The Comparison of Service Quality Expectations of Low Cost Carriers' and Full Service Carriers' Customers

Abstract

Passenger transport by air achieves growth every year in Turkey and in the world. Along with this growth, competition in the sector is intensifying and necessity of providing a high level of service quality for airlines is emerging. Two basic business models of airlines are low cost and full service. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is a difference between service quality expectations of low cost and full service airlines' customers, in Turkey. The data were collected via online questionnaire from 370 individuals determined by convenience and snowball sampling method. The five-dimensional SERVQUAL scale, developed by Zeithaml et al. (1990) and adapted to the airline by Sultan, Simpson (2000), was included in the questionnaire. As a result, it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference between the service quality expectations of customers of low cost and full service airlines. However, the high averages for all quality dimensions suggest that airline customers' service quality expectations are quite high, regardless of the ticket price they pay. In addition, when making an airline choice, it has been determined that low-cost airlines 'customers consider mostly the price, while full-service airlines' customers consider their past experiences.