Given the importance of flight attendants of airline companies, not only is it critical for them to improve their productivity and efficiency but it is also vital that they promote the work satisfaction level of their flight attendants under the suppo...
Given the importance of flight attendants of airline companies, not only is it critical for them to improve their productivity and efficiency but it is also vital that they promote the work satisfaction level of their flight attendants under the support and provision of the CEOs in order for them to provide passengers with high-quality cabin services. There has yet been any research on how the service-orientation of airline companies influences the service-orientation of flight attendants and their loyalty to passengers.
The purpose of this research is to identify the impact of airline companies’ service-orientation on the cabin service-orientation of flight attendants and their loyalty to passengers thereby exploring methods that will improve the two aspects in order for airline companies to capitalize in escalating their share in the market.
We conducted both the documentary study and the empirical study side-by-side in order to accomplish the goals of this research.
The difficulty lies in the fact that the population of this research must contain all flight attendants and customers of every national airline company. In that respect, we selected a prime Korean airline company, hereby indicated as company D, and collected survey results from its flight attendants and customers to draw a hypothesis and to validate it.
We extracted as sample the flight attendants and customers of company D, the oldest airline company in Korea. We used the direct investigation method to distribute and retrieve survey sheets. The survey was carried out from January 15th, 2007 to March 20th, 2007 (approximately 2 months), during which we distributed 200 copies to the flights attendants of company D and 1,000 copies to its passengers. The copies were distributed at a ratio of 5 passengers per 1 flight attendant. As per the flight attendants, 174 copies (retrieval rate: 87%) were retrieved of which 162 copies were used for analysis. 854 out of 871 copies retrieved from the passengers (retrieval rate: 87.1%) were used for analysis.
In order to prove the research model along with Research Hypothesis 1, Research Hypothesis 2, Research Hypothesis 3, and Research Hypothesis 4, we performed a series of analysis using SPSS WIN 10.0 and AMOS 4.0 in reference to preceding researches.
After examining the overall structural model of the research model between service-orientation factors of airline companies such as promotion and incentives, customer-oriented goals of the managing staff, cabin evaluation and feedbacks, and delegation of rights and cabin service-orientation factors of flight attendants such as proactive attitude, will to service, will to provide information, and loyalty to passengers, while the Chi square is significant, it is not a concern as it is a typical occurrence in circumstances with less than 200 samples. Although GFI and AGFI were slightly lower than the standard (0.90) at 0.849 and 0.809, respectively, RMSR marked a little higher than the standard (0.05) at 0.073 as we can state that the overall conformity of the model was at an acceptable level. Also, given the venturous nature of the research, the PGFI value (406.092/300=1.354) was at a very appropriate level of 1.4.
From the result of conducting a structural model analysis in proving the hypothesis, we can observe appropriate relationships between the notions of the dormant factors and the observation variables proposed in the structural model. The service-orientation of airline companies showed that it is partially influential to customer satisfaction-orientation, the will to service and to provide information. Meanwhile, the service-orientation of flight attendants proved that it does not affect their loyalty to passengers.
Taking into consideration that this is the very first research on the relationship between the service-orientation of airline companies with the service-orientation of flight attendants and their loyalty to passengers, the research was conducted with a progressive approach instead of a conservative approach in terms of validating the hypothesis. It is a common practice to set the level of significance to 0.05 when validating from a conservative stance and 0.1 for validating from a venturous perspective. Thus, we will set the level of significance to 0.1 for validating Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 3.
From the results of the structural model analysis, the path coefficient, CR, and p values between proactive attitude, feedback, and cabin evaluation were -0.724, -1.784, and 0.074, respectively. Since the p value of 0.05 is smaller than the significance level of 0.1, it is significant to say that cabin evaluation and feedback cast an impact on proactive attitude and therefore Hypothesis 1 was selected at significance level 0.1. The path coefficient, CR, and p values between promotion, incentives, and will to service were -0.773, -1.945, and 0.052, respectively. Since the p value of 0.05 is smaller than the significance level of 0.1, it is significant to say that promotion and incentives cast an impact on the will to service and therefore Hypothesis 2 was selected at significant level 0.1.
What these research results represent are as follows; first off, promotion and incentives cast a negative influence on proactive attitude, will to service, and will to provide information while the customer-orientation of the managing staff draws a positive influence.
Delegation of rights proved to be a non-influential factor in terms of proactive attitude and will to provide information. On the other hand, cabin evaluations and feedbacks cast a negative influence on proactive attitude, will to service, and will to provide information.
Finally, proactive attitude, will to service, and will to provide information do not have any impact on loyalty to passengers. Such outcome mainly owes to the fact that the number of elements that induce such loyalty are increasing.
The outcome of the multiple regression analysis clarified that responsibility awareness, delegation of rights, cabin evaluation and feedback, customer-oriented management, and promotion and incentives are all significant variables that influence work satisfaction. Among those variables, the ββ coefficient value of promotion and incentives marked the top with 0.605, indicating that promotion and incentives variable is the most critical, followed by customer-oriented management at 0.181, delegation of rights at 0.168, and responsibility awareness at 0.151.