How to Improve Aviation Consumers’ Rights: A Case in Korea (Draft)

摘要

The aviation industry is changing rapidly from provider-oriented to consumer-orientedunder the environment of web 2.0 which is alleviating the gap between information holders andinformation users. Furthermore, regulations and policies have favored the airline thus far, and notpaid much attention to the airlines' consumers. Although airlines’ strategies are giving moreattention to their consumers, it is still not enough to satisfy the consumers' needs and to handletheir complaints in a timely manner. This study examined methods to improve airline consumers’rights and actions to take order to satisfy needs during consumers’ increasing activities on theweb. The importance of service providers and satisfaction of consumers was surveyed. Theresults show that there are major differences in perceptions between the service providers (orspecialist) and consumers on how to handle the airline consumers' complains and their rights.While the providers and specialists classified ten compensation items to improve consumerservice into two groups, such as compensation for problems caused during and before using theservice, the consumers considered only routine problems such as aircraft delay, baggage delay orloss as compensation items. It is also shown that the ten compensation items do not have ameaningful influence on overall consumer satisfaction. However, it is assumed that thecompensation for baggage loss, over-booking and selling may possibly influence consumersatisfaction.