Positioning of International Air Passenger Carriers Using Multidimensional Scaling and Correspondence Analysis

This article uses multidimensional scaling and correspondence analysis to explore how international airline passengers position various air carriers. The analysis has produced perceptual maps of relative positions of airlines and their service attributes. Empirical data were collected from Taiwanese air passengers who had flown from Taipei to Tokyo and to Singapore. Factor analysis was performed to reduce a large number of airline service attributes into a small set of underlying factors. The results of multidimensional scaling analyses reveal that some air carriers are closely competitive; this can be seen by their close proximity in the perceptual map. However, certain airlines possess a unique service quality profile and are not strongly associated with other airlines; such unique firms appear as isolated points on the perceptual map. Interestingly, both multidimensional scaling and correspondence analysis produce similar perceptual maps of the airlines' relative positions and service attributes. However, the advantage of correspondence analysis over multidimensional scaling is that data collection is relatively quick and easy because the analyst is not required to obtain respondents' ratings for each attribute. This study provides specific suggestions about how air carriers on each route can use the results to improve their performance or to build a differential edge.