Abstract:
Customer Retention is a cine qua non for the survival and sustainability of firms in today‟s
competitive but volatile business environment. Retaining the customer is good for the
health and the general wellbeing of firms. The economic benefits of customer retention
cannot be over-emphasized as it culminates in the overall profitability of firms.
The open skies policy in the air transport industry in Ghana sparked intense competition
and has witnessed proliferation of airlines into the industry. This calls for deliberate
workable strategies aimed at not only acquiring customers but also keeping them as well
so as to prevent customers from defecting to competitors.
Several studies have been conducted to identify the importance of customer retention
especially in the banking sector. Little is known about the design of workable customer
retention strategies in the airline industry in Ghana.
The aim of this study was to find out the correlation between constructs of Relationship
Marketing (RM), Airline Service Quality (ASQ), Airline Switching Barriers (ASB) and
Service Recovery (SR) and Customer Retention in the airline industry in Ghana.
A quantitative method and researcher-administered questionnaire was used to investigate
the problem. The survey design was a cross-sectional non-experimental study of 337
respondents which was sampled by using a multistage probability and non-probability
sampling techniques. Bivariate and standard multiple regression models were used for
analysis.
The analysis of the study clearly revealed that all the four constructs used in the study
namely; RM, ASQ, ASB, and SR are significantly and positively associated with customer
retention with the duo constructs of ASQ and ASB being the most significant.
Despite limitations such as generalizability, the findings of this study provides evidence
that airline industry professionals need to pay close attention to these strategies especially
Airline Service Quality and Airline Switching Barriers and fine-tuning them to reflect the
exigencies of the time and also to ensure their continued use and adoption for an improved
Customer Lifetime Value.
