Airline e-commerce globalization competitiveness: localization error analysis of 23 American and European airline websites

This study aims to offer an insightful review highlighting localization issues observed in airline e-commerce websites, and the results are meant to provide not only practical reflections on web elements that airlines could improve international usability on, but also suggestions for managers and practitioners in how best practices can be considered in the localization process. The selected methods are content analysis and microanalysis, both qualitative and descriptive methods, based on an error typology derived from industrial localization quality evaluation metrics that are used to systematically identify, categorize and count localization errors. The results of this work are summarized in a frequency distribution table and explicated in screen captures. The main limitation is related to the use of error typology approach to quality evaluation, in which quality is evaluated only on the surface level, and cannot be directly interpreted in terms of root causes or resolution. However, this limit can become an opportunity for future researches, where results obtained in the present work can serve as underlying grounds for crafting strategies and best practices to improve airline website localization to increase competitiveness in the globalized e-commerce environment. The immediate managerial and practical implication of this study is the identification of e-commerce localization errors existing in production, particularly in the e-ticket purchase processes. These observations can be useful guidelines for the implementation of corrective and preventive measures that can help improve international usability of airline websites, and, ultimately, drive profitable customer action.