گسترش موثر استراتژی خدمات در مرحله عملیات راه آهن با سرعت بالا

This paper utilizes a confirmatory passenger continuance behavior model to appraise high-speed rail service quality and performance. Surveys are administered for Taiwan High-Speed Rail (THSR) and Korea Train eXpress (KTX) corporations to gain an understanding of passengers’ perceptions of the operational performance using a proposed satisfaction index. A modified importance–performance analysis is employed to enable elaboration of strategic service management decisions. The empirical study concludes that level of access to THSR station and personal space on KTX train are the top-priority quality indicators that need to be addressed to improve customer satisfaction and corporate profits.

Quite a few quality indicators for the service industry have been proposed in numerous studies (Fornell et al., 1996, Anderson and Fornell, 2000, Hensher et al., 2003, Lin, 2007, Correia et al., 2008, Joo and Sohn, 2008 and Nathanail, 2008). In service industries, the core values for consumers include not only the uniqueness of the products offered, but also various other factors such as the physical facilities, style, image, and quality of service delivery. While some studies indicated level of access to station is a critical dimension influencing rail use (Givoni and Rietveld, 2007 and Brons et al., 2009), quality of the service offered by the provider is one of the indicators most frequently used to measure the success of a marketing strategy. In contrast, to assess the delivery value of a service to customers and to quantitatively measure whether organizations meet or even exceed customer expectations, substantial research (Fornell, 1992, Fornell et al., 1996, Anderson and Fornell, 2000, Hensher et al., 2003, O’Loughlin and Coenders, 2004, Correia et al., 2008, Joo and Sohn, 2008, Nathanail, 2008, Yang and Peng, 2008, Shin et al., 2009 and Sohn et al., 2009) has been devoted to the development of a customer satisfaction index (CSI) in various service industries, with the primary goals being to assess competitiveness and offer practical guidelines to the providers to allow them to improve the service. Although various studies show performance evaluation and quality impact on passengers and providers in the transportation service industry, particularly in airline and bus services (Suzuki et al., 2001, Hensher et al., 2003, Yeh and Kuo, 2003, Stradling et al., 2007, Chen, 2008, Correia et al., 2008, Espino et al., 2008 and Jou et al., 2008), rarely of the currently-established CSI evaluation methods have been adapted for high-speed rail (HSR) infrastructure management during its franchised operation. Service quality is a significant antecedent of customer satisfaction, and strongly influences profitability, productivity, market share, return on investment, and cost reduction. Improved service quality can increase customer satisfaction, reduce customer complaints, and enhance customer loyalty (Chen, 2008 and Chou and Kim, 2009). Restated, continuously improving service quality is important for increasing the competence of the infrastructure management business. Before improving service quality, decision-makers should understand the practical relationships between service quality, customer satisfaction, and post-purchase behavior, as well as service quality performance and its evaluation. Nevertheless, there has been little exploration of service evaluation indicators for the high-speed rail (HSR) industry, let alone methods to measure their performance. Although the HSR seems to attract a significant number of passengers in the transportation market at the outset (Cheng, 2010), especially for long-distance travel in highly-developed cities, the provider’s responsiveness to customers is vital for the long-term success of a corporation due to word-of-mouth communication (nowadays word of “mouse”) and customer loyalty, which relate to customer retention, repurchase, and corporate profitability. Thus, knowledge of passenger characteristics and the identification of service attributes that the passengers consider to be priorities, along with the passengers’ perception of the service’s present performance status, are essential for efficient and successful service strategy management. In this paper, we evaluate how incorporation of the Quality-Satisfaction-Loyalty (QSL) relationship (Chou and Kim, 2009) into a passenger satisfaction index (PSI) calculation, which adapts the frameworks of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) (Fornell et al., 1996) and SERVQUAL model (Parasuraman et al., 1988), can be used to assess the quality of services provided by a high-speed rail corporation as experienced by the customers that use it. To improve and validate the understanding of corporate operational efficiency by owners in the service-oriented industry, this study compares overall and social demographic attribute-level satisfaction using structural equation modeling and importance–performance analysis (IPA). The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, we review the prior work on service quality, customer satisfaction, and nationwide CSI models related to service industry and transportation management. Section 3 outlines the research methodology and analysis methods adopted for subsequent investigation. Section 4 describes the data profile, including construct indicators in the questionnaire and descriptive statistics. Analytical results of the proposed PSI for both THSR and KTX are provided in Section 5. The final two sections contain a discussion of the strategic implications for the HSR operations stage, concluding remarks, and directions for future research.

Gradual decrease in the number of trains due to less ridership requires more efficient CRM than ever before. In this study, we proposed a passenger satisfaction index (PSI) with three evaluation indicators: overall satisfaction, reasonable price tolerance, and ticket service system. These indicators underlie the confirmatory PS construct that links 18 antecedently measuring indicators under SQ and CI. We anticipate that the innovative PSI will serve to inspire THSR and KTX corporations to improve their service quality in an efficient and targeted manner. What do the PSI numbers imply? The PSI is a tool that can measure a transportation service firm’s most fundamental revenue-generating assets: its passengers. The quality indicators used in the PSI can become a basis for formulating a long-term competitive strategy. Although the evaluation items in the questionnaire are not appropriate for other transportation modes, such as intercity bus, train, and air transport, because these travel modes have different software and hardware infrastructures, the measurement indicators in the proposed framework can be modified to systematically benchmark the transportation industry across firms and over time. The contribution of the paper to the literature is to propose a novel PSI model integrated with a modified IPA technique and through which identify top-priority performance evaluation indicators for high-speed rail corporations. Particularly, the PSI provides a baseline for determining whether passengers are becoming more or less satisfied with the high-speed rail, bus, train, and airplane services provided by individual transportation industry firms. A decrease in PSI over time should be seen as a warning signal about the long-term financial prospects of a firm, because it indicates a drop in customer satisfaction with the transportation service offered. The application of the overall PSI to the THSR and KTX systems was demonstrated with the measurement variables. Although the PSI of THSR (54.03) is slightly higher than that of KTX (47.35) by 14.11% and the same questionnaire and measurement metrics (1–10) were used, caution is warranted when comparing the indices across nations. This is because although both corporations provide a HSR service, distinct passenger groups were surveyed in Taiwan and Korea. Corporate performance is generally better when there is a significant level of competition, differentiation, customization, reliability, and low switching costs between similar industry structures. Further, PSI scores compared cross-sectionally within a given time period offer a particular service provider a chance to determine how well their service is perceived by their passengers relative to that provided by a similar service provider. This paper presented quantitative measures of overall perceived service quality based on the confirmatory structural relationship of latent constructs and weighted indicators. In summary, the PSI is more suitable as a reference point across time from a longitudinal perspective, assuming that firms can be compared when the industry structure is held constant, and the observed differences in THSR and KTX performance may be attributed to differences in the management of these two corporations. Additionally, the IPA results allow complete assessment of feedback information, which can help managers of high-speed rail corporation prioritize service attributes for innovative service strategy improvement. Specifically, the CRM departments can shift resources to “concentrate here” attributes and re-examine the “possible overkill” indicators, thereby increasing customer satisfaction and enhancing passengers’ future re-riding behavioral intentions. The analytical results indicate the quality and level of access to THSR station and personal space on KTX train are the top-priority service attributes that need to be addressed to improve passenger satisfaction. Transportation service delivery encompasses multiple processes and interactions between passengers, amenities/facilities, and staff. This paper examined the critical quality indicators that influence passenger satisfaction. The proposed novel PSI framework along with the modified IPA can help corporations implement an effective service strategy, achieve continuous quality improvement, and manage customer relationships efficiently, thereby improving passenger satisfaction and increasing passenger confidence in transportation services. The empirical findings can be used to form management strategies at the operations phase of corporations in different countries who run or plan to run bullet trains between cities. Using the methods proposed in this study as a basis, future research can expand constructs from the organizational perspective of employee involvement, employee satisfaction, work performance, management commitment, employee loyalty, and their combinational impacts on operational performance and the long-term profitability of passenger transportation services. Moreover, with the aid of technology like CRM, a passenger-centric management information system can be developed that can satisfy the needs of passengers efficiently. A further research direction to consider is the seasonal effects of HSR travel on passenger satisfaction.