An Airline’s Mobile Travel Guide Application: Effects on Customer Loyalty

Abstract

Value adding services have become increasingly important in the aviation industry as executives thrive to expand their IT technologies on board as well as in the infrastructure needed to support an airline. This study proposes the introduction of a mobile travel guide application running on smartphones and tablets providing information about the airline’s destination coming from flight crews and other employees. The purpose of this study is to investigate how far in the innovation-decision process of mobile technology customers are, how consumer behaviour is affected, and ultimately whether such technology is a suitable tool for improving customer loyalty towards an airline. The results should help marketers in deciding whether a mobile travel guide application is an effective tool for increasing customer loyalty. A questionnaire using non-random sampling and qualitative as well as quantitative research has found that smartphone users are using mobile applications throughout the whole day and thus they are at the end of innovation decision process. Further, mainly personal and social factors influence attitude towards the proposed technology and the firm. The application itself enjoys spurious loyalty while contributing to building customer loyalty for the airline. A free to use mobile travel guide application filled with information provided for by flight crews helps in strengthening customer loyalty for the firm by appealing to personal and social factors. The results of this paper indicate that the extension of mobile services by a travel guide application is worthwhile for an airline as it can be considered as a possible tool to increase customer loyalty.