Browsing by Author "Dissanayake, Suranga"

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    Quality evaluation of an Airline: A Modeling Approach
    (Uva Wellassa University of Srilanka, 2011) Perera, S.S.N.; Dissanayake, Suranga; Pradeep, B.N.P.
    Note: See the PDF Version The delivery of high quality service became a marketing requirement among air carriers as a result of competitive pressure. Empirical studies on demand for airline services show that service quality is central to the choice of airlines fot both business and leisure travelers (Bureau of Transport and communications Economics, 1994). According to Butler and Keller (1992), only the customer can truly define service quality in the airline industry. Some argue that quality in the airline industry is difficult to describe and measure due to its heterogeneity, intangibility and inseparability. Most of the work done on service quality has assumed the attributes of service quality are independent. However, intuitively it would seem that many of attributes have some degree of inter-dependence which is not properly evaluated using conventional additive measures. This study aims to evaluate the service quality of an airline using a mathematical modeling approach. Service quality is a composite of different attributes; among them many intangible attributes are difficult to measure. Factor analysis is initially used to extract some independent common factors and fuzzy measures were calculated to evaluate the performance of inter-dependent attributes in each common factor. The study also examines the positioning of the airline relative to three other airlines. A pair-wise comparison approach was adopted to determine the relative weights between each factor to position the three airlines. The result suggests that other than a few service attributes like In-flight entertainment and seating comfort, passengers are satisfied with most of the attributes.