Explicit and implicit customer satisfaction factors in the leisure airline business

One of the main challenges for airlines is to retain loyal customers in a very competitive environment. Loyal customers offer a greater share of wallet, require less marketing effort, spread positive word of mouth and are often less price sensitive. Consequently, the objective of this paper is to understand what the key leisure airline loyalty factors are and how the leisure airline could design their product to retain as many loyal leisure passengers as possible. Hence, we develop a framework based on the customer value model which can serve as guidance for airline managers focusing on the leisure air market. To find satisfaction factors, a literature review followed by a means-end analysis to update the satisfaction factor database were conducted. The satisfaction factors were then tested in a survey including explicit and implicit questions with 402 air passengers at Zurich Airport in 2014. Based on stated preferences 21 identified factors were ranked. By using the Kano approach ten main aggregated attributes were identified and the potential implicit satisfaction impact was measured.