Passengers’ perception of airlines’ services: Addressing systematic and random variation in tastes

This paper investigates heterogeneities in passengers’ perceptions of airlines’ services considering systematic and random variations in users’ tastes. For this purpose, an efficient design of a stated preference survey is carried out, where attributes related to the in-flight travel and to the passenger’s experience before and after the flight are considered. A Random Parameter Multinomial Logit model is estimated with the obtained data, which also considers systematic variations in user tastes. The obtained results show that most of the parameters associated with the considered variables fit better to a normal or uniform distribution, and that part of their variance can be explained by interacting these variables with other variables such as gender, age, travel frequency or income level. The proposed model allows conclusions to be drawn and marketing policies to be implemented that directly aim at certain user segments, in addition to comprehensively explaining passenger behaviour by showing their preferences.