- 2015-03-09 (x)
- 2009-05 (x)
- Brunger, William G. (x)
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Show moreAirport managers tend to view airport efficiency through the lens of their own experience based on measurements of travelers’ interactions with the airline after the traveler has entered the airport process. They ignore the times when the traveler is not empirically measurable, for example, the period between arrival at the airport and checks-in with the airline, and therefore miss important insight into how travelers cope with uncertainty and anxiety of the airport experience. In this paper, the author, an Airline Executive, suggests that ethnographic studies based on the techniques of rich observation, note-taking, coding, and inductive analysis will be a useful complement to airline/airport measures because ethnography can focus on travelers’ behaviors from the travelers’ point-of-view. Airport studies based on ethnographic studies should contain richer, more behaviorally complex and more customer-centric insights, leading to better, comprehensive problem identification and process redesign.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreThe Airline Industry has experienced considerable change since the Airline Deregulation Act took effect in 1978, both because of the new business climate engendered by deregulation and because of technological advances in and surrounding the industry. One of the most powerful change agents has been the Internet, which is widely used in the sale and distribution of airline tickets. Several researchers have noted that the rise of the Internet has been accompanied by a decrease in airline fares. Previous studies have suggested several causal categories – for example, reduced search costs, greater transparency, mistrust, uncertainty, more effective buying strategies – but have not studied the categories together, or from the customer’s pointofview. The purpose of this current study is to examine the mechanisms by which the Internet has caused that reduction, focusing first on how the customer uses the Internet differently than he did more traditional distribution alternatives, how the customer has understood that change in process, and why that has lead to a reduction in fares. The study will be qualitative, based on a series of interviews with a sample of Internetusing airline customers. The customers will be asked to describe their experience. Using Grounded Theory methodology, the Investigator will then describe the interviews using the literature as a theory base, and then try to understand if the causal categories in the literature are sufficient to explain the change or whether new categories emerge.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreCustomers who use Internet websites find and buy lower fares than do those who use travel agents for similar trips, even though for most large U.S. airlines the fares and availability offered through both channels are the same (because of contractual obligations). Economic and marketing theory offers “transparency” and “lowered search costs” as primary explanations. In an effort to understand, describe and corroborate those explanations, we studied the behavioral changes implied by the Internet, asking customers how they have understood the transition to Internet travel purchase and how they believe they have changed their behavior, specifically about the impact of their search process on fare levels. Interviewees identified increased “breadth of search” and “control” as the primary benefits of the switch to Internet purchase channels, believing that lower fares are a by-product of broader and more thorough search. Several respondents also described new social and search involvement behaviors, enabled by the Internet, which seem to have increased the diligence of their search. That said, more than half of respondents described very simple one-or-two-step search strategies, and all used simpler search protocols than they knew were available, supporting the behavior of Cognitive Lock-In, perhaps moderated by Frequent Flyer Program status, geography and gender.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreThe Airline Industry has experienced considerable change since the Airline Deregulation Act took effect in 1978, both because of the new business climate engendered by deregulation and because of technological advances in and surrounding the industry. One of the most powerful change agents has been the Internet, which is widely used in the sale and distribution of airline tickets. Several researchers have noted that the rise of the Internet has been accompanied by a decrease in airline fares. Previous studies have suggested several causal categories – for example, reduced search costs, greater transparency, mistrust, uncertainty, more effective buying strategies – but have not studied the categories together, or from the customer’s point-of-view. The purpose of this current study is to examine the mechanisms by which the Internet has caused that reduction, focusing first on how the customer uses the Internet differently than he did more traditional distribution alternatives, how the customer has understood that change in process, and why that has lead to a reduction in fares. The study will be qualitative, based on a series of interviews with a sample of Internet-using airline customers. The customers will be asked to describe their experience. Using Grounded Theory methodology, the Investigator will then describe the interviews using the literature as a theory base, and then try to understand if the causal categories in the literature are sufficient to explain the change or whether new categories emerge.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less