Consumers' behaviour of 18-26 years old of the European Union and the low-cost European airline tickets (2008)

The goal of this dissertation is to know and understand consumer behaviour of the low fare airline ticket consumers. In the first part, we explain the airline industry and more particularly the booming sector of low cost airlines in the European Union since the 1990s. After that, we show the economic cycle of airline industry. Then we explain the low cost economic model used by the low cost airlines. In addition, a survey has been realized on a sample of 150 English and French business students between 18 and 26 years old. The goal of this survey is to evaluate if this target of customers travel often by plane and what is their preference between the regular and low cost airlines. Furthermore, the consumer habits are broached as well as the impacts of different features on their consumer decision making. As a result, we share the influencing factors in two main groups: the factors linked to the consumer and the factors in relation with the consumer environment. We notice that the first influencing element is the price, followed by the previous experience and the recommendation, as both the second and third main influencing elements respectively. In addition, advertising appears to have no impact on them except for the Internet advertising. Finally, I create a new model of consumer decision-making, especially the low fare airline ticket consumers of 18-26 years old, living in the European Union.