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INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS
responsive to customers. This will ensure that they get the ―basics‖ right because
exploiting new opportunities will require a company to build on existing capabilities.
The stronger these capabilities the more other profitable opportunities a company is likely
to have. Good performance can only come from a solid foundation of knowing one‘s
customers and how they choose, and delivering consistently whatever it is that matters
most to them.
Keywords: Transport Service, Service Quality, Customers, Affordability, Empathy of
Customers
1. Introduction
There are different modes of transportation namely road, rail, air, water and pipeline etc.
Out of these modes, road transportation is the most dominant in Nigeria. Road transport
mode seemed to be most favoured and important in Nigeria based on two crucial
determinants of the nature and pattern of transport, namely the physical and human
geography of Nigeria. The road mode provides easy access to every nook and cranny of
the country traversing the length and breadth of the nation linking the industrial,
commercial and agricultural centres (FRN, 1998).
The contrast feature between roads and vehicle ownership in Nigeria is that while the
roads are publicly owned, vehicles are owned mostly by private individuals and
organisation. However, a substantial number of vehicles are owned by the government
either for commercial or official purposes. The public vehicles used for commercial
purposes are usually owned by state – owned mass transit corporations, which compete
on routes plied by private operators, although with lower fares (Arosnayin, 2004).
The demand for public transport is dependent on two major factors:-
i). The desire to make a particular trip at all and the drive to do so by public transport,
and
ii). Possibly the characteristics and nature of public transport modes that are available
(Aworemi et al. 2008). Formal public transport system is high passenger occupancy
vehicles, which are usually provided by government and other government and nongovernmental
agencies at users‘ costs in the form of fares. Formal public transport system
is deemed significant because of the following reasons;
(i) The growth of private car-use tends to intensify congestion costs, environmental
hazards, energy costs, which are socially and politically unacceptable.
(ii) For reasons of age, disability or poverty a large proportion of the population may
never own private vehicles hence there is need to provide public transport for them
(Passweel and Reeker, 1978 and Hay, 1984).
The supply of formal public transport vehicles varies from place to place all over the
world. In less developed countries, the supply of public transport is far below the demand
for the mode. Furthermore the public transport systems are grossly mismanaged and in
most case inefficient. Prior to the introduction of the National Urban Mass Transit
Programme in 1988 over 90 percent of the commuting needs in the major urban centres
of Nigeria were met by private road transporters. The balance of 10 percent were spread
between private motorization, government municipal owned operators where they
COPY RIGHT © 2011 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 92
JANUARY 2011
VOL 2, NO 9