THE INFLUENCE OF BRAND ASSOCIATION AND SERVICE QUALITY ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND LOYALTY OF AIR ASIA IN SURABAYA YOUNGSTER

Abstract

Transportation has become inseparable utility that help people moving from one place to others, especially airplane that allow people to travel to faraway places easily and efficiently. Along the time, the growth of airline industry has brought competitive rivalry among numerous brands. Focusing on survive through global economic recession, several airlines has repositioned as low-cost carriers. Air Asia is the first airlines that use low-cost carriers concept in Asia. This research is designed to determine: (i) the relationship between service quality towards customer satisfaction; (ii) the relationship between brand associations towards customer satisfaction; (iii) the relationship between brand associations towards customer loyalty; (iv); and (v) the relationship between service quality towards customer loyalty through customer satisfaction of Air Asia in Surabaya’s youngsters. The populations are Surabaya’s youngster who ever used Air Asia. The research was conducted using quantitative approach with personally-self-administered questionnaires for data collection. The questionnaire contains in total 25 questions which are the representatives of 15 service quality indicators, 3 brand association indicators, 3 customer satisfaction indicators, and 4 customer loyalty indicators. The results showed that: (i) service quality significantly influence on Air Asia’s customer satisfaction in Surabaya youngster; (ii) brand association significantly influence on customer satisfaction; (iii) customer satisfaction significantly influence on customer loyalty; (iv) brand association significantly influence on customer loyalty; and (v) customer satisfaction is the intervening variable of service quality and customer loyalty