مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

CS is an abbreviation of customer satisfaction that started being used when the CEO of Scandinavian Airlines, Jan Carlzon, mentioned about ‘customer-oriented sales strategies.’ As the trend became oriented towards customers, and with development of Internet, customers tended to acquire power. Therefore, it is a general trend to pursue customer satisfaction management in all areas for companies, public organizations and the airline industry which all rely on good quality of customer service. Consumer Reports has posted data containing the majority of complaints flight passengers have experienced in the airline industry in America in 2006. The complaints are about fees for baggage, additional expenses, attitude of employees, support provided not in a timely manner, and unknown reasons for delay on flight departure. Most of these complaints were interestingly related to a lack of communication. There was a complaint related to ticket price, but the majority of complaints were about people. According to statistics related to disappointments with airline service in Korea, the number of consultation regarding air traffic issues received in the Korea Consumer Agency increased from 1201 in 2007e2931 in 2013, showing continuous increase over time (MOLIT, 2014). The airline market is currently expanding in size along with an increased amount of complaints from passengers.

If disappointment with the service is inevitable, due to its unique characteristics of the service, and companies are unable to completely remove all disappointments, companies need to seek solutions that effectively cope with service failures (Blodgett et al., 1997). Customers satisfied with the service recovery conducted by corporations that had shown service failure earlier evaluate them more favorably than the customers who had not experienced service failure do. More than 70% of customers who had experienced effective service recovery of companies maintain their relationship with them, suggesting that efficient management of service failure is extremely important for airlines. (Hart et al., 1990).

The airline industry is continuously expanding in size, and an increase in disappointment with service is unavoidable. If it is not feasible to prevent service failure, airlines should make an effort to lead customers to have positive images of them through outstanding failure recovery. While there have been many studies on service failure in various industries, there has been limited interest on the effects of service failure and recovery in the airlines and how service failure affects corporate image, customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions. In particular, there is a lack of understanding on whether studies on service failure and service recovery in other traditional services can still be applied to the service environment of airlines.