In Asia, Does Airline Service Quality Matter to Investors?

The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether premium services airlines in Asia offer better returns to investors as compared to normal services airlines. To accomplish this, portfolios are created for each airline group and compared against benchmarks in monthly assessments over a sixty two month period ending in October 2017. The benchmarks include the global market and the oil market. The global market offers a comparison to a baseline expectation while the oil market represents a major cost component for the airline industry. The findings point to the premium services airlines as being the superior performing group in relation to the normal services airlines as judged in six cases using various configurations of the benchmarks. These results are further confirmation that in some industry segments, service quality matters. Included is literature pertaining to service quality, loyalty, and profitability. Each of these topics is expanded to show the link between various facets of customer satisfaction and implications on overall company profitability.