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Air traveler retention has attracted considerable attention, partly because it is a means for gaining competitive advantage. Online ticketing is popular among air travelers because of convenience. The web is a rich source of information which helps the traveler to search (Hodkinson & Kiel, 2003) and evident in online ticket booking. Information search is integral to on-line decision-making (Hodkinson & Kiel, 2003). Studies establish that online retailers profit from a customer only when a customer shops over four times from the same portal (Mainspring and Bain & Company, 2000). Therefore, overall satisfaction is important in maintaining long term online buyer seller relationship (Szymanski & Hise, 2000). Despite its importance, limited attempts have been made to understand customer loyalty and investigate its antecedents and their interrelationships for online ticket booking. This study investigates if search and compare are the antecedents of satisfaction for online air ticketing services by applying the stimulus organism response model (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974). Traditional travel agency channels need more staff, whereas online ticketing is cost effective for airlines. With majority of airline revenues being generated through checked baggage, onboard food, premium seat selection, and extra legroom the airlines get an opportunity to adopt bundling tactics, product-suggestion analytics, and dynamic pricing to create customized recommendations for its passengers (Boin, Coleman, Delfassy, & Palombo, 2017). An online website can provide product lists with links so that consumers can search and compare interesting products by simply scrolling and clicking (Liang & Shiau, 2018).
Search and compare (SC) a cognitive process is based on comparative and normative theories and acts as stimuli to the traveler. SC is also an indicator of flight demand(Curley, Dichter, Krishnan, Riedel, & Saxon, 2020). It has the potential to replace the traditional way of incentivizing the customer. Comparative theory (Dervin, 1991) talks about well-defined preferences that obey certain axioms of rational behaviors while normative theory is based on expected utility paradigm, where customers learn through deliberation on choices(Habermas, 2006). Searching and comparing different objects on a website is a transactional process. A service is a search good, if information is enough to gauge quality (Fernando, Sivakumaran, & Suganthi, 2018). Air ticket is a search good where the intention to purchase online is high for search goods (Chiang & Dholakia, 2003). Searching, comparing and selecting services are a satisfying experience. This study investigates if this experience is transactional or cumulative by nature. If transactional, then the satisfaction would be at an assortment level, if cumulative then, it would be an overall stage. In either case, satisfaction would be classified as an organism. Further, this research studies the response of satisfaction as online repatronage intention and their customer loyalty. A retail study in India found that satisfaction leads to repatronage intention and customer loyalty (Atulkar & Kesari, 2017), where repeat purchase increases the margin (Sirdeshmukh, Singh, & Sabol, 2002). However the link between loyalty and repatronage has not been investigated. This gap has been addressed in this study. An objective of online ticketing platforms has been to enhance loyalty. The satisfaction loyalty relationship is strongly affected in the presence of moderators (Baron & Kenny, 1986) and is moderated by age (Homburg & Giering, 2001), perceived risk (Tuu, Olsen, & Linh, 2011) and spending habits of customers. In travel literature, age plays an important role in determining the utility of several hypothesis This study checks the effect of age, gender, civil status and number of online platforms used on the hypothesized relationships. This study additionally fills a gap in the literature on the moderating effect and provides practical rules of thumb to find the moderating effect.