Unravelling public transport customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction dynamics in the high-end middle class market

Abstract

Recent improvements to the public transport offerings available to South African commuters are managing to attract a small but loyal patronage from among the car-owning public. The improved services provide opportunities for studying the requirements and satisfaction criteria of choice users, in order to enable the design of services that are able to attract and retain them. Qualitative and quantitative surveys were conducted on users and non-users of the upmarket Tshwane Business Express public transport service, comprising all-in-one park and ride, rail overhaul service as well as feeder and distributor buses. The users of the public transport service have their own cars but opt to use public transport. They are compared with a control group of non-users, who also have cars and similar journey origins and destinations as users, but choose to drive. The paper focuses mainly on the results of the qualitative survey. The survey firstly demonstrates the applicability of some theoretical concepts developed in the consumer science literature. Customer satisfaction, even in public transport services, is a dynamic phenomenon. For both users and non-users, perceived service staff respect, level of security and service reliability are seen as fundamental satisfaction attributes. Public transport fare appears to be a satisfaction trade-off variable within the user group, and non-users generally tend to have higher service quality expectations than the users. The heterogeneity of personal needs and socio-economic backgrounds among users, as well as non- users, is not a strong source of conflict or trigger for dissatisfaction unless in cases of poor personal hygiene