Maximilian Klein

Maximilian is a Double Degree candidate at the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland and HEC Paris, France where he is majoring in Business Management and Strategic Management. After an internship with an international consultancy specialized in marketing and sales, he decided to research on influential determinants in the purchase of flight tickets for his master’s thesis.

 Nowadays, flying has become a popular means of transport, we’re all used to booking flights all over the world. Nevertheless, surprisingly little research has been conducted on the influence of different product features on the purchase decision, be it the airline’s image or the scheduled arrival time. Only few studies exist mainly examining the customers’ willingness to pay for additional leg room or other factors to improve the overall comfort.

Therefore, Maximilian conducted an exhaustive literature review on relevant features and analyzed the offering of ten major international airlines. Ultimately, he compiled a list of 80 factors that in the following were were summarized and condensed according to their relevance given the thesis’ topic. During a first pre-study, respondents were asked to assess the individual importance of 40 features in an isolated setting. Depending on the respondents’ flight behavior (less frequent vs. frequent flyer) and the flight’s duration (short haul vs. long haul), seven to eight dominating factors can be identified.

In order to not only assess the isolated importance of these factors but also to allow for tradeoff decisions between different features, these factors shall be examined by means of an ACBC. Ultimately, these findings allow for more accurate and precise statements with regard to the relevance of the features.

Based on these findings, Maximilian aims for deriving managerial implications for the design of airline’s marketing instruments.