The Relationship between Sustainable Competitive Advantage and Customer Satisfaction in Ethiopian Airlines
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Date
2014-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
In today’s competitive business environment, businesses need to develop and sustain Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA) to succeed and stand out from the competition and the objective of this research paper is to identify the SCA of Ethiopian Airlines by undertaking empirical research on the relationship between determinants of sustainable competitive advantages and customer satisfaction in Ethiopian. To achieve the objective, a structured questionnaire was developed using David Aaker’s model of SCA. The questionnaire that had a five- point likert scale: from strongly disagree to strongly agree was administered to judgmentally selected 400 passengers at Addis Ababa International Airport and Pearson Toronto International Airport. Moreover, focus group discussion was held with 10 staff of Ethiopian Airlines to identify three service areas with high and low customer satisfaction. Data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. For quantitative analysis: descriptive statistics -- Frequency, mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics -- correlation, regression and ANOVA. The research findings of the study clearly showed that Ethiopian Airlines has SCAs: Brand, Convenient Schedule/Network and Modern Fleet. Turning satisfied customers into loyal customers needs to be worked on as well. Moreover, the focus group discussion indicated that areas like airport service, baggage service, reservations service and general information provision are weak areas that need to be taken care in order for Ethiopian to keep on shining in the sky. Lastly, a further research would benefit the industry if done by addressing the limitation of this study, i.e., by increasing the sample size and including other airlines passengers as well.
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Keywords
Airline Marketing, Customer Satisfaction, Ethiopian Airlines