<Consumer Interplay in Strategic Airlines Alliances>
< Lecturer’s Name and Course Number>
Introduction
There has been an increase in the number of business networks and strategic alliances in the past decade. However, the firm-customer relationship has not shifted its focus on most of the services of marketing research amid the changes in the business trend environment. The research proposal below seeks to investigate the effects of culture and the service failures that exist in the setting of a strategic airline alliance. The main focus is on the strengths and service failures in social identification on the alliance entities- the alliance, the home carrier of the consumer, and the alliance partner airline. The study reveals that the evaluations by the consumers are less extreme once a home carrier results in a service failure (Iatrou and Oretti, 2011, p.206). However, the consumers will rate a lesser known partner airline harshly once they cause a service failure.
In the research, people positively evaluated the home carriers and also transferred the evaluations to the alliance. The increase in the number of strategic alliances calls for an evolution in the marketing and adoption of services that are dominant in the logic. Airlines can have a long-term viability if they coordinate with other network partners and channels. The growth of the strategic alliances has its base on standardizing a seamless service delivery. It is possible that the evaluations made by consumers within one alliance of several firms lead to the making of attributions about other members of the alliance.
Hospitality and tourism services are subject to frequent failures in service once the expectations of the customers fail to be met. Negative evaluations by customers directly result in significant losses for the hospitality and tourism firms (Evans, Stonehouse and Campbell, 2012, p.12). However, increased attention is placed on the development of efficient service recovery strategies by both front-line staff and the managers with an aim of restoring the customer satisfaction. Early research in the strategic alliances between airlines focused on the classification of recovery strategies and service failures and understanding the impact on the satisfaction of customers, the behavioral intentions, and the communication through the word of mouth. However, there has been a recent application of the theories from other areas such as fairness and justice theory due to the evolution rate of the hospitality and tourism firms’ operating environments (Evans, Stonehouse and Campbell, 2012, p.13).
The study focuses on the airline industry and the worldwide airline alliances such as the Star Alliance and the Oneworld Alliance. They form the context of the research paper because, first, the service failures such as lost luggage, overbooking, and rude flight attendants are common in the airline industry. Secondly, the agreements to share the evaluation by consumers is an integral part of the strategic airline alliances and affect the consumer evaluation of their home carrier, which is always the preferred airline. Finally, the potential effects on the perception of consumers and their behavior toward an airline result from service exposure of the alliance partners still regarded as competitors despite being members of the same alliance. Most business travelers rate the alliances, not based on the alliance benefits, but on the airline benefits such as safety and reputation. Additionally, very few travelers are aware of the alliance affiliated to the preferred airline. However, once two airlines promoting a common global alliance have a situation of service failure, the consumers make assumptions about the alliance in terms of the behavioral intentions and satisfaction (Iatrou and Oretti, 2011, p.209).
Literature Review
There are two different theories that form the basis of the literature in the analysis of the existing culture of consumers in the strategic alliances. First, there is the attribution theory and second, there is the social identity theory. The two theories help in understanding the relationship between consumer evaluation and entity level of the home and partner carriers and the international alliances.
The Attribution Theory
The Attribution theory centers on the individual assignment of the causal inferences of the experienced or witnessed events as well as the consequent effects of such inferences on behaviors and evaluations. Causes of service failure could be as a result of three different dimensions of cause, including controllability, locus, and stability. Locus is important to this research because, in any context of failure of service, the customer’s perception of the origin and location of the event of failure rests on the customer. It may also rest on a different factor such as a service provider or the environment that constitutes the external locus. The theory provides several insights into the experiences of service failure. The research findings, therefore, must be aimed at indicating the number of customers believing that the failure in airline service resulted from service providers and consequently exhibit dissatisfaction, voice complaints to the concerned firms, or demand for an apology or a refund. In most cases, attributions to third parties have no formal affiliation with the third party or the service provider and, especially among partners in global airline alliances. Consumers have vivid expectations in terms of the service recovery efforts for a certain service provider, especially in airlines that have identifiable staff as well as a distinct brand (Lu, 2003). As such, one can reasonably propose to consumers that have particular specifications in service recovery after a failure in service on the individual members of an airline alliance.
The attributions of consumers are important in the process of service recovery. Hence, a given alliance would have to deal with different service failures caused by the member partner airlines. Consequently, in the evaluation of the outcomes of recovery, the consumers would have to identify the responsibility of each party and the potential cause of the outcome in order to reach a resolution. Failures that are attributed to specific service providers bring about negative evaluations from the consumers and the behavior toward the service provider (Hill, 2014). The alliance airlines that implement the service recovery have opportunities to ensure efficient recoveries and, therefore, receive favorable evaluations.
The Social Identity Theory
The extent to which consumers identify with the airlines as service providers also influences their evaluation and behavior toward the particular service provider in case of the event of service failure. The social identity theory seeks to evaluate why people pay attention to justice in recovery situations as well as in service failure. The theory also looks at the way in which people form a basis of affiliation that is different from commitment. It also focuses on the loyalty that is based on repeated purchases by the customer due to inertia, price, commitment, and individual commitment due to affection. Social identity is the individual sense linked to self and that which goes beyond personal identity. People gain a social identity from categorizing themselves as members of a given occupation, ethnicity, sport, or gender.
Social identification occurs once a customer identifies with a given brand such as the reputation of an airline, its innovations, leadership, and excellence standards. Identifying with the airline gives the customer a sense of pride even in their communication with friends and relatives. With such positive feelings, the consumer widens their association with the brand. As a result, the brand is able to construct a loyalty platform in their marketing field (Lu, 2003).
Research Methodology
The research will also aim at testing a set of hypothesis instead of generalizing the findings to a much wider population. The intention will be to set a minimum of 50 respondents to satisfy the requirements for further testing and analysis. The research will be similar to that of Truxal (2012), where they obtained a total of 373 responses and the response rate was 6.3%. However, the incomplete questionnaires were eliminated and the sample size remained to be 313. With the potential effects on the analysis of data and the unbalanced design resulting from the huge number of respondents, several solutions were proposed for the analysis of the designs. The majority of the respondents were male, constituting 53%. The percentage was consistent with the broader population of frequent air travelers. A quarter of the respondents fell between the ages of 46 and 55 years. Close to 70% of the respondents preferred traveling in their home carrier. The respondents were familiar with the setting of the study making the sample suitable (TruxaL, 2012, p.85).
For this research, the respondents to the research study will be presented with short scripts aimed at invoking either a weak or strong identification with their home carrier. With such a social identity manipulation, a service recovery and failure script will also be presented. The development of the script will be as a result of perusing several events of service failure in the publications that are airline related, and that which reviewed the airline surveys. The scenarios in the scripts presented to the respondents depicted service failure events that involved two airlines in the same alliance and the alliance brand on a flight that was code-shared. The service failure events in the research scenario were chosen to show a link in the breakdown of computer systems operating the flight and the subsequent delays and cancelation of already confirmed flights.
Different measurements will be used in the research. First, there are independent variables that included the social identity and the locus of failure in service. The locus of failure in service will be manipulated at two different levels. Firstly, the locus of the home carrier causing a service failure that will result in the partner airline to implement the recovery of the service. On the other hand, in the locus of the partner airline causing a service failure, the home carrier will have to ensure that service recovery was implemented. The strength of the social identity of the home carrier will also be manipulated at two different levels. The script presented to the respondents will include the material to strengthen how consumers identified with their home carrier in the condition of strong identification. On the other hand, the condition of weak identification will include no references to the carrier. Rather, different carriers will present the acceptable choices for the different respondents to the research (TruxaL, 2012, p.87).
Secondly, there will be two different dependent variables that included the general satisfaction of the consumers and the behavioral intentions. The variables will cover all the three entities of the alliance brand, the partner airline, and the home carrier. The measurement scales will be adapted and operationalized from the service encounter and customer satisfaction literature.
The locus of service failure had a hypothesis positing that the airline resulting in service failure had high chances of having a lot of negative consumer evaluations in terms of negative behavioral intentions and poor consumer satisfaction. The airline that deals with the service failure would then follow in the negative consumer evaluations and lastly the affiliated alliance. However, to break the interaction between the three entities, the research study performed contrasts with the one whose entities compare at different causality levels of the locus (Peoples, 2012, p.59). Once a partner airline performs a service failure, the consumers are likely to statistically have a much lower perception of the airline as compared to the alliance and the home carrier. Additionally, the difference between the alliance and the home carrier is likely to have a significant satisfaction level as well as behavioral intentions. The simple effects test carried out on every entity level disclosed the different evaluation on the partner airline depending on the causality locus. The respondents to the research will evaluate the partner airlines higher if the service failure results from the home carriers.
Work Plan Including Timetable
The first part of the dissertation is writing a proposal based on the topic of the dissertation. Before this, one has to research on the different topics that they are interested in and find one that is best. The choosing of this topic also requires the input of the school-assigned mentor. The mentor will provide input on areas to focus on during the research. The next stage is about data collection and research. During this stage, I will focus on collecting information from both primary and secondary sources about the topic. The stage will also include identifying the relevant information and using this data for the dissertation. The next stage is to write the chapters of the dissertation based on the information collected. During this stage, the written chapters will be given to the mentor for approval. Based on their approval, further editing will be done on the written chapters while relying on the data collected in the previous stage. Further input by the mentor will provide guidance on corrections on the dissertation chapters.
Bibliography
Evans, N., Stonehouse, G. and Campbell, D., and 2012. Strategic Management for Travel and Tourism. Hoboken, Taylor and Francis. Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Hill, T., 2014. Aguide to three major Airline Alliances: Star Alliance, Oneworld, and Sky Team. [online] Available at: http://www.hopper.com/articles/860/a-guide-to-the-three-major-airline-alliances-star-alliance-oneworld-and-sky-team [Accessed 4 March 2016].
Iatrou, K. and Oretti, M., 2011. Airline Choices for the Future: From Alliances to Mergers. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company.
Lu, A.C., 2003. International Airline Alliance: EC Competition Law/ US Antitrust Law and International Air Transport. New York: Kluwer Law International.
Peoples, J. ed., 2012. Pricing Behavior and Non-Price Characteristics in the Airline Industry. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.
Truxal, S., 2012. Competition and Regulation in the Airline Industry: Puppets in Chaos. New York, NY: Routledge.
