Factors Affecting Channel Choice in the Case of Individual Customers Air Ticket Purchase
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Date
2015-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The main goal of this research is to find out the factors that affect individual customers of Ethiopian airlines in their choice of the travel agency channel outlet for their international air ticket purchase. It tried to order the factors according to their significance effect on the customers channel choice. The paper also covered to see if the factors have any different effect across the demographic profile of respondents. The study examined seven factors that were taken from prior research works on offline channels of distribution in a multichannel scenario’s. All responses were collected by using a structured questionnaire through convenience sampling (n=239). Data was analyzed using SPSS software to obtain descriptive statistics, comparing mean scores (i.e. independent t-test and ANOVA) and other analyses (i.e. correlation analysis and multiple linear regressions). According to the study findings, four factors: price, service, contact speed and immediacy of feedback were identified as the main factors that customers of Ethiopian airlines perceive to be important in influencing their choice of the travel agency channel outlet. However, the influences of contact speed and immediacy of feedback were found to be the more important factors than the other two factors. The study also finds out that prior experience, geographic location and language variety have no significant effect on customers channel choice in purchasing an international air flight ticket from travel agencies inAddisAbaba. The finding of the studyshowed that there is a significance difference in perceiving the seven factors between and among the customers of Ethiopian airlines with different demographic profiles. Price and service were found out to affect male customers more while immediacy of feedback affected female respondents.The adult age category also showed a higher sensitivity to the factors price, service, contact speed and immediacy of feedback. The factors prior experience and price prevailed across respondents of different marital status, income, education and travel experience with Ethiopian airlinesinternational flights.After examining the results and reaching on conclusions, the researcher recommended that both Ethiopian airlines and travel agencies should focus their attention on the four factors found to be important in the channel choice of individual traveling customers of the airline so as to attract new customers and retain the existing ones
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Keywords
Customers Channel Choice, International Air Travelers, Travel agencies