Untitled

482 quality, transportation
aesthetics; environmental auditing; environmental
compatibility; impact assessment, environmental;
perception, environmental
Further reading
State of the Environment Advisory Council �1996)
Australia, State of the Environment, 1996, Collingwood:
CSIRO Publishing.
quality, transportation
JOHN J. PIGRAM, AUSTRALIA
Providing transportation service can be an
extremely challenging endeavour. First, the production
of any service can be more difficult to
manage than the production of goods, since
services are largely intangible. In the production
of a pure service, such as in transportation, there is
no physical item to examine prior to purchase or
use, so service quality is not as readily
observable as in the case of goods. Customer
perceptions are extremely important, making it
necessary for the provider to perform the service to
the expectations of the customer.
Second, transportation service must be performed
on a continuous basis. Unlike the production
of goods, there can be no inventory of services
to draw from to meet the needs of customers when
demand increases. If transportation capacity is
not available to meet the needs of customers at the
time and place required, the opportunity to fill that
need is lost forever. Additionally, production of
transportation services necessarily involves management
of people and equipment from a
distance. Managers typically are not in the same
geographic location as the transportation equipment
or the employees operating it. This makes it
very difficult for them to know how well the service
is being provided and to make the necessary
adjustments to ensure that the service conforms to
the needs of the customer.
As the transportation sector continues to mature
in a deregulated environment, there has been an
increasing emphasis on service quality competition.
Today, managers are recognising that improved
service quality can be used as an important tool to
differentiate their service offering from that of
other providers. This differentiation leads to
enhanced customer satisfaction and improvements
in market share and profitability and is true
for both passenger and freight service. There are
many dimensions to these services, but here the
various dimensions of transportation service quality
can be grouped into four general categories: speed,
availability, dependability and communication.
Tourists are concerned with the speed of
transportation service. Not only are long trips
typically very tiring, but in today's fast-paced
economy, the value of the traveller's time plays an
important role in the choice of transportation
mode. Naturally, faster service is considered to be
of higher quality and usually commands premium
fares. For example, taking a long distance trip by
bus or private automobile may be less expensive
than flying, but airlines are generally much faster.
Tourists will be more refreshed after a few hours of
flying than after days of driving or riding, and more
time is available to enjoy leisure visits or conduct
business associated with the trip. In freight service,
carriers that provide fast service typically charge a
premium price for their services, such as for
overnight parcel delivery services.
Availability is also an important dimension of
the service quality. Tourists prefer carriers which
offer frequent and more convenient schedules to/
from the desired origin and destination. Thus,
carriers with more frequent service offerings to/
from preferred locations on a given day have a
distinct advantage over those with schedules of
lower quality service. If tourists have to drive great
distances to connect with an airline, bus or train,
the carrier may be at a significant disadvantage
relative to carriers that provide service to more
communities.
A carrier that has appropriate transportation
equipment at the right locations and at the right
time is another dimension to availability. Those
that always have needed equipment available for
pickup and delivery of passengers and/or freight
shipments permit more flexibility in customer
transportation decision making, thus providing an
important competitive advantage. Dependability is
still another important dimension of service quality.
Business travellers must depend on the transportation
provider to arrive on time so that they can