The branding attempts of airline companies have to be in collaboration with the strategies such as networking, job training, and fl eet policy. The other two important
strategies – the “on-time performance” and “value for money” – also have to be cohesive with branding Taneja
2014 . Branding is an important marketing instru-
ment and it is more important to airline business compared to other businesses. It is impossible to see any single passenger airline in “the top 100 Global Brands.”
Relatively well-known airlines could argue with such lists and point out that such rankings have been based on brand equity and the market capitalizations of the
global airlines tend to be relatively small. Other arguments include factors that although they are global in operations, airlines are not considered global business
due to the existence of bilateral and multilateral agreements. These are valid expla- nations
Taneja . One of the basic conditions of sustainable competitive advantage
is branding for the industries, and the airline industry is not an exception. Although it may vary through industries, brand loyalty of consumers is affected by several
factors. Service quality is one of the most important factors in service industries Zeithaml et al.
1996 . Moreover, the service quality is a predecessor for brand loy-
alty, brand recognition, and brand satisfaction. Consequently, the marketing profes- sionals try to identify “perceived quality” while defi ning the term brand. Professionals
believe that consumers fi nd high-quality products more successful when all other variables are considered as equals. Relatively, the brand quality defi nitions will
strongly affect brand preferences Morton
1994 . Consequently, the marketing pro-
fessionals claim that the service quality is a strong founder of the brand loyalty Gremler et al.
1996 . Tam 2000 and Chinomona et al.
2003 also support that
service quality affects brand satisfaction directly.
5.2.2 Service Quality
Various researchers have tried to identify and conceptualize service quality in the areas of marketing and management. The fi rst conceptual explanations Grönroos
et al. 1984
were based on the disconfi rmation paradigm depending on the literature developed on the quality of physical goods and products. The perceived service
quality can be defi ned as attitudes or judgments related to superiority of a service. Grönroos
2007 assumes that customers’ perceived service quality is an output of
the evaluation process in which customers compare their expectations with the actual service performance. By this logic, service quality is evaluated in two dimen-
sions: the fi rst dimension is technical quality, defi ned as a result of the interaction of customers with the service provider, and the other dimension is functional quality
related to the given service Grönroos
2007 .
Parasuraman, Berry, and Zeithaml 1985
defi ned the concept of service quality as a discrepancy level between customers’ normative service expectations and their
perceptions of the service performance. The dominant theory in conceptualizing the phenomena of service quality and satisfaction is the paradigm of expectation-
disconfi rmation. This paradigm is composed of two processes: the fi rst is the
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development of the output result expectations and the second is the confi rmation disconfi rmation judgments arising from the comparison of the results perceived as
contrary to these expectations. When the actual performance matches with the previ- ous expectations, a match occurs. When the performance exceeds the expectations or
when it occurs at a lower level, a negative or positive disconfi rmation occurs. While negative mismatch causes a perception of low service quality or dissatisfaction, posi-
tive mismatch causes a perception of high level of service quality and satisfaction.
The airline sector is classifi ed as one of the most abstract service sectors. The main reason for this classifi cation is that it is a sector that has all of the distinctive
features of services of the airline sector listed as abstractness, inseparability, unsta- bleness, and instability Clemes et al.
2008 . The airline sector, having both labor-
intensive and capital-intensive structures, can be affected very easily by economic, political, and social events because of its wide region in which it operates and it
being an international business Air Transport Association of America 2007
. Today a lot of factors such as increased competition, prevention of governments from sub-
sidizing the airline companies losing money, deregulation, etc., have been forcing the airline companies that want to survive to be more productive and more competi-
tive Aircraft Aerodynamics and Design Group Stanford University 2011
. Because of high costs, it is very diffi cult for the airline enterprises operating with lower profi t
margins to compete with their competitors in terms of price in the long run. In addi- tion, the competitor enterprises’ reaction to price changes in a short time has led the
airline enterprises to the area of service quality Liou and Tzeng 2007
. Elliott and Roach Elliot and Roach
1993 used the criteria of performance, bag-
gage handling, food quality, seat comfort, check-in service, and fl ight service to evaluate the service performance of an airport. Ostrowski et al. Ostrowski et al.
1993 evaluated the service quality in terms of punctuality, food and drink quality,
and seat comfort. Chang and Yeh 2002
developed a fuzzy multi-criteria model to evaluate the service quality of local passenger airlines in Taiwan. Similarly, Liou
et al. 2011
determined eight criteria in order to evaluate the service quality of domestic fl ights in Taiwan and to determine and develop their weak sides. The
dimensions of their study are reservation services, ticketing services, check-in pro- cedures, baggage handling, boarding process, cabin services, baggage claims, and
responsiveness On the other hand, evaluation criteria for Taiwan Airlines are dem- onstrated in Table
5.1 .
There are several criteria developed by various researchers in evaluating the quality of service offered in airline enterprises. There are criteria that have been
developed by various institutions and organizations as well. Among them, one of the best-known criteria is Skytrax .
5.3 Case Study: Turkish Airlines TK
