British Airways is one of the worlds leading airlines with a network that provides passenger and freight services to 149 destinations in 72 countries. Its airline network is centered on the United Kingdom where 85% of its 47,500 workforce is based. The mission of the company is to deliver services that matter for people and how to fly. In order to achieve or realize this mission; British Airways recognizes the importance of working in partnership with its stakeholders. This has significantly influenced its approach to corporate social responsibility.
The main reason why the company has decided to engage CR is to help it achieve its long-term strategic goals in providing growth opportunities around the health airport
Today most companies are redesigning their operations and management style in order to increase customers satisfaction and productivity. With the introduction of the new technology, a lot of changes have been brought in the business environments. Different companies are coming up with various types of new information and technology in order to improve their businesses.
This paper therefore utilizes the various tools of writing a research proposal to investigate how the new technology has made British airways company to improve the way it serves its customers what should be noted is that the success of any organization will depend on the quality of customer service skills employees have. The company has not been left out in coming up with new method s of satisfying its customers.
Communication more efficiently
If we consider the number of immigrants (passengers) visiting United Kingdom from east and central Europe, it can be said that the company has realized a lot of benefits. However the company needs to do a lot in order to attract more passengers and tourists into the region.
To date many tourists are raising questions about security measures and long lines made when booking for flights movements from major cities to the air ports has also not been possible. This research proposal has therefore been developed to investigate the efforts the company has put forward to improve customer satisfaction which covers the area of booking, traveling to the Airport in order to catch up with time and finally security measures that have been taken. This is because terrorism and drug trafficking has been mentioned as public enemy number one in the region. Passengers or tourists would not like to risk their lives when cases of terrorism are high. This means that the company needs to address the issues of tight security to ensure that its customers are protected.
In any research proposal there must be an area dealing with significant of study that is the rationale of the study (Gill and Johnson, 1997). The company to make some adjustment in order to improve their services and attract more customers will use the information on the study. The government will also use the information to address areas that needs provision of services such as upgrading public transport system, security and provision of social amenities.
Research question
The research question in this study will focus on the way the British airways company has improved its services to attract more customers and serve its customers better (Veal, 1997) .The following research questions will be used to Help in directing the study in this given area. The questions are as follows.
- Are there changes in the way passengers are served at airports?
2) What measures should be taken to ensure that security and safety of passengers are provided by British Airways?
3) Is there any link between public transport and airports to improve passengers’ satisfaction in order to reduce congestion?
4) What should British airways do in order to grab the biggest share of this growing market?
Objectives of the study
This research proposal is on investigating how British Airways has tried to improve the service to passengers. According to Clark (1998) the objectives of any study should be specific, smart, realistic and time bound. The specific objectives on the study will be:
- To evaluate the safety and security measures taken by airports and airlines security department to ensure passenger are protected.
- To find out the measures taken to promote easy movement of passengers.
(3) To investigate how the company has tried to address the issue of customer satisfaction
especially passengers.
Hypothesis of the study
Hypothesis developed in this paper will be used to provide a general answer to the problems being searched on. However these hypotheses are subjected to clarification where by they will be tested to confirm whether they are true or not (Johns and Lee-ross,1998). The following alternative hypotheses therefore have been constructed to achieve objectives stated above.
H2: Online booking of tickets has been developed to improve services offered to passengers.
H3: Public transport has been established to help in easy movement of passengers from and to the airports.
H4: Security has been increased to ensure that passengers are protected from any threats.
Literature review
Literature review is one of the most important aspects of a research proposal (Hart, 1998). It involves reviewing the existing literature in order to a void wasteful duplication of work other researchers had previously done. It is divided into three sections whereby the first section deals with online booking, second section deals with modification on transport and last one on security measures.
Online ticketing
The effects of the new technology have been seen in the air transport sector. To date it can be said that online shopping has become a feature of modern life. Passengers who are traveling using air transport can now take or find their tickets through the use of Internet (Debra and Colin, 2003,p7). They can further customize their tickets by adding meal preferences and self selected seat numbers to make them feel satisfied. The new technology has also made it easier for airlines to communicate information to passengers very easily about conditions attached to fares and about general conditions of carriage (Arnold, 2004). This has led to reduction of cases of inconveniency during travel (Finn, Elliot and Walton, 2000)
A number of airlines are now shifting from traditional way of obtaining tickets to modern way where online shopping is encouraged. For instance easy Jet has ensured that over 98% of its bookings are made online (Rigas, 2002,p31). The Internet according to passengers has made booking of air tickets much easier than ever before. Among the advantage it has include saving time, and money since passengers will tend to avoid agents premiums and booking fees. Passengers therefore have time to make their decision on what to pick on.
Online ticket sales by region
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