提升載客率，在競爭激烈的市場中，航空公司營運者為能永續發展，須確實掌握旅客行為意向與選擇航空公司之實際行為，然後才能因應其需求特性，提供滿足旅客之服務。而為求釐清航空公司哪些關鍵因素影響航空旅客之行為意向，本研究構建一整體行為意向架構與服務鏈等兩個結構，並以兩階段線性結構方程模式驗證；整體行為意向模式由知覺犧牲、服務品質、服務場景、服務價值、滿意度、移轉障礙與行為意向等七個構面所組成，而服務鏈則由航空公司服務流程之訂位服務、地勤服務、飛航操作、客艙設備、餐點服務、客艙服務、行李運送與客怨回覆等八步驟所組成，其中衡量服務品質構面之潛在變數即為服務鏈之八個步驟。本研究以中國大陸民營的第一家低成本航空公司－春秋航空營運之航線為研究對象，在春秋航空航線營運之機場與客艙中發放問卷，總計發放二千份問卷，實際回收有效問卷為968份。根據實證結果，服務品質對於航空旅客並無產生直接影響，而是透過服務價值與滿意度造成一間接影響。其次，本研究為深入探究不同旅客之行為意向，亦對商務旅次與休閒旅遊旅次旅客進行實證研究。最後，本研究以重要度與績效分析方法對服務鏈中八項服務品質提出改善建議，以供航空公司管理者研擬服務品質改善計畫及航空公司服務行銷之策略。

This study divides entire airline services into eight service stages and uses a second-order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to constitute service quality and to examine the causal relationships between two consecutive service stages from a service chain perspective. Two conceptual frameworks – overall framework and service chain framework are proposed. The former incorporates the constructs of service quality, sacrifice, servicescape, service value, satisfaction, switching barriers, and behavioural intentions with seven hypothetical causal relationships. The latter depicts eight hypothetical causal relationships between two consecutive service stages. The proposed models are validated by a case study of Spring Airlines, the first low cost carrier (LCC) in China. The empirical results support all hypotheses except hypothesis 3. Notably, test results for the interrelationships between two consecutive service stages indicate that a lack of satisfaction at a specific service stage will affect customer perception of the consequent service stage. Therefore, to improve service quality for a service stage, the service quality of all upstream service stages must be improved first. This study also find that service quality has a large effect on behavioural intentions while sacrifice has the smallest effect. It is found in the study as well that low-fare strategy may not be effective when an airline fails to deliver high-quality services. In this paper structural equation modelling approach is used to investigate and compare the factors affecting the behavioural intentions of business and leisure passengers in the context of low-cost air services. The empirical results show that discrepancies between these two types of passengers do exist, suggesting the marketing strategies should be differentiated. The estimated results show that for business passengers service quality has the largest effect on behavioural intentions, followed by servicescape. It reveals that business passengers not only value service quality but also value the spatial environment. In contrast, for leisure passengers, service value is found to have the largest effect on behavioural intentions, implying the effectiveness of a low-fare policy. However, it is worth noting that service quality still has the second largest effect, implying that even in the context of low-cost air services, airlines still have to devote themselves to improving service quality to attract greater patronage of business and leisure passengers. The final part of this study employs the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) to analyze LCC’s passengers’ degree of care, degree of satisfaction and priority list on some critical service items. The proposed method has been applied to Spring Airlines in the LCC market through a comprehensive passenger survey. The results of the analysis will serve as the basis for LCCs to improve their service strategies to meet passengers’ needs. Accordingly, the proposed IPA method can effectively identify critical airline service items being improved and serve as a valuable tool to assist airlines’ managers in developing the improvement strategies of airline services.