Customer satisfaction in airline transportation: A research on Turkish airlines? customers

In world markets in which there is nearly not any economic boundary, the best way to reach success is to constitute a kind of competitive capacity. Airline services working under low profit conditions and faced with a strict competition because of the rules of flying can be alive if they create some differences in their services. In order to ensure this they need to provide customer satisfaction by supplying them with their expectations.In this study, the variables forming customer satisfaction are first considered theoretically and then the importance of these variables from the point of airline customers is mentioned. In this context a survey is conducted in Turkish Airlines and the scale?s internal reliability is tested by entering the data in the SPSS program. A model to the factors effecting customer satisfaction is formed with the help of literature review. It is confirmed that there is multiple correlation among total customer value, total customer costs, coordination, affirmation and communication, interaction variables.The obtained correlation matrix is entered LISREL as data. Two hypotheses are accepted and two are declined because of inconsistency after comparison of LISREL outputs in the sense of adaptive values to standard values. As a result it is found that (H1) while customer value has a direct effect on customer satisfaction, the services given during the fly is mostly important from the view of customer value. (H2) Another hypothesis accepted is identified that communication and interaction have also direct effect on customer satisfaction.After all, it is seen that the scale related to these two accepted hypotheses is reliable and it can be used to determine customer satisfaction in airline services. It is required that the other two declined hypotheses should be reviewed and re-tested in other researches.Key Words: Airline services, Turkish Airlines, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Value, Customer Costs, Conformity, Communication, Evaluation, Coordination, Affirmation.