Producing goods and services has no meaning without selling
them to the ultimate consumers. However, selling of goods
and services is not an easy job, particularly during the
post-liberalization period. Further, marketing has evolved
from the production concept to marketing and societal concept.
Therefore, the sellers of goods and services have to give
due importance to the pillars of marketing and societal
marketing concepts, viz, consumers' stated and unstated
needs, consumer satisfaction, profitability and integrated
marketing. Since the consumers are the kings in the marketing
of goods, services and ideas, the sellers have to identify
the stated and unstated needs of the consumers and try delivering
the products to satisfy them at higher levels. The consumers
are said to be satisfied only when they feel positive towards
the products, otherwise they are said to dissatisfied. The
KSRTC, being passenger transport service providers to the
public, has been facing severe competition from many private
passenger transport service providers in and out of the
state. In addition, the KSRTC has been facing competition
from Indian Railways. Of late, Indian Railways has been
providing passenger transport services of higher quality
at much cheaper price, when compared to the bus services.
Further, private passenger transport service providers in
and out of the state have increased the quality of passenger
transport service by adding sleeper and air-condition facility
for long distance travel. In addition, they added Volvo
bus facility to the passengers. They also cover the distance
in shorter time when compared to the KSRTC buses. In view
of this, passengers are looking favorably towards the private
transport service providers for satisfying their transportation
needs. Therefore, the KSRTC has to make all efforts to satisfy
the passengers, to attract new ones and retain the current.
The satisfied passengers bring many advantages to the KSRTC,
in particular, and to other manufacturers, in general. The
present study is based on the primary data collected from
sample respondents from the district, to analyze the level
of satisfaction towards KSRTC in the study area. The questionnaires
are prepared by using five point scale ranging from very
good to very poor, and are presented to the respondents
to collect the required information. Based on the information
collected, the actual mean has been computed and compared
to the expected mean, in order to know the level of satisfaction
towards the individual services and the overall services
of the KSRTC. The study reveals that passengers have dissatisfaction
towards the majority of the services of the KSRTC.
The KSRTC started
its operation in the state of Karnataka in 1961 with 1,792
buses, and has been in operation under the banner of KSRTC
till August 1997. However, it was divided into Bangalore Mahanagar
Transport Corporation in August 1997, North Western Karnataka
Road Transport Corporation and North Eastern Karnataka Road
Transport Corporation in November 1997. The objective of the
KSRTC is to provide efficient, economic and properly coordinated
road transport services. At present, the KSRTC has 1 corporate
office, 11 divisional offices, 57 depots, 110 bus stations,
2 bus body building workshops, 1 printing press, 3 training
institutes and 1 hospital. Further, it operates on more than
5,100 schedules with more than 5,400 vehicles, covering more
than 19.5 lakh kms, carrying, on an average, 22 lakh passengers
daily.1 In addition, it has more than 25,000 employees
working in different capacities to run its operations smoothly.
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