Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction, and Customer Loyalty in the Southeast Asian Airline Industry: A SERVQUAL-Based Mediation Model
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Abstract
The airline industry faces increasing competition as passenger expectations for reliable, responsive, and personalised services continue to evolve within an increasingly digitalised service environment. This study examines the effects of service quality on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in the Southeast Asian airline industry, with customer satisfaction as a mediating variable. Drawing on the SERVQUAL framework and Expectancy-Disconfirmation Theory, service quality is examined through five dimensions: tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. A quantitative, cross-sectional survey design was adopted, with data collected from 200 airline passengers in Southeast Asia who had travelled by air within the previous 12 months. The data were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The findings show that tangibility, reliability, and empathy significantly and positively influence customer satisfaction, whereas responsiveness and assurance do not have significant effects. Reliability has the strongest effect on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is positively associated with customer loyalty and significantly mediates the relationships between tangibility, reliability, and empathy and customer loyalty. The study contributes to airline service quality research by demonstrating that SERVQUAL dimensions do not contribute equally to customer satisfaction and that customer satisfaction provides an important pathway through which selected service quality dimensions influence customer loyalty. The findings provide practical implications for airline managers to prioritise operational reliability, personalised service, and passenger-centred strategies to strengthen customer satisfaction and loyalty.
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