Customer Satisfaction At Low Cost Airlines: A Case Study Of Jetstar Pacific Airlines (JPA)

The appearance of LCA model in recent decades has rapidly penetrated into airline markets. Passengers have more options for their travel. Many people believe that low fares mean low quality. However, some of them argue that LCA can deliver good quality as FCA does. LCA providers always find ways to prove to their customers that it offers low prices but not low quality. Many studies have been explored on the subjects of the service quality, cost, and customer satisfaction in the LCA around the world but still rarely any related researches is in Vietnamese. This paper examines the influence of factors on customer satisfaction and identifies the satisfaction levels with service that customers have acquired from the low-cost airline industry in Vietnam, with the case study of JPA that is the first LCA in Vietnam. The examination is based on the SERVPERF model includes Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, Empathy, Tangibility dimensions, and the Price dimension which is added afterwards. The hypotheses of six dimensions have been assumed to have positive impacts on customer satisfaction. Those hypotheses are tested to determine the correlation between initial dimensions and identify the real representative factors affecting customer satisfaction with services that JPA has supplied. In addition, the paper determines the scores of corresponding to the representative factors that are evaluated by its customers. Through those findings, the management has an overview and insight of performance that JPA executes to adjust the behaviors and to give the most appropriate direction. Furthermore, the identified factors are also evaluated to determine effected coefficients that have impact on customer satisfaction. Based on the effected coefficients the recommendations for improving those factors are given. The survey and analysis result proves that the Behavior – Performance factor has the strongest influence on customer satisfaction; however JPA’s passengers are not very pleased about JPA’s performance on this factor, therefore JPA should focus on it at the highest priority for improvement. In the context of the current economic difficulties, Price Convenience is also considered as the second factor which has relatively impressive impact on passengers’ satisfaction; JPA is regarded pretty good at this aspect in customer assessment, so that JPA needs to promote and continue to improve in order to keep a competitive advantage. Besides, the analysis also indicates that the Tangibility – Commitment factor has little affect on customer satisfaction, however followed by the two above factors, the JPA should improve this element.