Airline loyalty determinants among business travelers: empirical evidence from Croatia

Abstract

Airline passenger loyalty has been the subject of several studies set within a general travel context. These studies have helped understanding the influence of variables like brand equity, airline service levels, customer commitment, but also price in tying a passenger to a particular airline. Despite the great economic importance of the business traveler market, no study has, however, so far, exclusively focused on this traveler segment and tried to investigate drivers of repurchase intentions and loyalty of this specific traveler type. This study aims to address this research gap. The findings reveal that business passenger loyalty is far stronger driven by emotional than rational elements, in particular trust. Accordingly, airlines aiming to tie business travelers should set the focus of relationship marketing activities primarily to affective than calculative commitment building.

Keywords:

• Business travel
• customer loyalty
• commitment
• airline marketing
• structural equations modeling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.