| Author: | Chong, Sookyup |
| Title: | Developing a website evaluation framework for low cost carriers |
| Advisors: | Law, Rob (SHTM) |
| Degree: | DHTM |
| Year: | 2020 |
| Subject: | Web sites -- Evaluation Airlines Airlines -- Cost of operation Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | School of Hotel and Tourism Management |
| Pages: | 151 pages |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | The rapid and continuous evolvement of information and communications technologies (ICTs) brought a dramatic change to the existing business scope of every industry and affected customers' purchase behavior. The airline industry, as early adopters in the use of ICTs, integrated these technologies as core elements of their business and finally came up with a new business model called low cost carriers (LCCs). LCCs are one of the most impressive business models that show such integration of technologies into business and utilize their own websites most. One of the most successful LCCs, easyJet use their website as the sole distribution channel for their products and services, and the major successful LCCs also share this single distribution channel strategy to save cost. In accordance with the growth of e-commerce in the tourism and hospitality industry, studies regarding website evaluation have actively been conducted. However, a generally adopted standard framework for website evaluation in the tourism and hospitality industry context is yet to be developed. On the other hand, website evaluation literature discussing the airline sector shows an undesirable situation with respect to the number of studies conducted, especially in the LCCs context, as well as an absence of standard evaluation model. This study, thus, established a well-defined standard framework with fifty-two attributes under seven dimensions reflecting every aspect and feature of airlines, as well as general e-commerce, in order to effectively assess LCCs' websites. The framework has closely reviewed and validated by the focus group of 15 members, which consisted of the experts from both the industry and academia, as well as the members representing customers' perspectives. An overall assessment for the LCCs' websites has been conducted using this framework. In doing so, a mixed method integrating both quantitative and qualitative research approaches have been accomplished. The study assessed a total of 60 websites of LCCs, which represent 73 global carriers, and further checked whether there is any difference in their performance based on the economy groups classified by IMF, as well as geographic subareas and areas grouped by ICAO through independent samples T-tests and one-way ANOVA tests. The study finally verified the possible correlations between the overall performance of LCCs' websites and their financial performance. The website assessment results present the average performance score for the 60 websites as 63.58 and rank Jeju Air's website as the best with a score of 82.47, whereas the results indicate China West Air's website as the worst with the mark of 45.31. Besides, the statistical analyses suggest that the websites in the advanced economies (AE) group statistically performed better than the websites in the emerging market and developing economies (ED) group, in general. However, the analyses did not show statistically valid differences among the websites classified by geographic areas and subareas except for some dimensional scores. Meanwhile, the study outcomes present the statistically significant positive correlations between the website performance and financial performance for the pairs using the ratios return on assets (ROA) and net profit margin (NPM) and the dimensional scores of service content (SC), technical performance (TP), website design (WD), usability (US), customer relations (CR), and credibility (CD). Based on the total scores of website performance, the pair with the NPM is found only marginally correlated. This research has made academic contributions to the current website evaluation literature by developing a comprehensive and well-defined website evaluation framework in the airline industry context, which can be used for every type of airline. It also practically contributes to the industry as a valuable reference and practical guidance for structuring and managing websites. The positive correlation verified between the website performance and financial performance of each airline further ensures such a significance of this study. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5437.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 1.8 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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