An assessment of the effect of service quality on Customer Satisfaction: The case of Ethiopian Airlines in Gondar Airport

Abstract

The study employed explanatory and descriptive research design and used both primary and secondary data sources. The populations in this study were passenger customers at Ethiopian airlines at Gondar branch. Therefore, 100 (sample) passenger respondents at Ethiopian airlines at Gondar branch Airport were selected for the purpose of this study. They were selected by convenience sampling procedure and technique. The data were collected through questionnaire and semi-structured interview. Descriptive statistics such as frequency mean and standard deviation analysis techniques are applied to analyze respondents’ perception on service quality dimensions and customers satisfaction. Besides, Pearson correlation and regression analysis technique is applied to investigate the impacts of service quality dimensions on satisfaction and to examine the level and test relationships and effects. The overall results of the study indicated that in the correlation analysis of service quality dimensions (tangibility, assurance, responsiveness, reliability and empathy) show, they all have positive and significant relation with the level of customer satisfaction. The strongest relationship is observed on reliability and assurance, while, empathy has relatively less relationship with the lowest mean value but it has a big impact on customer satisfaction. The study also found that the regression model revealed that, there were statistically significant relationship between quality service delivery dimensions and customer satisfaction. The independent variables such as empathy, tangibility, reliability, responsiveness and assurance together accounted for 78.1 % of variance in the dependent variable of customer satisfaction. The study result identified that all service quality dimensions have significant and positive impact on customer satisfaction. On the basis of the finding, it has been recommended that Ethiopian Airlines Gondar branch should work hard to improve the service quality in order to get satisfied customers. To increase the level of satisfaction more, it should effectively manipulate the attributes by giving more training, by giving difference incentives and rewarding good performer employees.