This study aims to evaluate the effect of airline flight attendants’ non-verbal communication on customer satisfaction and re-visit intention to provide more differentiated services for Chinese tourists visiting Korea and enhance customer satisfacti...
This study aims to evaluate the effect of airline flight attendants’ non-verbal communication on customer satisfaction and re-visit intention to provide more differentiated services for Chinese tourists visiting Korea and enhance customer satisfaction and re-visit intention of airline passengers and also provide foundational data for marketing as well.
Along with the economic growth in China and yuan’s appreciation, there are more and more Chinese tourists visiting Korea. Moreover, at the point of July, 2013, Chinese population reaching up to about 1.4 billion has potentials
to give either great profit or loss to Korean tourism industry with its customer services. Therefore, this study intends to provide foundational data regarding airline service quality and also how to attract continually Chinese visitors who are our quality customers.
To attain the research goal effectively, first of all, the study examines the current status of Chinese visiting Korea and also non-verbal communication, customer satisfaction, and re-visit intention theoretically. Based on this, the paper verifies the relations of non-verbal communication and customer satisfaction with re-visit intention through positive research. To collect data for the positive study, the researcher selected as its samples Chinese tourists to Korea visiting Daegu, Daegu in Gyeongbuk area, Gyeongju, or Andong for total 7 days from October 15th till October 21st, 2013. Regarding the size of samples, the study distributed 250 questionnaire sheets thought to be statistically valid and used 200 that were valid for the analysis. The data went through factor analysis, reliability analysis, frequency analysis, one-way ANOVA and regression analysis with the utility of SPSS 12.0 for Windows.
About the study hypotheses formulated for the research, the paper has gained the results of positive analysis as follows: First, there was no difference in the types of non-verbal communication according to the demographic characteristics. However, there was difference found only in language of appearance like the hair style, attire, or
accessories according to their sex or academic career.
Second, non-verbal communication has a significant influence on customer satisfaction.
Thus, it can be said that factors like pseudo language including pronunciation or the rate of speech that is the non-verbal communication, language of appearance including the attire, hair style, or the volume of voice, in-cabin environment, language of space like the space to the customer, or body language such as smile and eye contact determine customer satisfaction with the services.
Third, non-verbal communication has a significant influence on re-visit intention. Among the types of non-verbal communication, pseudo, space, or body language influences customers’ re-visit intention; however, it does
not influence language of appearance like the hair style, attire, or accessories. This means that it is determined not by the external factors or physical charms but by the things that are related with voice, say, the volume of voice, intonation, or accent, physical movement, or physical
attitudes like eye contact or smile.
Fourth, customer satisfaction has a significant influence on re-visit intention.
This implies that if customers are satisfied with the airline services, they tend to revisit it later.
And the results of this study have implications as follows:
First, it is possible to reexamine the effect of airline flight attendants’ non-verbal communication on customer satisfaction and re-visit intention in order to let in-cabin flight attendants know of the factors of non-verbal communication and the importance of it. And on the side of airlines, they can recognize the effect of their in-cabin flight attendants’ non-verbal communication on customer satisfaction and re-visit intention and secure foundational data in developing their own services.
Second, among the types of non-verbal communication, airline flight attendants also think importantly pseudo language and language of appearance such as pronunciation, the rate of speech, hair style, attire, and
accessories as well as language of space and body language like the space between the flight attendant and the passenger, in-cabin environment, or flight attendants’ smile, attitudes, or eye contact. We can see that these
factors influence re-visit intention and customer satisfaction with the airline.
Therefore, airlines should make efforts to exert positive effects on customer satisfaction and re-visit intention by providing training for greetings, attitudes, appearance, or attire associated with non-verbal communication targeting in-cabin flight attendants and education for services or manners to satisfy customers and also inducing the latest airplanes to provide more clean and comfortable in-cabin environment.
Third, in terms of airlines’ recruitment, they need to emphasize flight attendants’ image of appearance and also promote aggressively the employment of multi-lingual flight attendants as foreign language skills are essential in the global airline market. And after hiring those with multi-lingual competence, if they can still realize customer satisfaction by providing foreign language education to improve their communication skills favorably for maintaining superior services, this will work as a more
strategic marketing method to attract customers.
Based on the above results, the paper concludes that it is needed to recognize the importance of non-verbal communication between flight attendants and customers with service as a point of contact so that airline flight attendants’ non-verbal communication can be used to enhance customer satisfaction and re-visit intention, and in the process of employing airline flight attendants, it is necessary to hire those with multi-lingual competence in order to improve service quality, and it is also required to
provide constant training for things like non-verbal communication, not just for verbal communication.
And because Chinese visitors are the significant customers that can give great profit or loss to tourism in Korea, it is needed to provide them with services equivalent to their needs.
It is expected that this study will play fundamental roles afterwards in helping airlines to provide customers with better quality services for enhancing customer satisfaction and re-visit intention and also being utilized for marketing and creating positive airline image.