Positioning of selected Middle Eastern airlines in the South African business and leisure travel environment

Abstract

The study examines the positioning of four selected Middle Eastern airlines in the South African business and leisure travel environment. The positioning of the airline indicates how passengers rate the airline based on their expectations of that particular airline in terms of service quality attributes deemed important by passengers. Airline service quality attributes were grouped using factor analysis and positioning maps were generated based on statistically significant attributes of service, using a 3D centroid plot. The results suggest that passengers have different expectations of different airlines and that an airline's performance can be measured against these expectations, rather than against a standard set of service attributes.