Effects of new technologies on customer satisfaction : A study on how new customer-facing technologies in airports affect the customer satisfaction

Abstract: Background: New technologies have turned out to be an inseparable part of the air travel industry over the last couple of decades, and it brought us many benefits. Nonetheless, these new airport technologies also brought new problems that foster air travellers’ irritation. A negative experience has a relatively worse influence on an airport than a positive; therefore, this is an interesting topic to investigate. There is so far only limited research done about the connection between new customer-facing technologies and customer satisfaction. Due to this lack of analysis, this study has the goal to examine the understanding of the effects of new airport technologies on individual’s satisfaction. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to discover how new customer-facing technologies on airports affect the customers’ satisfaction Method: The research goal is accomplished by implementing qualitative research and collecting the data through ten semi-structured in-depth interviews with various individuals that had a recent air-travel experience which was no earlier than three months. The data analysis is done by performing an inductive research approach. Conclusion: The results show that customer satisfaction process begins at the need recognition and how it is perceived depends on the experience of each person. The way the need is perceived decides the priority of the factors that describe the new customer-facing technologies’ (CFT) service, as a result of that setting the expectations towards the process of interacting with the new CFTs. The customer then interacts with the service while assessing the performance compared to the expectations, and subsequently, a positive or negative disconfirmation is made upon deciding if service is better or worse than expected. A positive disconfirmation results in a satisfied customer and a negative disconfirmation results in a dissatisfied customer.