Freight forwarder satisfaction, airport customer loyalty, and competitiveness

The Middle East represents 18% of the world's air cargo revenue, and the region's air cargo revenues have been growing three times faster than worldwide air cargo, making the Dubai airport an appropriate and novel focus for the operations management study on air cargo. The study provides a synthesized measure of freight forwarder satisfaction and tests the measure in an empirical model. The data collected from a population of freight forwarders, identified through the National Association of Freight and Logistics (NAFL), who use the Dubai International Airport, the world's busiest airport, yielded a sample of 187 respondents surveyed during the fourth quarter of 2019. The results of the study provide evidence that freight forwarder customer satisfaction is positively associated with airport competitiveness (performance) through a mediator—customer loyalty.