The Role of Customer Engagement in Enhancing Passenger Loyalty in IndonesianAirline Industry: Relationship Marketing Approach

Raditha Hapsari, Michael D Clemes, David Dean

Abstract


Scholars and practitioners agree that organisations cannot rely on transactional marketing since customers demand more personalized goods and services. Consequently, organisations need to build a relationships based on a mutual exchange with their customers to satisfy their needs and wants and customer relationship emerged to enhance long-term customer profitability. Customer perceived value have been widely accepted as important antecedents improving customer loyalty. However, only a few published studies have the integrated customer engagement construct with the other important marketing constructs to examine the interrelationship among them. This research aims to examine the interrelationships among perceived value, customer engagement and customer loyalty. Focus group discussions, and a survey of 250 Indonesian airline passengers in East Java Province, Indonesia, were conducted to satisfy the research objectives. In order to carry out a comprehensive investigation of the relationship between variables, a quantitative approach is used in this study. The methods used to analyse the data are Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to test the model fit and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to test the hypothesis. Sobel’s test is also used to test the mediating role of customer engagement. The findings of this study indicate while customer perceived value consistently influences loyalty, customer engagement is also proven to be an antecedent of loyalty. Furthermore, customer engagement is also proven to play a mediating role which strengthens the relationship between perceived value and loyalty. The results of the empirical analysis is supported by previous studies that suggest customer engagement is a new construct that has an important role to play in enhancing passenger loyalty.


Keywords


customer relationship marketing; perceived value; customer engagement; customer loyalty; airline industry

Full Text:

PDF

References


An, M., & Noh, Y. (2009). Airline customer satisfaction and loyalty: impact of in-flight service quality. Service Business, 3(3), 293-307.

Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of personality and social psychology, 51(6), 1173.

Bhattacharya, S., & Singh, D. (2008). The emergence of hierarchy in customer perceived value for services: A grounded analysis. Journal of American Academy of Business, 13(1), 65-73.

Bowden, J. (2009a). Customer engagement: a framework for assessing customer-brandrelationships: the case of the restaurant industry. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 18(6), 574-596.

Bowden, J. (2009b). The process of customer engagement: A conceptual framework. The Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 17(1), 63-74.

Brodie, R. J., Hollebeek, L. D., Jurid, B., & Ilid, A. (2011). Customer Engagement. Journal of Service Research, 14(3), 252-271.

Brodie, R. J., Whittome, J. R. M., & Brush, G. J. (2009). Investigating the service brand: A customer value perspective. Journal of Business Research, 62(3), 345-355.

Chen, C. F. (2008). Investigating structural relationships between service quality, perceived value, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions for air passengers: Evidence from Taiwan. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 42(4), 709-717.

Edward, M., & Sahadev, S. (2011). Role of switching costs in the service quality, perceived value, customer satisfaction and customer retention linkage. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 23(3), 327-345.

Gale, B. T. (1994). Managing Customer Value: Creating quality & service that customer can see. New York: The free press.

Gounaris, S. P., Tzempelikos, N. A., & Chatzipanagiotou, K. (2007). The relationships of customer- perceived value, satisfaction, loyalty and behavioral intentions. Journal of Relationship Marketing, 6(1), 63-87.

Hurley, A. E., Scandura, T. A., Schriesheim, C. A., Brannick, M. T., Seers, A., Vandenberg, R. J., & Williams, L. J. (1997). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis: Guidelines, issues, and alternatives. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 18(6), 667-683.

Ladhari, R. (2008). Alternative measures of service quality: a review. Managing Service Quality, 18(1), 65-86.

Oliver, R. L. (2010). Satisfaction: A Behavioural Perspective on the Consumer.

Pakdil, F., & Aydin, O. (2007). Expectations and perceptions in airline services: An analysis using weighted SERVQUAL scores. Journal of Air Transport Management, 13, 229-237.

Park, J. W. (2010). The effect of frequent flyer programs: A case study of the Korean airline industry. Journal of Air Transport Management, 16(5), 287-288.

Park, J. W., Robertson, R., & Wu, C. L. (2004). The effect of airline service quality on passengers’ behavioural intentions: a Korean case study. Journal of Air Transport Management, 10(6), 435-439.

Park, J. W., Robertson, R., & Wu, C. L. (2006). Modelling the impact of airline service quality and marketing variables on passengers’ future behavioural intentions. Transportation Planning and Technology, 29(5), 359-381.

Petrick, J. F., & Backman, S. J. (2002). An examination of the construct of perceived value for the prediction of golf travelers’ intentions to revisit. Journal of Travel Research, 41(1), 38-45.

Prahalad, C. K., & Ramaswamy, V. (2004). Co‐creation experiences: The next practice in valuecreation. Journal of interactive marketing, 18(3), 5-14.

Ravald, A., & Grönroos, C. (1996). The value concept and relationship marketing. European Journal of Marketing, 30(2), 19-30.

Ryu, K., Han, H., & Kim, T. H. (2008). The relationships among overall quick-casual restaurant image, perceived value, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 27(3), 459-469.

Saha, G. C. (2009). Service quality, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions: A study of low-cost airline carriers in Thailand. Managing Service Quality, 19(3), 350-372.

Schreiber, J. B., Nora, A., Stage, F. K., Barlow, E. A., & King, J. (2006). Reporting structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis results: A review. The Journal of Educational Research, 99(6), 323-338.

So, K. K. F., King, C., & Sparks, B. (2012). Customer engagement with tourism brands: Scale development and validation. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 1096348012451456.

So, K. K. F., King, C., & Sparks, B. (2012). Customer Engagement With Tourism Brands: Scale Development and Validation. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research.

So, K. K. F., King, C., Sparks, B. A., & Wang, Y. (2014). The Role of Customer Engagement in Building Consumer Loyalty to Tourism Brands. Journal of Travel Research, 0047287514541008.

Sobel, M. E. (1982). Asymptotic confidence intervals for indirect effects in structural equation models. Sociological methodology, 13(1982), 290-312.

Van Doorn, J., Lemon, K. N., Mittal, V., Nass, S., Pick, D., Pirner, P., & Verhoef, P. C. (2010). Customer engagement behavior: Theoretical foundations and research directions. Journal of Service Research, 13(3), 253-266.

Vivek, S. D., Beatty, S. E., & Morgan, R. M. (2012). Customer Engagement: Exploring Customer Relationships Beyond Purchase. The Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 20(2), 122- 146.

Yang, K. C., Hsieh, T. C., Li, H., & Yang, C. (2011). Assessing how service quality, airline image and customer value affect the intentions of passengers regarding low cost carriers. Journal of Air Transport Management.

Zins, A. H. (2001). Relative attitudes and commitment in customer loyalty models: some experiences in the commercial airline industry. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 12(3), 269-294.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.21776/ub.apmba.2015.003.03.1

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.