Measuring and Managing Customers´ Expectations in the Airline Industry

Understanding and well managing customer’s needs and expectations is very critical for a service-oriented organization like an airline because it protects against customer’s dissatisfaction. After customers’ needs and expectations are well identified, the service provider should strive so as to fill the service quality gap and even to go beyond customers’ expectations by accommodating or shaping them. SERVQUAL is one of the measuring tools which has been widely used to measure customers’ expectations in the service quality setting. SERVQUAL represents service quality as the discrepancy between customer’s expectations for a service offering and the customer’s perception of the service received, requiring respondents to provide answers to questions related to both expectations and their perceptions. In order to manage effectively and efficiently customers’ expectations, airlines need to know them then accommodate them through segmentation, innovation and Total Quality Management or shape them by using communication and other cues such as customer-oriented human resources management practices but without promising more than they can deliver.