Passangers' expectations regarding airport service quality

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to find, through an empirical investigation, what are the most important variables influencing airport passenger satisfaction perceptions, by taking into account their views on the quality of service provided at airports they used. To achieve this, first we tried to check the applicability of a study done in the United States, seeking to validate it to an European context, which largely turned up to be confirmed. Then we aimed at checking the existence of latent variables behind the ACI ASQ Survey questionnaires applied widely, four times a year at several airports all over the world, including Porto Airport that feeds up an award scheme greatly acknowledged. Data coming from this survey served as the basis for our study of the quality assessment of passenger service. We found out that the way ACI ASQ questionnaires are organized decisively influences the evaluation of passengers, since they respond having in mind mostly the heading of the groups of items, rather than the items individually. This evidence has led us to study the dimensions behind each group of items, resulting in the identification of factors that were more important than others in its contribution to the overall customer’s satisfaction. Thus, it was observed that the dimensions: comfort; compliance and orientation, in this order, are those that are most influential on passengers’ satisfaction. Finally, we tried to find out similarities between the two alternative models of airport costumers’ quality perception formation: the F&M model (in our adapted version) and the one implicit on the ACI ASQ survey. On this respect it was concluded that they do not measure the same set of dimensions, that is, they approach different, and overlapping, and probably complementary constructs related to airport service quality.

Date of Award	2010
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Miguel Sottomayor (Supervisor)