Evaluating the Airline Selection Behavior of Iranian Domestic Travelers

Aviation industry due to economic problem was faced with loss of revenue in recent years. This industry has always been searching for ways to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Better understanding of behavior travelers to choose an airline, will help airlines in this field. In recent years this issue has attracted much attention by increasing number of companies, increasing trade competition and economic condition in Iran. In this paper through the literature review we can find out that to go through this business, the industry needs to tackle two obvious tasks: Cost-Reduction and revenue generating.an Airline`s knowledge of its customers and its ability to devise marketing campaign’s to suit the preferences of those customer segments become of paramount importance in attracting the passengers to the cabin. In the development of new services and the utilization of new equipment, consumer driven input should be utilized. To achieve a competitive advantage, some airlines are offering better ground and in-flight entertainment systems. However, these measures are not industry norms, and may not be applicable to all airlines. Thus the airlines need to study their own customer base and find out if better offerings suit their customers’ needs and wants. Value is provided only by satisfying the needs of the customers, according to Schmitt and Simonson (1997).They stated that their book that firms can provide value by satisfying customers` experiential, aesthetic needs, in world in which consumers have their basic needs satisfied. The authors defined it as “Marketing Aesthetics” as the marketing of sensory experiences in corporate or brand output that contributes to the organization`s or the brands identity.This research evaluate the behavior of passengers on select domestic airlines, for collectthe required information from passengers, using expert advisors and university professors,design a questionnaire with 21 criteria that was supposed to have an important role inselection of travelers and the passengers were asked to score the importance of each ofthem. These 21 criteria were prioritized based on the importance of travelers view point.In addition, this study sought to find relationships between preference criteria anddifferent group of travelers based on their personal information and travel feature. 6ththeories get tested by T, ANOVA& Homogeneity of variance for achieved to researchobjectives. By using this method, the criteria’s were determined significant differences in term of importance and priorities in different group of travelers. In this study, 8th major factors were identified that most influence in the selection process of travelers, which include on time flight, safety, price, convenient flight time, number of past event in each airline, responsiveness in time of delay, how to sell ticket and reservation and crew & staff behavior. Practical implication of this research offers commercial competing for airlines and introduces some field for this kind of studies in Iran.