Latent semantic analysis of service quality in the Airline Industry: A consumer perspective

Abstract

The airline Service quality has received much attention from both academicians and practitioners. Various studies have used SERVQUAL, AIRQUAL, the Kano Model, etc. for measuring the customer service quality in the airline industry. However, a review of the airline servicequality literatureshows alack of research about theuseof latent semantic analysis (LSA) in uncovering the underlying factors affecting the quality of service provided by the airline companies. The purpose of this study is to explore the generic service quality characteristics pertaining to the airline industry by mining the comments provided by the passengers of various airline companies across the globe. Passengers are under no pressure to express their concerns, opinions, or suggestions for improvement of service quality. Therefore, we posit that the customers’ comments are reflections of their perception of quality of service that they have already experienced. This study will help thestakeholders better understand thecharacteristics of service quality in the airline industry. The findings will providemanagers in the airline industry with insights for managing and improving the quality of service rendered to their customers. We collected 1,069 customer comments on eleven airline companies and conducted an LSA on them to identify five factors affecting the service quality in the airlines industry. The findings suggest that caring and friendly crews, luggage handling, in-flight meals, in-flight entertainment, and service expectation are the five critical factors of the airline service quality in the eyes of the customers.