Exploring personality moderation effects on satisfaction and loyalty in the airline industry

Purpose: The United States airline industry is a highly competitive industry. Airlines could benefit from satisfied and loyal customers. This study investigates the effect of personality traits of airline consumers on satisfaction and loyalty in the U.S. airline market.Design/methodology/approach: An online survey was constructed to measure the “big five” personality traits, service quality, satisfaction, and loyalty. Data were collected using Amazon Mechanical Turk, resulting in 624 respondents. Factor analysis was conducted using principal component extraction and varimax rotation.Findings: The results show that service quality, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness influence airline satisfaction, while satisfaction, neuroticism and openness influence behavioral intention loyalty. When moderation effects were examined, openness was the only moderating personality trait.Originality/value: This research examined the big-five personality traits, often not investigated in airline satisfaction and loyalty studies. This study offers several managerial insights and theoretical implications that practitioners and researchers who are interested in airline satisfaction and loyalty might use. Further, this study may provide a foundation for future research in airline and airport satisfaction, loyalty and service quality.