A STUDY ON SERVICE QUALITY PERCEPTION OF RAILWAY PASSENGERS OF SOUTHERN RAILWAY

Dr. K. P. BALAKRISHNAN Associate Professor, Department of Commerce Parks College, Tirupur E-Mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT Railway had proved as a potential sector for drawing economic and developmental benefits by various countries. But less emphasis have been given in the improvement of railway sector, especially the railway services of Southern Railway. When compared with road transportation, this sector had failed to draw proper economic benefit from its operations. This study is aimed to focus on the railway transportation sector and to develop a model defining the relationship between the overall satisfaction and the service quality attributes in a selective route of Southern Railway, so that it can reinforce further improvement process. Findings show that, overall service satisfaction depend on eight distinct service quality attributes. The results imply that the service is at a worst situation. Further the overall satisfaction of service is highlighted together with the need for improvement on priority basis in order to support further orientation, addition and betterment of service. The results could also help to draw maximum economic benefits and in developing various linkages with the rest of the regions in India. Key Words Southern Railway, Service Quality Perception, Satisfaction

A Study On Service Quality Perception Of Railway Passengers Of Southern Railway – Dr. K. P. Balakrishnan

INTRODUCTION Because of low cost and enjoyable journey, Railway is deemed to be one of the popular sectors in transportation practices in India. Its contribution is highly significant and had solved several problems relating to communication, employment problems and so forth in the interest of the nation’s economy. A large group of peoples are engaged with this subsector from staff to executive level to operate the whole system. However as its service is to a greater mass of the Indian population as well as the International travelers, its service quality is the considered as the primary concern. The major challenge to the railway authorities at present is to ensure expected quality of service that the target audiences wish to avail who makes use of this sector for several purposes. Hence the main aim of the study is to identify the present level of customer’s satisfaction and to measure the expected service quality by the passengers. Railway is a dominating enterprise over others in India. It captures a large amount of land resource of this country. The share of this sector is around 20% in passengers segment among all transport sectors in India. It is just after roadway which covers around 65% and waterway have a contribution of about 16% of total passengers. This study explores the relationship between railway service quality attributes and customer satisfaction based on passenger perception. A model is developed which describe the relationship between

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overall satisfaction of service and the service attributes in different circumstances of passenger perspectives. Primarily, the service quality attributes enlisted through literature review and interviewing the passengers and experts, after that using factor analysis the service attributes those express the overall service situation is determined and last of all a model developed. Using this satisfaction model the overall satisfaction of the railway service can be depicted which will help to know the service situation and provide guidelines in further service assessment, betterment and improvement process. CONCEPT AND BACKGROUND This study gives emphasis on monetary valuation of the improvement of service for a number of passenger groups. Key aim of this study is to provide some robust parameters which can be used in different circumstances in the assessment of railway service. In subsequent steps of current study those parameters provide essential help to sort out the service quality attributes which affect the passenger satisfaction of service regarding the particular study area. About 22 attributes were used to conduct the railway passenger quality valuation process which helps to identify the responsible attributes regarding the study. Factor analysis is introduced as one of the very useful technique to summarize a large amount of data in manageable way. Factor analysis attempts to

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identify underlying variables, or factors, that explain the pattern of correlations within a set of observed variables. Factor analysis is often used in data reduction to identify a small number of factors that explain most of the variance observed in a much larger number of manifest variables. It may used to define a relationship among sets of many interrelated variables to be examined and represented in terms of a few underlying factors. This technique is applicable to identify the underlying dimensions or factors that explain the correlations among a set of variables. Factor analysis can be employed to determine the brand attributes that influence consumer choice. In the current study this technique is used to determine the factor that influences the quality of railway service. The overall railway service is interdependent on the service attributes. The quality of those service attributes dominate the satisfaction of overall service of rail passengers and this relationship can be depicted through a linear model stating overall satisfaction as dependent and others service attributes as independent variable. The regression model is found

as the most familiar option to draw the relationship between overall satisfaction and service attributes of railway. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The sample survey was addressed to the rail passenger of Southern Railway. This survey has been collected from 120 rail passengers. They were asked about their socioeconomic characteristics considering their origin, destination and purpose of trips and about the overall satisfaction on present service condition. To evaluate the rail service quality, the passenger was asked about 20 service attributes selected primarily through literature review, interview to the passenger and railway executives. On a scale from 1 to 5 denote the satisfaction level form very poor to very good. Passengers were asked to give satisfaction level regarding their perception of existing service condition. The specific cause underlying their choice also requested to describe. The primarily selected service quality attributes are listed as below:

TABLE No. 1- RAIL SERVICE QUALITY ATTRIBUTES v1 v2 v3 v4

ATTRIBUTES Waiting arrangement Seat condition Spacing among seats Spacing for moving on train

v11 v12 v13 v14

ATTRIBUTES Journey time Train announcement Waiting arrangement Ticketing time

v5 v6 v7 v8

Luggage storage facilities Window condition Environment inside the train Condition of toilet inside the train

v15 v16 v17 v18

Information availability Toilet facilities in the station Security in the station Safety caution

v9

Fooding inside the train

v19

Announcement in the station

v10

Security inside the train

v20

Behaviors of the staffs in the station

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A Study On Service Quality Perception Of Railway Passengers Of Southern Railway – Dr. K. P. Balakrishnan

Collected data from field survey is processed to conduct the factor analysis. Through factor analysis the service

quality attributes which determines the satisfaction of rail service is extracted in following way:

TABLE No. 2 - TOTAL VARIANCE EXPLAINED

% of variance

Cumulative %

Total

17.900

17.900

1.987

9.937

9.937

1.747

8.737

8.737

2

2.513

12.567

30.467

2.166

10.828

20.766

1.687

8.434

17.171

3

2.017

10.083

40.549

2.086

10.429

31.195

1.449

7.243

24.414

4

1.603

8.015

48.565

1.005

5.024

36.218

1.433

7.164

31.578

5

1.299

6.496

55.061

1.673

8.365

44.583

1.401

7.003

38.582

6

1.288

6.441

61.502

0.909

4.546

49.130

1.342

6.708

45.290

7

1.161

5.806

67.308

0.769

3.844

52.973

1.239

6.197

51.487

8

1.006

5.031

72.339

0.714

3.569

56.542

1.011

5.055

56.542

Total

3.580

% of variance

Cumulative %

ROTATION SUMS OF SQUARED LOADINGS

% of variance

EXTRACTION SUMS OF SQUARED LOADING

1

Total

Cumulative %

Factor

INITIAL EIGEN VALUES

Extraction Method: Maximum Likelihood

The table above shows the concept of determination of the number of factor that have to be extracted for subsequence analysis. From the above it could be explained that the number of

factor that needs to extract is 8 which have Eigen values greater than 1. It also seen that those 8 factors cover around 56.5 % of total variance of rail service.

TABLE 3: ROTATED FACTOR MATRIX (A) ATTRIBUTES Waiting time Seat condition Spacing among seats Spacing for moving on train Luggage storage facilities Window condition Environment inside the train Toilet Condition in the Train Foodservice in the train Security inside the train Journey time

1

2

3

FACTOR WEIGHTS 4 5 6 0.648

7

8 -0.540

0.524 0.880 0.288 0.410 0.857 -0.582 0.621 0.887 0.523

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Train announcement Waiting arrangement Ticketing time Information availability Toilet facilities in the station Security in the station Safety caution Announcement in the station Behaviors of the staffs in the station

0.528 0.663 0.430 0.614 -0.553 0.686 0.575 0.348 0.671

Extraction Method: Maximum Likelihood. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. Rotation converged in11 Iterations.

The table shown above indicates the results obtained from the factor analysis after rotation of factor matrix. The method used for rotation of factors is Varimax an orthogonal rotation. From this it can identify the attributes those have to be extracted for analysis. In this way 8 factors were identified considering the high correlation with the factors. So, extracted 8 factors from the analysis are waiting time, spacing

for moving on train, environment inside the train, security inside the train, waiting arrangement, station information, security in the station and behavior of staffs. In the way of calibrating satisfaction model those service attributes used as independent variables and overall satisfaction as dependent. The model result describes in Table 4.

TABLE No. 4 - REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS

VARIABLE (Constant) Waiting Time For Train Spacing For Moving On Train Environment Inside The Train Security Inside The Train Waiting Arrangement Station Information Security In The Station Behaviors Of The Staffs In The Station

UNSTANDARDIZED COEFFICIENTS B SE -2.296 1.180 0.090 0.199 0.121 0.137 0.276 0.131 0.265 0.121 0.296 0.158 0.263 0.133 0.115 0.132 0.087 0.126

STANDARDIZED COEFFICIENTS BETA

T VALUE

SIG.

0.076 0.137 0.282 0.285 0.275 0.265 0.135 0.091

0.453 0.886 2.103 2.194 1.872 1.984 0.873 0.694

NS NS 5% 5% NS NS NS NS

R – 0.644; R2 - 0.415; Dependent Variable: Overall Satisfaction on Existing Service

From the above table it is seen that the coefficient of correlation (R) value 0.64 which describe strong relationship between variables and the coefficient of determinant (R2) value describe that overall satisfaction will vary around 42% for variation in each of those six

independent variables. Table 4 shows the value of constant and coefficient value of each attributes for satisfaction model. So the satisfaction model describe as below:

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Overall satisfaction

=

- 2.296 + 0.09*(waiting time) + 0.121*(spacing for moving on train) + 0.276* (environment inside the train) + 0.265*security inside the train) + 0.296*(waiting arrangement) + 0.263* (station information) + 0.115*(station security) + 0.087*(behavior of staff in the station)

From this model it could be observed that the satisfaction of railway service is depend on eight distinct service quality attributes and security inside the train is the worst among those because the coefficient of the security inside the train have high value which implies the service satisfaction is mostly dominated by the quality of this service attribute for Southern Railway. Also waiting arrangement and train environment found very near condition as like as train security, because both services got almost similar coefficient value like train security. Spacing for moving on train and station security found with the worst situation after these three services attributes. Behavior of the staffs and waiting time found with low coefficient value than others which implies that these two have less domination in overall service satisfaction. The passenger give more importance in security inside the train because it is most common of hijacking and loss of luggage or baggage when train stops in different station and there is very low security patrol found inside the train, also in case of long journey, majority of the passengers sleep in train. Station information that is availability of information about train schedule, arrival and departure time, other information are not well managed. It could be seen that there is no assigned stuff or help point to provide

information and staffs on ticketing room are not talking much except selling tickets. However in few stations it has found display board displaying on screen provide limited information such as railway fare and train schedule. Station waiting hall arrangement observed in the study reveals that the seating capacity is very low and is not well arranged. Further the room environment is highly dirty and clumsy.

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Another important service issue that dominates the overall satisfaction level of passenger is environment inside the train. In the study it is observed that many compartments were occupied with wastes such as empty snacks packets, dry food found on train floor and kept uncleaned. However, it was also found that cleaning of train are not properly carried out and maintained at timely by the staffs. The environmental condition of the catering and food preparation is found to be in bad condition in the train. In few stations it has been noticed that the height of the train floor from station platform is much higher than normal range which create problems during uploading, unloading and getting into the train. This often one of the major possible reasons for the happening of accident.

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A Study On Service Quality Perception Of Railway Passengers Of Southern Railway – Dr. K. P. Balakrishnan

CONCLUSION With increasing demand of service, the railway authorities had failed to take necessary initiatives for the betterment of the passengers as well as in the improvement of services to the passengers. Although large amount of passengers of different income have depend on this sector for their travel purposes, there is an urge for further improvement of the overall services, so that more passengers may be attracted to widely use this service. The satisfaction model will be helpful to determine the overall satisfaction that is overall situation of existing rail service in different circumstances which provide the guidelines in further assessment, betterment and improvement process. It will provide a mean of measuring the passenger perception in terms of rail service quality which helps to assess the efficiency of supply side of service. REFERENCES

for the Organizational Reform of Bangladesh Railway phase III, Asian Development Bank. Bangladesh Railway (BR), 2008, Log Book of Passengers and Train Schedule, Khulna Zone, Khulna, Bangladesh. Eboli, L. and Mazzulla, G. 2007. Service Quality Attributes Affecting Customer Satisfaction for Bus Transit, Journal of public transportation, Vol. 10. Fu, L. and Xin, Y. 2007. A New Performance Index for Evaluating Transit Quality if Service, Journal of public transportation, Vol. 10. Gleave, S. D., 2000. Rail Passenger Quality of Service Valuation, London. Lind, D.A. and Meson, R. D., 1994, Basic Statistics for Business and Economics, Boston, Irwin. Malhotra, N. K. 2008. Marketing Research an Applied Orientation, Prentice Hall of India Private Limited, New Delhi,

ADB, 2000. Technical Assistance to the Peoples Republic of Bangladesh

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