Putting first things first: understanding customer citizenship behavior in airlines through brand experience, loyalty, and relationship quality

The airlines industry is becoming increasingly competitive, necessitating a deep understanding of the role passengers’ brand experiences play in their citizenship-like behaviors. This study aims to investigate the influence of service experiences of airline passengers on their voluntary, customer-driven citizenship behavior. Using purposive and quota sampling, the data for this study were collected from 395passengers of 20 international airlines operating in Pakistan. Subsequently, the data were analyzed using PLS-SEM and necessary condition analysis (NCA). The results present that consumers’ brand experience (BE) significantly influences customer citizenship behavior (CCB). Moreover, this relationship is mediated by brand loyalty (BL; B = 0.116), affective commitment (AC), and BL in sequence ( B = 0.02), as well as by brand relationship quality (BRQ) and BL in sequence ( B = 0.097). However, AC and BRQ do not mediate the relationship between BE and CCB individually. On the other hand, NCA manifests that brand experience, relationship quality, loyalty, and affective commitment are necessary for CCB–AC (≥18.83%), BE (≥2.66%), BL (≥82.18%), and BRQ (≥63.86%) are critical threshold levels for achieving CCB. Besides contributing theoretically to the existing literature, this offers several practical implications for the airlines industry managers and the policy makers working on developing strategies for passenger experience. Moreover, this study contributes methodologically to the literature, demonstrating the operationalization of hierarchical component modeling through the second-order reflective formative construct of BE.