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In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, low-cost carriers grew rapidly in many low- and middle-income economies. In this chapter, we examine the geography and network structure of low-cost carriers in such economies across Asia in 2018. We use these analyses to explore the relationship between budget airlines and economic development. Levels of disposable income and infrastructure adequacy help to account for the significance of low-cost airlines in some middle-income economies. And in turn, these airlines by fostering higher levels of accessibility and personal mobility may help catalyze faster development. However, the environmental externalities associated with aviation, especially atmospheric emissions, raise concerns about the sustainability of this mode. We assess these concerns and focus in particular on the development of low-cost carriers fleets in Asia. We ask whether the acquisition of more fuel-efficient aircraft will ameliorate aviation's environmental impact.

The rapid expansion of low-cost carriers (LCCs) in East and Southeast Asia has brought fierce competition to full-service carriers (FSCs). Competition in the air transport market is at an all-time high, thanks to the ongoing liberalization in air transport in the last several decades. This chapter assesses the efficiency performance of major FSCs in this region. It provides indicative evidence of the close association between FSCs' efficiency, and air transport liberalization and LCCs penetration. Singapore Airlines and Asiana are identified as the star companies in this region for their ability to achieve higher efficiency and, at the same time, report positive growth in productivity.

Following deregulation, the airline industry has dramatically changed. In addition to numerous mergers and bankruptcies, the industry has also seen an influx of small, “low-cost” carriers who offer differentiated competition to the traditional legacy carriers. These low-cost carriers traditionally avoided the hub-and-spoke networks of legacy carriers, offering point-to-point service often on adjacent routes. However, events of the past 10–15 years, including the terrorist attacks of 9/11, rising fuel prices, and economic recessions, have led to a shift in the operations of these airlines. The legacy carriers have unbundled many of their services, most notably through baggage fees, seeking to improve efficiency. Low-cost carriers have expanded services into major airports and have shifted to more direct route level competition with the legacy carriers as they use their cost efficiency advantages to their advantage. In this chapter, we examine airport and route choice decision to serve by legacy and low-cost carriers over time. Our descriptive and econometric models point to convergence of operations in terms of the airports and routes that low-cost and legacy carriers serve, with the implication that the current competitive atmosphere improves efficiency as the distinctions between legacy and low-cost carriers have become less obvious.

This study aims to examine the mediating and moderating processes that link airline brand image to passenger loyalty through perceived value.

The research participants were Taiwanese passengers with experience travelling abroad by air. Structural equation modelling and multigroup analysis were used to investigate the effect of airline brand image and perceived value on the loyalty of passengers using full-service and low-cost carriers.

For both airline types, airline brand image had a significant and positive effect on passenger perceived value. Perceived value had a significant and positive effect on passenger loyalty, perceived value was a crucial mediator and airline type was not a key moderator in the model.

In this study, focusing on the perspective of Taiwanese passengers, a conceptual model of the factors that lead to passenger loyalty, with a focus on brand image, was developed. This paper contributes to the literature and application field by examining the mediating effect of perceived value and the moderating role of airline type in the aviation industry; on the basis of the results, potential recovery strategies for airlines in the post-COVID-19 era are provided.

本研究檢驗透過知覺價值將航空公司品牌形象與乘客忠誠度連結起來的中介和調節過程。

受訪者是曾經有搭乘飛機出國旅行經驗的台灣乘客。本研究採用結構方程模式和多群組分析進行驗證, 分別從搭乘全服務型航空與低成本航空的乘客探討航空公司品牌形象和知覺價值對乘客忠誠行為的影響。

不論是就全服務型航空或低成本航空而言, 航空公司品牌形象對乘客知覺價值都具有顯著的正向影響, 知覺價值對乘客忠誠行為同樣具有顯著的正向影響; 知覺價值是一個重要的中介變數, 而航空公司類型不是關鍵的調節變數。

在這項以台灣乘客的視角為重點的研究中, 開發了一個以品牌形象為重點的導致乘客忠誠度因素的概念模型。本研究通過檢驗知覺價值的中介作用和航空公司類型在航空業中的調節作用, 為文獻和應用領域做出了貢獻; 最後根據研究結果, 提供後疫情時代航空公司的潛在恢復策略。

este estudio examinó los procesos de mediación y moderación que vinculan la imagen de marca de la aerolínea con la lealtad de los pasajeros a través del valor percibido.

los participantes de la investigación eran pasajeros taiwaneses con experiencia en viajes al extranjero por vía aérea. Se emplearon modelos de ecuaciones estructurales y análisis multigrupo para investigar el efecto de la imagen de marca de la aerolínea y el valor percibido en la lealtad de los pasajeros que utilizan líneas aéreas de servicio completo y de bajo costo.

para ambos tipos de aerolíneas, la imagen de marca de la aerolínea tuvo un efecto significativo y positivo en el valor percibido por los pasajeros. El valor percibido tuvo un efecto significativo y positivo en la lealtad de los pasajeros, el valor percibido fue un mediador crucial y el tipo de aerolínea no fue un moderador clave en el modelo.

En este estudio centrado en la perspectiva de los pasajeros taiwaneses, se desarrolló un modelo conceptual de los factores que conducen a la lealtad de los pasajeros, con un enfoque en la imagen de marca. Este documento contribuye al campo de la literatura y la aplicación al examinar el efecto mediador del valor percibido y el papel moderador del tipo de aerolínea en la industria de la aviación; Sobre la base de los resultados, se proporcionan posibles estrategias de recuperación para las aerolíneas en la era posterior a la COVID-19.

By extending the existing service quality dimensions and reflecting the low-cost carriers (LCCs) context, the purpose ot this study aims to develop the research model to examine whether passenger satisfaction mediates the relationship between service quality and behavioral intentions of LCCs across low- and high-experience passengers.

Data collected from 320 passengers (180 for low-experience passengers and 140 for high-experience passengers) to test the research model. The partial least square structural equation modeling approach was used to perform the path modeling and multi-group analysis.

The results confirm that passenger satisfaction mediates the relationship between four service quality constructs (tangible features, service reliability, quality of personnel and online ticketing service) and behavioral intentions (repurchase and recommendation intentions) for both low- and high-experience passengers. However, convenient flight schedule has a significant influence on passenger satisfaction only for low-experience passengers.

The results of multi-group analysis indicated that passenger satisfaction exerts stronger effect on recommendation intentions for low-experience passengers. LCCs managers' priority should be placed on providing satisfying service experiences to less experienced passengers. Improved passenger satisfaction through superior service quality motivates low-experience passengers to recommend LCCs, thus increasing the positive word-of-mouth promotion.

Theoretically, this study is first considering both low- and high-experience LCCs passenger perceptions to examine how passenger satisfaction mediates the relationship between service quality and post-purchase intentions. From the managerial perspective, the findings can provide useful management insights into developing multi-faceted strategies that allow LCCs firms to restore passenger confidence and retain their repurchase intentions.

This study aims to explore the role of consumers’ expectation violation in brands’ negative eWOM management on social media. The effects of brand feedback strategies (i.e. compensation and causal attribution) and brand type (i.e. full-service vs low-cost) in consumers’ expectation violations and the impact of such violations on consumers’ satisfaction and responses to a brand (i.e. brand love and brand hate) were examined.

This study used a 2 (causal attribution: external/brand) × 2 (compensation: present/absent) × 2 (brand type: low cost vs full service) × 2 (industry: airline and hotel) between-subjects experimental design.

Results indicated that the presence (vs absence) of compensation can result in positive consumer expectation violations, which can lead to consumer satisfaction and brand love. Alternately, the absence of compensation can result in negative consumer expectation violations, which can lead to consumers dissatisfaction and brand hate. Moreover, brand type (i.e. full-service vs low-cost) significantly interacted with the presence of compensation in influencing consumers’ responses. The attribution of the cause did not significantly influence consumers’ responses.

This study highlights the importance of knowing consumers’ expectations when responding to negative eWOM on social media. Offering compensation is an effective strategy for restoring consumer satisfaction. Specifically, for low-cost brands, offering compensation can lead to even more favorable responses.

This study pioneers in exploring the roles of different brand feedback strategies and brand type in influencing consumers’ responses to brands’ handling of negative eWOM. This study revealed the underlying mechanism through the theoretical lens of expectancy violation and examined the impact of expectation violations on consumer satisfaction and brand love and brand hate.

Low cost carriers (LCCs) have become one of the most significantly growing parts of the airline servicing market. This new player has redesigned the whole airline industry, which was previously led by the national/international full-service airline companies. Considering such advancements, the hub locations of LCCs became an important issue than ever before. Within this concept, a guiding framework is developed for an LCC company, which is in search of a new hub airport location within Turkey to satisfy the demand and attract new passengers.

An interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy (IVIF) sets based weighted aggregated sum product assessment (WASPAS) and multi-objective optimization by ratio analysis (MULTIMOORA) methods are developed for decision-making processes.

Five airport locations are evaluated using the developed method. Results showed that in determining hub locations for LCCs, potential number of passengers of the city, airport quality and the number of hotels within the city are obtained as the three most important criteria among 12 evaluation criteria. The best location for the LCC company is determined as Antalya Airport.

To apply the proposed method to a different set of alternatives, data gathered on comparing location of alternatives from experts should be updated.

Proposed hybrid framework is presented as the first time in the literature as a decision-making tool. In order to validate framework's applicability, efficiency and effectiveness, a comparison and a sensitivity analysis are conducted at the end of the study.

Increased global air travel and competition in the airline industry entail better service delivery and failure management. This study examines how airline type, failure criticality and the traveller's culture influence travellers' airline evaluations of service failure.

The study uses a large data set of customers' online reviews and incorporates quantitative and qualitative feedback from 20 major airlines across the world. Semantic tagging, sentiment and multivariate analyses have been used to analyse the data.

Failure criticality and travellers' cultural backgrounds significantly affect airline evaluations after service failures. Moreover, failure criticality influences evaluations of travellers from individualistic cultures more severely. Contrary to expectations, full-service airlines were evaluated positively after less critical service failures.

The findings support that customers undergo different emotional states when they experience service failure. Understanding these internal emotional sensitivities and how services would be judged by travellers across cultures can help airlines to better manage their service recovery efforts and to strategise prioritisation of scarce resources.

Though airline service failure has been well researched, this study examines the role of culture in service failure evaluations. The study uses a novel method to analyse a large data set of both quantitative and qualitative traveller feedback useful in service recovery management.

Variations in customer expectations pose a challenge to service quality improvement in the airline industry. Understanding airline customers' expectations and satisfaction help service providers improve their offerings. The extant literature examines airline passengers' expectations in isolation, neglecting the overall impact of online reviews on service quality improvement. This paper systematically evaluates the airline industry's passengers' expectations and satisfaction using expectation confirmation theory (ECT) and the SERVQUAL framework. The paper analyzes online reviews to examine the relationship between airline service quality attributes and passengers' satisfaction.

The SERVQUAL framework was employed to examine the effects of customer culture, the reason for traveling, and seat type on customer's expectations and satisfaction across a large sample of airline customers.

A total of 17,726 observations were gathered from the Skytrax review website. The lowest satisfaction ratings were from passengers from the USA, Canada and India. Factors that affect perceived service performance include customer service, delays and baggage management. Empathy and reliability have the biggest impact on the perceived satisfaction of passengers.

This research increases understanding of the consumer expectations through analysis of passengers' online reviews. Results are limited to a small sample of airline industries.

This study provides airlines with valuable information to improve customer service by analyzing online reviews.

This study provides the opportunity for airline customers to gain better services when airline companies utilize the findings.

This paper offers insights into passengers' expectations and their perceived value for money in relation to seat types. Previous studies have not investigated value for money as a construct for passengers' expectations and satisfaction relative to service quality dimensions. This paper addresses this need.