Air Canada Stakeholder Optics
Analysing and reporting on this topic will require a good understanding of both the current issues Air Canada is dealing with and relevant research & best practices regarding consumer trust, corporate reputation management, crisis communication, etc. I've roughly grouped my suggestions below into those two categories.
Other than that broad categorization, this list of resources and search strategies is in no particular order -- try them all!
Good luck with your research!
About Air Canada, its Current Situation, and its Industry
A. Explore the Air Canada site to get a sense of their current messaging and customer service options. A few of their pages that you'll want to browse:
- Media Centre (includes several sub-sections such as Corporate Responsibility & Stories)
- Customer Service Plan
- Facebook page
- Twitter feed
B. Consumer advocacy sites
- Air Passenger Rights (see also their Facebook page)
- Consumers' Association of Canada: Airlines
- Canadian Automobile Association: Air Passenger Rights
C. Government agencies
- The Canadian Transportation Agency is an independent, quasi-judicial tribunal and regulator that deals with Air Passenger Protection and much more!
- US Department of Transportation: Office of Aviation Consumer Protection
- US Bureau of Transportation Statistics: Airlines, Airports, and Aviation
- Canada: Library of Parliament: Reports that mention Air Canada
D. News: This is a very current topic -- one that is changing quickly -- so it's important to keep on top of the news.
- Factiva covers thousands of news sources, esp. those with good business/industry coverage.
- The "Expert Search" feature in Factiva can save you some work. Try searching for Air Canada in the Company field, then go to Factiva Expert Search and choose Reputation Risk > Customer Service > English or perhaps News Sentiment > Negative News (Transportation). Switch the Duplicates option above your results to Similar to reduce the number of redundant hits if necessary.
- And if you get too many results in any of your Factiva searches, try adding "... and wc>500" to the end of your keyword search. That will get you articles that have a "word count" greater than 500 -- which might be more substantive articles.
- Try Canadian Newsstream for articles in most major Canadian newspapers, starting with this rough search. Be sure to watch for any mentions of surveys or experts that might have additional/deeper information. For instance...
- This news article from Feb. 2021, Airlines are trashing their reputations, linked to this Aug. 2020 Forbes article about a US government survey that ranked Air Canada poorly. After a quick bit of digging, I found the US government site that provides access to that survey, as well as to newer editions of the same study: Air Travel Consumer Reports.
- And this Globe & Mail article led me to the Cirium site, which offers some free resources and data tables on the airline industry.
- Also watch for travel/airline industry news publications on the web, in Factiva, and in Business Source Complete. For example, Travel Week has an Airline Industry section as well as an Advocacy section that might be useful.
E. Try my Industry Surveys and Company Information guides for more resource suggestions. For example, our IBISWorld Industry Reports database (listed on the Industry Survey guide) includes such reports as...
F. Need statistics on Air Canada (or almost any other topic)? Try our Statista database (sample search for Air Canada). Remember to always explore the links to the original sources in Statista in case those sites and reports have additional context & information. For instance...
- Canadian airlines ranked by consumer complaints in FY 2021-2022 includes a source link to the statistics page of the CTA (mentioned in D above).
- This Statista chart on corporate reputation uses data from the Reputation Institute. Maybe worth digging deeper into the RI site in case it has more to offer?
G. Or how about the results of public opinion polls? Start with the following polling firms, but also watch for any mentions of relevant surveys in the news (see "" above for news sources). Be sure to scan any reports posts to see if the polling firm provided detailed data tables.
- Ipsos Canada: samples: Six in Ten (58%) Canadians Avoiding Airports Until Situation Improves as Seven in Ten (70%) Call Situation a National Embarrassment and Most (88%) Canadians Say We Need More Competition as it’s Too Easy for Big Business to Take Advantage of Consumers.
- Angus Reid: sample: Turbulent times: Canadian and US flyers say airline industry is broken, but differ on how to fix it.
- Leger: sample: Leger Unveils the Results of the 2022 Reputation Study
- Nanos: sample: A very strong majority of Canadians think that having a competitive airline industry to help the economic recovery is an important or somewhat important contributor to the national interest
Sometimes polling firms conduct surveys on behalf of the government, but don't release the results on their own site. In such cases, it's possible that the results could show up in the federal government's Public Opinion Research Reports portal. For example, here's a 2018 report by EKOS Research on "Public attitudes and awareness of airline passenger protection"
H. Industry associations
- International Air Transport Association (IATA): Start with their Consumer & Passenger Issues pages, but also check out their Airlines magazine.
- National Airlines Council of Canada: NACC
- Air Transport Association of Canada
I. From our CQ Researcher resource: Airline Industry Turbulence: Can big carriers overcome looming market challenges?
About Consumer Trust, Crisis Communication, and Beyond...
A. Books & eBooks!
A good book on a topic can give you the big picture in one place -- something that is much harder to find via shorter articles and websites. Try searches in the SFU Library Catalogue using terms such as:
Here are a few titles that came up in my initial, exploratory searches:
- Communicating in extreme crises : lessons from the edge - online
- Putting image repair to the test : quantitative applications of image restoration theory - Print: HD 59.2 P88 2016 & online
- The return of trust? : institutions and the public after the Icelandic financial crisis - online
- Risk and crisis communication : navigating the tensions between organizations and the public - online
- The SAGE encyclopedia of corporate reputation - online
- The vulnerability of corporate reputation : leadership for sustainable long-term value - online
- The apology impulse : how the business world ruined sorry and why we can't stop saying it - Print: HD 59 O47 2019
- Brand hate: navigating consumer negativity in the digital world - online
- Strategic reputation management: towards company of good - online
- Reputation management : the key to successful public relations and corporate communication - online
- Corporate reputation and social activism: strategic interaction, firm behavior, and social welfare - online
B. Report from PwC: Rebuilding trust after times of crisis: A practical guide
- If you like the PwC perspective, consider searching the sites of other major consulting firms such as E&Y, BCG, and Deloitte.
C. Research articles...
- via PsycInfo: PsycInfo covers many of the key consumer behaviour journals, as well as hundreds of applied psychology journals that touch on similar topics. Try this rough search to start with, then adjust it (sample) to focus on your specific needs.
- and via Business Source Complete: our main business journal/magazine database. Again, here's a rough search in BSC to get you started.
- If you see an expert quoted in an article, be sure to search for their original research. For instance, a simple Google search led me to this post, and a couple clicks later I had copies of some of the original research discussed such as this paper and this book and this book and this book!
- Search tip: This academic article on corporate reputation issues is a bit old (2004), but could still be used to find newer articles. Since it was published, more than 200 newer publications have cited it, including this 2015 article (as found via Google Scholar). Maybe some interesting stuff in there?
- Even if this one article and its newer (citing) articles aren't of interest to you, remember this search trick: When you find a relevant academic article -- even an older one -- always take a minute to search for it via Google Scholar to see if it has been cited, and to check to see if those (newer) citing articles are relevant.
<That's all for now, but do check back later in case I've thought of additional resources & strategies! -- MB>
