KOREASCHOLAR

The passenger airline industry is worth $623 billion, transporting around 3,530 million passengers a year (IATA, 2015). Although useful, most prior research focuses only on specific situations and on a minority of passengers, and takes a producercentric view which conceptualizes consumers as the target of airline activities (Reisinger and Movondo, 2005, Wangenheim and Bayón, 2007, Folkes et al., 1987, Bejou and Palmer, 1998). Instead, we focus on a characteristic of airline travel that affects all airline consumers: confinement. Airline consumers are often confronted with restrictions in terms of space and activity which can lead to discomfort, frustration, dissatisfaction, and reduced well-being. The objectives of this study are therefore to: 1) Define the concept of consumer confinement, 2) Develop a model showing how the problems faced in confined contexts, solution strategies used to deal with these, moderators and outcomes are related, 3) Show how confined airline experiences can be managed more effectively to improve consumer and company outcomes. In understanding how companies and consumers play a role in avoiding and reducing these, we investigate how consumers become problem solvers and deal with confinement using a thematic analysis of blogs and forums. Our study shows that long-haul travellers face a wide range of problems and have developed inventive, personalized solution strategies to address these. We also develop a conceptual model which identifies the problems faced by consumers such as boredom and not looking good; moderators such as propensity to plan and claustrophobia; potential confinement solution strategies consumers and companies can action, such as talking with other passengers and watching movies; and how these may affect company and consumer outcomes such consumer emotions, satisfaction and loyalty. The paper contributes to theory development in marketing by conceptualizing confinement, which has received very limited attention in prior work (see Chen, Gerstner, and Yinghui, 2009 for an exception). Second, we build on prior work on negative service experiences, such as the effect of overbooking service capacity (Wangenheim and Bayón, 2007) and service failure (Folkes, Koletsky, and Graham, 1987) that took a more producer-centric view, conceptualizing consumers as the recipient of the company’s activities. We extend and go beyond this work by showing that consumers are actually active co-solvers of their consumption experience problems (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). Third, our conceptual model provides theoretical relationships between confinement and company as well as consumer outcomes such as satisfaction, emotions and loyalty to show how effective strategies are used to help consumers reduce the problems caused by confined situations. Fourthwe contribute to an understanding of the boundary conditions of when strategies work by showing that in particular, individual differences such as fear of flying could have an effect on the effectiveness of strategies. Fifth, we complement the travel medicine and the general travel literature which has researched travel risk and anxiety (Reisinger and Movondo, 2005) and physical health problems resulting from flying phobias (McIntosh et al., 1998), with a focus on the more common problems and strategies used by the large majority of long-haul flyers to occupy time and improve emotional well-being. We conclude with suggestions for further research.

• Stephanie Feiereisen(Cass Business School, City University London, UK)
• Thorsten Hennig-Thurau(University of Munster, Germany)
• Vincent-Wayne Mitchell(Cass Business School, City University London, UK)