Browsing by Author "Sezgen, Eren"

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    Airline brand management: a practical perspective to brand management in the airline industry
    (Elsevier, 2023-06-02) Sezgen, Eren; Mason, Keith J.; Mayer, Robert
    Measuring and managing airline services cannot be easily achieved using the tools developed to measure brands in goods and most other services industries due to some unique characteristics of the airline industry. This paper seeks to explain airline branding, brand management, and brand measurement from the perspective of airline marketing professionals. The aim is to identify customer-based brand equity (CBBE) measures appropriate to the unique nature of the airline industry. Furthermore, we explore the dimensions that drive brand equity in the airline industry. The paper uses semi-structured expert interviews to collect data from senior marketing executives working for both full-service and low-cost carriers, in addition to airline branding/marketing consultants. The findings reveal the factors that drive airline customer-based brand equity (CBBE) as awareness, functional and technical service performance, credibility, differentiation, value, satisfaction, and loyalty. The research encapsulates the basic dimensions of brand equity advocated in the branding literature but also some measures which are new to the airline branding literature (functional and technical service performance, and credibility). These measures are critical for airline managers as they attempt to build equity in their respective brands. Therefore, this research offers researchers and practitioners a better understanding of brand equity measurement and of brand equity formation for airlines.
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    Development and validation of an airline-specific customer-based brand equity scale
    (Cranfield University, 2020-02) Sezgen, Eren; Mason, Keith; Mayer, Robert
    A brand is a feature that distinguishes one product or service from another. Having a strong brand can therefore provide competitive advantages to airlines which is key in today’s highly competitive environment to achieve sustainable growth and profit. One of the critical aspects of strategic brand management is the assessment of the health of the brand. Therefore, the brand equity concept introduced the 1980s that, in general represents added value derived from customer perceptions of the brand versus the product/service itself, enables researchers and marketers to evaluate and understand brand successes and failures. However, there is little agreement in the literature on the concept, its measurement or its key dimensions. Having reliable measures is one of the prerequisites in management since it is difficult to manage something without measuring it appropriately. Therefore, the aim of this study is to systematically develop a valid, reliable and parsimonious scale to measure customer-based brand equity of airlines. Following well-established scale development procedures, this study first adopts a range of qualitative studies to construct an airline-specific customer-based brand equity scale. The scale construction established through a review of literature, airline marketing expert interviews, and a data-mining study on passenger reviews. The construction is followed by stepwise passenger surveys to test, validate and to assess its reliability. The results support the validity, reliability and the scale’s predictive capability. Therefore, the result revealed six main dimensions of the ACBBE (Airline Customerbased Brand Equity) scale namely: awareness, service performance (functional and technical performance), credibility, differentiation, value and loyalty (brand intention and brand premium). This study provides a diagnostic tool for the airline marketing professionals to track, audit and assess the performance and health of their brands. The academic contribution of this research is twofold. It introduces a valid, reliable and psychometrically robust measurement tool by considering dynamics of the industry and, therefore, this study may lead as a point of departure to develop more sophisticated airline brand equity valuation methods.
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    Voice of airline passenger: a text mining approach to understand customer satisfaction
    (Elsevier, 2019-04-13) Sezgen, Eren; Mason, Keith J.; Mayer, Robert
    This paper investigates the key drivers of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction towards both, full-service and low-cost carriers and also towards, economy and premium cabins. Latent Semantic Analysis - a text mining and categorisation technique ─ is applied to analyse online user-generated airline reviews. Over five thousand passenger reviews for fifty (50) airlines were collected from the online review site, TripAdvisor. Findings show that there are fundamental differences in the drivers of passenger satisfaction depending on the class of air travel purchased, and whether the airline is a low cost or a full service carrier. Friendliness and helpfulness of staff are the key factors for those travelling in Economy Class, product value is key for those in premium cabins, and a low price is the key satisfaction driver for those that choose to travel on a low cost airline. The research also shows that the service attributes seat comfort and legroom, luggage/flight disruptions and staff behaviours are the main reasons for passengers’ dissatisfaction among all groups. This study provides an alternative customer satisfaction analysis for managers to hear the voice of their customers by using a well-established text mining technique and by analysing the reviews of satisfied and dissatisfied customers.