Empowering Journeys: Navigating Air Travel Experiences of Consumers Living with Dementia

Abstract

The global population is aging rapidly, reshaping consumer profiles. Among this growing group, over 57 million people worldwide live with dementia. Yet despite facing significant marketplace barriers, they remain largely overlooked in marketing research. This dissertation examines their service experiences in air travel, a complex, high-stakes, and multi-touchpoint environment. The central question guiding this work is: How can we create empowering journeys for consumers living with dementia (CLWD)? Using a multi-method qualitative approach across three articles:

Article 1 maps how marketing scholarship has historically framed CLWD through a scoping review of 77 publications, revealing persistent gaps in marketplace inclusion and culminating in a multi-level framework for more inclusive research and practice.

Article 2 investigates how CLWD navigate air travel through a two-year netnographic analysis. The Service Turbulence Model (STM) is introduced as a possible explanation for the results. Rather than focusing on static barriers, the STM frames accessibility as emerging through coordinated, adaptive support between CLWD, companions, and service ecosystem.

Article 3 extends the STM by examining the provider side, drawing on interviews with 22 aviation stakeholders. Four stakeholder trade-offs are identified that can result in spiraling disruption (i.e. turbulence) throughout the travel journey. Through this interpretation, it is argued that vulnerability stems from ecosystem design choices rather than consumer characteristics alone.

Though rooted in air travel, this work aims to lay the groundwork for broader change across service sectors, especially for people living with non-visible disabilities whose needs have long been present but rarely seen.