Do passengers perceive flying first class as a luxury experience?

Abstract

The definition of a single luxury experience has remained elusive to the airline industry, experts, scholars, and even luxury consumers. The duality of luxury suggests that experiences must provide a sense of prestige and hedonic well-being to be perceived as luxurious by consumers. This study proposed that consumers’ feeling of prestige influences their hedonic well-being, as suggested by self-determination theory. Passengers derive a sense of prestige from their sensory and behavioural experiences. Meanwhile, they derive hedonic well-being from their sense of prestige and their sensory and intellectual experiences. Thus, the first-class cabin experience was confirmed as luxurious. The airline industry should enhance sensory, intellectual, and behavioural experiences in their first-class cabins to increase the luxuriousness of the first-class experience.

Keywords: airlines, consumer behaviour, duality of luxury, experience, luxury