Ústav manažmentu kultúry a turizmu kulturológie a etnológie

Introduction. Today, tourism has become an important power and global importance in the world economy. It includes the activities of people trave- ling and staying away from home for tourism, business or other purposes. This phenomenon which is named as tourism, has a wide impact in economic terms and constitutes a basic feature of today’s civilization (Oral – Kurgum 1997).

The fact that the tourism event is in a continuous development and trans- formed into an increasingly complex structure has been one of the main factors that triggered the emergence of many enterprises with different char- acteristics (Barutçugil 1984). As a result of these differences resulting from the diversification of tourism demand, the need to classify tourism enter- prises has emerged. One of the species that emerged within the scope of this classification is travel agencies. Travel Agencies are companies that perform a function that facilitates the contact between tourism demand and supply within the tourism industry and they completely produce service (İçöz 2000). Travel agencies aim to improve their relations with their customers and en- sure customer satisfaction in order to ensure the continuity of their activities in an increasingly competitive environment and to achieve competitive ad- vantage by increasing market share (Aksu – Şirin 2016).

Literature. In recent years, people started to travel more because of the development level of individuals, convergence of countries, rising living stan- dards and decreasing working hours (Gökdeniz 1990). As a result of these increasing travel trends, the tourism event has spread over a wider area and has become a widespread phenomenon by individuals around the world (Ak- taş – Doğanay – Gökmen – Gazibey – Türen 2015). Travel agencies, which have been established for commercial purposes and act as intermediaries in the provision of touristic needs and displacements of people, sell the products of tour operators, make reservations for tour operators in line with the de- mands and provide transportation to the regions needed for tourists who buy holidays (Hacıoğlu 2000). Travel agencies can be considered as a distribution vehicle that establishes a relationship between tourists and the establishments which produce touristic goods and services and as organizations that meet these travel requirements (Goeldner – Ritchie 2003, Ahipaşaoğlu 2001). Trav- el agencies contribute to the promotion and marketing of country tourism by making sales marketing activities (İçöz 2003). Therefore, they contribute to the development of both country and world tourism.

The most valuable asset of today’s enterprises and the basic elements that determine the future of the enterprises and they need to sustain their lives are the customers (Çınar 2007). The customer is defined as the decision-makers and groups who have the authority to buy for themselves or on behalf of      a particular organization under certain rules. In the marketing concept, it is defined as the person or organizational unit that actually makes the purchase decision (Tek 1999). As in all other stakeholders of the service sector, the priority in travel agencies is to ensure customer satisfaction. The benefits of a successful service bring high satisfaction, greater loyalty, increased profit and positive advice and resale. Many references to the concept of customer satisfaction can be found in the literature;

Oliver (1981) defined customer satisfaction as an emotional response    to a particular product and service experience. This response is developed based on customer perceptions and service performance expectations. If the perceived service performance exceeds the expectations of the customers, the approval leads to customer satisfaction and vice versa (Fornell 1992). Westbrook and Oliver (1981) describe customer satisfaction as an emotional response to certain products or services purchased, retail outlets, even be- havior patterns and experiences (or related) provided by the general market. According to the World Tourism Organization (WTO 1985) a definition of customer satisfaction is a psychological concept that includes a sense of well-being and satisfaction, which is the result of achieving or expecting an attractive product or service. MacKay and Crompton (1990) describe the satisfaction in a similar way by focusing on the psychological consequences of experiencing the service. Fornell (1992) defines customer satisfaction as an evaluation process where experience is as good as it should be. The customer decides whether he is satisfied with the purchase of a product, or after having experienced    a kind of service encounter with a company official. Customer satisfaction  is the result or the final step of a psychological process for evaluating the products which are needed and purchased (Peter – Olson 1993). Knowing what the customer’s wishes and requirements and even their expectations,  is very important in terms of the way in which customer satisfaction can be achieved. Because, if the enterprises predict correctly the customer demands and needs of customers, differentiate their products and services, customer satisfaction is formed in response to their expectations, thus increasing the desired sales, increasing the market share and increasing business profitabil- ity (Özer – Günaydın 2010). Therefore, if the customer expectations aren’t met, this may lead to dissatisfaction of customers and in the next level, the customers may prefer other enterprises

Method. The primary purpose of the research is to reveal the satisfaction level of the customers who buy service from travel agencies. In this context, this research was conducted by survey method on 723 customers who buy services from travel agents who offer services in Hatay province of Turkey. In the study, the multi-criteria satisfaction analysis scale developed by Siskos and Grigoroudis (2010) was used to determine the level of customer satisfaction.

Results. Demographic characteristics that define participants are present-

ed in Table 1. 48.3% of the participants were women and 51.5% were men. The majority of the participants were participants between the ages of 21 and 30 with a rate of 36.5%, the others are between the ages of 31-40 with a rate of 25.7, 20 years old and below are 17.8%, between the ages of 41-50 with a rate of 14.2%.

The highest percentage of education level is 29.8% of high school gradu- ates. It is seen that other participants are 24.2% of associate degree graduates, 22.9% of undergraduate graduates and 19.1% of primary education gradu- ates. 45.4% of the participants were married and 54.3% were single.

In terms of income level, the income group consists of 34.1% and the in- come is between 401-2000 TL. This is followed by 30.7% with 1400 TL and below income groups, 21.7%, with 2001-3000 TL income groups and 10.4% with 3001-4000 TL income groups.

 

Table No. 1: Demographic information of the sample

 

	Frequency	Percentage
Gender
Female	350	48.3
Male	373	51.5
Age
20 years and below	129	17.8
21-30 ages	264	36.5
31-40 ages	186	25.7
41-50 ages	103	14.2
51 years and older	42	5.8
Education Level
Elementary Education	138	19.1
High School	216	29.8
Associate Degree	175	24.2
Bachelor’s Degree	166	22.9
Master or Doctorate	29	4.0
Marital Status
Married	329	45.4
Single	393	54.3
Level of Income
1400 TL and below	222	30.7
1401 TL-2000 TL	247	34.1
2001 TL-3000 TL	157	21.7
3001 TL-4000 TL	75	10.4
4001 TL and above	23	3.2

 

Factor Structure of Agency Agents Satisfaction Scale. Exploratory factor analysis was performed in order to reveal the sub-dimensions of satisfaction with travel agencies.

Exploratory Factor Analysis. In the exploratory factor analysis applied to the Customer Satisfaction Scale, the inference method was determined as the maximum likelihood, the rotation method was promax and the eigenvalue was 1.

 

First of all, the criteria and tests of the data for the factor analysis were included. The KMO criteria was calculated as 0.94. This value reveals the suit- ability of the existing data group for factor analysis. The 0.000 value obtained as a result of the Barlett Sphericity Test is meaningful and has shown that it is possible to switch to analytical analysis.

In the exploratory factor analysis, there were 33 items in four dimensions under the first stage. Substances that were not assigned to any factor, those that received cross factor loads were moved out of analysis in sequence and this process was continued until there was no cross load on any factor. When the factor load was lower than 0.30, the limit of the load difference between two items in cross-loads was greater than 0.20 (Karasar 2016). As a result of these applications, a total of 8 items were excluded from the data set includ- ing ps5, pcs5, pcs6, pcs7, pss2, pss3, pss4, pss5, and 25 items remaining on the customer satisfaction scale were collected under four dimensions. Then, the consistency of each dimension constituting the resulting factor structure was calculated by Cronbach Alpha coefficient. Factor loads, eigenvalues and Cronbach’s alpha values of the scales are presented in Table 2.

 

Table No. 2: Factor Structure of the Customer Satisfaction Scale and Cronbach Alpha Internal Consistency Coefficient

Factors

	Factors
	1	2	3	4
ps11 The fact that the travel agency employees are confident about the service.	0.79
ps8 The timely fulfillment of the services of the travel agency employees.	0.78
ps7 The communication skills of the travel agency employees.	0.78
ps12 That the travel agency employees do their best for the benefit of the customers.	0.77
ps9 Travel agency employees help with questions.	0.72
ps2 The fact that travel agency employees have the necessary knowledge to answer questions.	0.67
ps6 The friendly behavior of the travel agency employees to the customers.	0.66
ps1 Travel agency employees in the field of expertise	0.62
ps4 The friendly behavior of the travel agency employees against the customers.	0.60
ps13 The fact that travel agency employees offer various suggestions to customers.	0.58
pss7 The services provided by the travel agency meet my expectations.	0.55
ps10 The fact that the travel agency employees meet their requests.	0.54
pss1 The first time the service of the travel agency has been fulfilled without error	0.50
ps3 Travel agency employees physical appereance	0.49
pss8 From the payment facilities offered by the travel agency	0.45
as2 Travel agency‘s communication facilities		0.87
as1 From the location of the travel agency		0.74
as5 Travel agency easy transportation		0.70
as3 The availability of the travel agency‘s website.		0.67
as4 Parking facilities of the travel agency.		0.60
pcs2 The view from the outside of the travel agency workplace.			0.81
pcs1 The interior design of the travel agency.			0.66
pcs4 Travel agency lighting.			0.48
pss6 The reliability of the travel agency.				0.98
pcs3 The layout of the travel agency.				0.83
The eigenvalues	42.52	6.07	5.71	4.74
Explained variance ratio	% 15.31	% 30.43	% 3.85	% 3.15
Cronbach Alpha	0.91	0.84	0.76	0.86

Extraction method: Maximum Likelihood.

As a result of the factor analysis, it was determined that the customer sat- isfaction consisted of (1) satisfaction from the personnel, (2) satisfaction with the product and service, (3) satisfaction with physical characteristics, and (4) reliability satisfaction dimensions. As a result of factor analysis, the satisfac- tion level of the customers according to dimensions is given in Table 3.

 

Table No. 3: Customer satisfaction dimensions mean and standard deviations

	n	Expected Range	Actual Range	Arithmetic Mean	Standard Deviation
Satisfaction from the personnel	723	1-5	1-4	3.91	0.71
Satisfaction with the product	723	1-5	1-4	3.83	0.79
Satisfaction with physical characteristics	723	1-5	1-4	3.63	0.85
Reliability satisfaction	723	1-5	1-4	3.81	0.85

 

According to the table, the mean satisfaction level of the personnel is 3.91, the mean of the satisfaction of the product is 3.83, the mean of the reliability satisfaction is 3.81, and the physical characteristics of the mean satisfaction rate is 3.63. The overall satisfaction was calculated as 3.80 ± 0.80.

Conclusion. In this study, the highest satisfaction mean of the participants was found as the satisfaction level of the personnel and the lowest satisfaction mean was the satisfaction with physical characteristics. This finding is similar to the findings of a study in a city hotel in Saint Petersburg (Guterman 2015). On the other hand, satisfaction from the personnel, which is the highest level of customer satisfaction was seen in another research in the health sector. In this study, the measurement tool of the current research was used (Drosos – Tsotsolas – Zagga – Chalikias – Skordoulis 2015). Accordingly, it is seen that the high scores of personnel satisfaction are confirmed by the measurements made from different areas with the same method and thus our findings are supported. As a result, it was concluded that the satisfaction of the personnel is the most positively evaluated element in customer satisfaction and the overall satisfaction level is high.

 

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