Post on 17-Aug-2015
A
MAJOR PROJECT REPORT
ON
“PASSENGERS SATISFACTION TOWARDS IRCTC ONLINE
RESERVATION FACILITY AT DURG AND BHILAI”
Submitted in partial fulfillment for the award of the degree
Master of Business Administration
Chhattisgarh Swami Vivekananda Technical University, Bhilai
.
Approved By, Guided By,
DR.SOUREN SARKAR DR.SOUREN SARKAR
Head of the Department Professor (FMS)
Shri Shankaracharya Group of Institutions
Faculty of Management Studies Approved By AICTE
(Managed by ShriGangajali Education Society, Bhilai)
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
i. DECLARATION 2
ii. CERTIFICATE 3
iii. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 4
iv. TABLE OF CONTENTS 5
INTRODUCTION 6-7
COMPANY PROFILE 8-10
LITERATURE REVIEW 11-15
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 16-19
DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS 20-22
FINDINGS 23-24
RECOMMENDATIONS 25-26
LIMITATIONS 27-28
CONCLUSION 29-30
vi. REFERENCES 31
vii. QUESTIONNAIRE 32-33
4
Research Background
I have conducted a research on the topic “A Study on Passengers Satisfaction
towards IRCTC Online Reservation Facility at Durg And Bhilai”. I have used
likert’s measurement scale to identify satisfaction level of passenger for online
ticket booking in IRCTC official website portal.
Contributions towards the study
The purpose of this report is to provide a background understanding of what
factors are considered by customers for online railway ticket booking. To prepare
the report, an extensive research based on factors of customer’s satisfaction
towards IRCTC Online Reservation has been done.
With the help of this research I have tried to find out the significant impact of some
factors such as Price, Brand, Quality, Features and Services on the passenger
satisfaction of customer’s while booking railway tickets.
6
BACKGROUND
Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd. (IRCTC) is a Public Sector
Enterprise under Ministry of Railways. IRCTC was incorporated on 27th
September, 1999 as an extended arm of the Indian Railways to upgrade,
professionalize and manage the catering and hospitalityservices at stations, on
trains and other locations and to promote domestic and international tourism
through development of budget, special tour packages, information & commercial
publicity and global reservation systems.
While discharging its mandate, the Company has made a significant mark in its
passenger-services oriented business lines like setting up of Food Plazas on
Railway premises, ‘Railneer', Rail Tour Packages and ‘Internet Ticketing' bringing
great deal of professionalism into the operations. In addition to above, IRCTC is
managing on Board Catering Services in Rajdhani / Shatabdi / Duronto and Mail /
Express Trains and Static Catering Units such as Refreshment Rooms, AVMs,
Book Stalls, Milk Stalls, Ice Cream Stalls, Petha & Peda Stalls etc. across the
Indian Railway Network
ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE
Corporate Office of IRCTC is situated at New Delhi , which is headed by the
Managing Director. Managing Director is being assisted by three Directors,
Director(Catering Services), Director(Tourism & Marketing) and Director
Finance) and nine Group General Managers.
For smooth operations of the business across all over the country, five Zonal
Offices are working at Delhi , Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai & Secunderabad. South
Zone Office is headed by Regional Director and all other Zonal Offices are headed
by Group General Managers. All Group General Managers have vast experience
of working in Indian Railways. These Zonal Offices are assisted by ten Regional
Offices at Lucknow , Chandigarh , Jaipur, Bhubneshwar, Guwahati, Patna ,
Bhopal, Ahemedabad, Bangalore and Ernakulam, which are headed by Chief
Regional Managers / Regional Managers.
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MANPOWER
At present IRCTC has 4453 employees (as on 31st December, 2009) on its roll.
The employees comprise of IRCTC Direct Employees, Deemed Deputation
absorbees, Deemed Deputationists, deputationists and fixed term employees. For
bringing professionalism in the work culture, IRCTC has recruited professionals in
different field like HR, Tourism, Catering and Finance, through direct recruitment
or campus recruitment.
CONTRIBUTION TO REVENUES OF RAILWAYS
During the year the Corporation contributed a sum of Rs.76.26 crore to the
revenues of Indian Railways as against a sum of Rs. 62.76 Crore during the
previous year. Contribution to the Revenues of Railways comprises Haulage
Charges, Concession fee, License fee, User Charges and Dividend. The sharing of
revenues with the various Zonal Railways has been made in terms of
Memorandum of Understanding dated 17th January, 2007 . In addition to the
above, tickets worth Rs.3888.82 Crore were booked during the year as against
Rs.1705.03 Crore during the previous year.
MAIN BUSINESS ACTIVITIES
On Board Catering Services and Static catering units on the Indian Railway
Network.
Manufacturing Packaged Drinking Water for Indian Railway Passengers.
Anaging the Departmental Catering units, taken over from Indian Railways.
Quality Control and Complaint Redressal System.
9
The service industry plays an increasingly important role in the economy of many
countries. In today’s global competitive environment delivering quality service is
considered as an essential strategy for success and survival (Parasuraman et al.,
1985; Reich held and Sasser, 1990; Zeithaml et al., 1990). Even the public sector
organizations have come under increasing pressure to deliver quality services
(Randall and Senior, 1994) and improve efficiencies (Robinson, 2003).
Customer needs and expectations are changing when it comes to governmental
services and their quality requirements. However, service quality practices in
public sector organizations is slow and is further exacerbated by difficulties in
measuring outcomes, greater scrutiny from the public and press, a lack of freedom
to act in an arbitrary fashion and a requirement for decisions to be based inlaw.
Parasuraman et al. (1988) have defined service quality as the ability of the
organization to meet or exceed customer expectations. It is the difference between
customer expectations of service and perceived service (Zeithaml et al., 1990).
Perceived service quality results from comparisons by customers of expectations
with their perceptions of service delivered by the suppliers (Zeithaml et al., 1990).
If expectations are greater than performance, then perceived quality is less than
satisfactory and hence customer dissatisfaction occurs (Parasuraman et al., 1985;
Lewis and Mitchell, 1990).
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BRAND
“A Name, Term, Sign, Symbol or Design & a Combination of them, intended to
identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers from those of
competitors” (American Standard Association).
Philip Kotler (pg 276) approached that Brand equity is the added value endowed to
product or services. A brand is said to have positive customer-based brand equity
when customer reacts more favourably to a product & the way it is identified as
compared to when it is not. Branding is an important element in business. Without
a brand, customers have to explain to the sellers in detail about the products that
they want, while sellers may be confused or give the wrong products to the
customers. Therefore, it can be assumed that brand acts as a sign, name or symbol
for the products and services. The main aim of the brand is to identify the products
or services of a seller or groups of sellers and differentiate an offering of a seller
from that of its rivals (Kotler).
Jess Halliday (2010) explains that branding and labelling have a very significant
impact on consumers’ buying decisions, followed by blind tasting. When a
consumer is making up their mind whether or not to buy a product they are not
guided by its taste alone. A number of extrinsic factors also vie for their attention,
such as awareness of the brand, labelling, price and origin.
Philip Kotler, (2003) (pg 276) approaches brand equity from a customer based
perspective defining it as “the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer
response to the marketing of the brand”.
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FEATURES
“Features is the totality of all the characteristics of a product or service that bear
on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs”
Philip Kotler
Philip Kotler (2003) (pg 146), Satisfaction will also depend on product & services
quality. What exactly is quality? Various experts have it as “fitness for use”,
“conformance to requirement,” “freedom from variations,” & so on.
Philip Kotler (2003) (pg.147), we can say that the seller has delivered quality
whenever the seller’s product meets or exceeds the customers’ expectations. A
company that satisfies most of its customer’s needs most of the time is called a
quality company. Total quality is the key to value creation & customer satisfaction.
PRICE
Rajan saxena, 2007(pg 321) TO manufacture price represents the quality of money
(or goods &services in a barter system) received by the firm or the seller for its
product. Price determines the capability of a customer to buy. Thus price is
considered as
𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒 =quality of money by the seller
quality of goods & 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑒𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑟
Benedict G. C. Dellaert, Vladislav Y. Golounov and Jaideep Prabhu (Vol 16), said
that a potentially powerful way to assist consumers in making dynamic shopping
decisions is to disclose price information to them before they shop, for example by
posting prices on the Internet. This paper addresses the differential impact of
disclosing either only current, or both current and future prices, on consumer
12
shopping decisions in multi-period tasks involving multiple product purchases.
They investigate the behavioural effects underlying this finding by estimating a
model that allows for variations in consumer discounting, strength of store price
format preferences, as well as choice consistency between different price
disclosure conditions. With this they found that they can easily attract & aware
their customers about their product, which help them to attract customers towards
them.
SERVICES
“Customer service is one invisible and easily disappearing process, involves the
transmission system through which the servicing process produced”
AmericanMarketingAssociation(1960)
Wang, Ke-yi (2010) service innovation is some change in the process of the
service. Service innovation is some progress produced in the invisible and easily
disappearing process which is provided by the telecom industry operators with the
participation of customers, contains the progress of the delivery system through
which service be transferred.
By Mitchell Holt, About 70 percent of people who take their business elsewhere do
so because of poor customer service and lack of human interaction, according to
the Customer Service Training Centre.
CUSTOMER INTENTION
A plan to purchase a particular goods and service in the future. A measure of the
claimed level of future consumption of a product or service by target customers
who almost invariably overstate their subsequent purchase behaviour. I think
IRCTC have the brightest future of any online ticket booking website portal. They
are so much more versatile than any other type.
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METHODOLOGY:-
The study was conducted in Bhilai and Durg. For the study, a questionnaire was
formulated & administered to the respondent. Questionnaire was open ended with
the likert’s scale. The medium of this questionnaire was English. The questionnaire
was face to face with respondents. Some of these were filled up after a small
conversation relevant to the subject of study.
OBJECTIVE OF STUDY:-
The principle objective of this study is:-
1. To know level of satisfaction among passengers for online IRCTC
reservation.
2. To know various factor which influence passenger satisfaction towards
IRCTC online reservation.
3. To know most influencing factor for passenger satisfaction towards IRCTC
online reservation.
RESEARCH DESIGN:-
The study is a descriptive study. Descriptive Research includes surveys of different
kinds. The major purpose of descriptive research is description of the start of
affairs as it exists at present. The main characteristics of this method is that the
researcher has no control over the variable, he can only report what has happened
or what is happening.
RESEARCH METHODS
This study used the survey method because surveys are conducted in case of
descriptive research. Surveys are concerned with describing & interpreting
conditions that either exist or existed. The researcher does not manipulate the
variable or arrange for event to happen. It also concerned with hypothesis
formulation & testing the analysis of the relationship between non-manipulated.
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RESEARCH TECHNIQUES:-
This work is carried out through self-administered questionnaires. The questions
included were open ended, dichotomous & offered multiple choice.
DATA COLLECTION:-
The data which is collected for the purpose of study is divide into two bases:-
1 ) PRIMARY SOURCES:- The primary data comprises information survey of “A
STUDY ON PASSANGER SATISFACTION TOWARDS IRCTC ONLINE
RESERVATION AT DURG,BHILAI” the data has been collected directly from
respondent with the help of structured questionnaire.
2 ) SECONDARY SOURCES:- The secondary data was collected from internet.
QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN:-
In questionnaire, I have used likert’s measurement scale to identify “A STUDY
ON PASSANGER SATISFACTION TOWARDS IRCTC ONLINE
RESERVATION AT DURG,BHILAI”. Here 1 to 5 scales are used to be marked
their preference level, where ‘ 1 stand for strongly disagree’ ,’2 stands for disagree’
, ‘3 stands for Neutral’ ,’ 4 stands for Agree’ ,’5 stands for Strongly agree’.
SAMPLE DESIGN:-
Data have been collected through the survey method while survey has been
conducted in two cities:
1 ) Durg 2) Bhilai
All the data are primary in the nature as they had been collected first hand &
personally. All the area had segmented according to the population of this area. I
have considered 100 as Sample size, I made a survey by questionnaire as prepared
by me.
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RESEARCH PLAN
RESEARCH PLAN
Research Design: Descriptive
Research Method Used Survey
Research Technique Used Questionnaire
Data Collection From Durg and Bhilai
Sampling Plan Convenience
No. of samples collected 100
RESEARCH TECHNIQUE
Regression
This technique is appropriate when the researcher has a single, metric criterion
variable. The main objective in using this technique is to predict the variability the
dependent variable based on its covariance with all the independent variables
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Descriptive Statistics
Mean Std. Deviation N
Irctc overall experience 4.58 1.519 100
convenience 3.92 .748 100
Information availability 3.53 .948 100
Safety 3.51 .847 100
Process time (Speed) 2.23 .952 100
information credibility 3.43 1.174 100
Services charges 3.57 .902 100
Transaction Process 2.64 1.040 100
Coefficients
Model
Unstandardized Coefficients
Standardized
Coefficients
T Sig. B Std. Error Beta
1 (Constant) 5.920 1.335 4.434 .000
convenience -.215 .208 -.106 -1.032 .030
Information availability -.042 .185 -.026 -.226 .028
Safety -.259 .184 -.144 -1.408 .016
Process time (Speed) -.122 .166 -.077 -.735 .464
information credibility .052 .133 .040 .391 .047
Services charges .350 .187 .208 1.873 .064
Transaction Process -.226 .166 -.155 -1.362 .176
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Coefficients
Model
Unstandardized Coefficients
Standardized
Coefficients
T Sig. B Std. Error Beta
1 (Constant) 5.920 1.335 4.434 .000
convenience -.215 .208 -.106 -1.032 .030
Information availability -.042 .185 -.026 -.226 .028
Safety -.259 .184 -.144 -1.408 .016
Process time (Speed) -.122 .166 -.077 -.735 .464
information credibility .052 .133 .040 .391 .047
Services charges .350 .187 .208 1.873 .064
Transaction Process -.226 .166 -.155 -1.362 .176
a. Dependent Variable: Irctc overall experience
Factors: 1.Convenience, 2.Availability of Information, 3.Safe Payment,
4.information credibility, 5.Service Charges, have significant impact on Overall
Experience of Customers with IRCTC online Reservation, as the value of Sig. is
less than 0.05 for all the above factors.
It has been found that Factors Process time and Transaction Process Credibility has
no significant impact on Overall Experience of Customers with IRCTC online
Reservation, as the value of Sig. is more than 0.05 for these two factors.
21
1. Customers are satisfied with the Convenience of IRCTC Online reservation.
[Avg is3.92]
2. Customers are satisfied with the Information availability of IRCTC online
reservation.[Avg is 3.53]
3. Customers are satisfied with the Safety of IRCTC online reservation.[Avg is
3.51]
4. Customers are not satisfied with the process time of online reservation.[Avg
2.23]
5. Customers are satisfied with the Information credibility of IRCTC online
reservation.[Avg 3.43]
6. Customers are not satisfied with the Transaction process of IRCTC online
reservation.[Avg 2.64]
7. Customers are satisfied with overall experience of IRCTC Online
reservation as the Average satisfaction level is 4.58.
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RECOMMENDATION
1. IRCTC should improve the process time of its online reservation system.
2. IRCTC should provide higher processing speed as at present it has been
found that passengers are not satisfied with the processing speed provided by
IRCTC online reservation system.
3. IRCTC should try to provide a more secure and consistent payment gateway
as the passengers are very much concerned about the online payment
system.
25
Limitation
Unequal distribution of the various age groups.
The chances of respondents filling the questionnaire hastily are
high.
And the short span of time was the biggest limitation.
27
CONCLUSION
At present passengers are well awared about the online reservation system of
IRCTC, this system is being used by the educated population for their travel plan
and ticket booking. IRCTC online reservation system is very convenient for the
passengers and hence it is very popular and its popularity is increasing day by day.
But there are some concerns with this system like there are significant numbers of
failed transactions, server down and server crashing problems are very often.
The system is fail to provide smooth service in time of urgency like the system is
still not very effective to book TATKAL ticket. IRCTC should continue to
improve its service related to server performance and payment gateway.
28
REFERENCE
1. Rama Prasad, M.V., (2002), “A study on passenger amenities in railways”,
2. Indian Journal of Marketing, Vol.XXXII, No.11, November, pp.14-19.
3. www.en.wikipedia.org
4. www.etcproceedings.org
5. www.indianeconomy.com
6. www.indianrailway.com
7. "Indian Railways Passenger Reservation Enquiry"
29
QUESTIONNAIR
I am a student of Master of Business Administration at Shri Shankaracharya group of institution
Bhilai. As a part of my curriculum, I am conducting a study on “A STUDY ON PASSANGERS
SATISFACTION TOWARDS IRCTC ONLINE RESERVATION FACILITY AT
DURG,BHILAI”. The data will be used exclusively for academic purpose only, without
disclosing your identity. I would be grateful to you for your candid responses. Please mark a tick
(√) in your preferred box
Strongly
Disagree
Neu
tral
Strongly
Agree
1. IRCTC reservation is convenient for the user. 1 2 3 4 5
2. IRCTC provide ample information regarding online reservation. 1 2 3 4 5
3. IRCTC online reservation money transaction facility is good. 1 2 3 4 5
4. The processing speed provided by IRCTC is good. 1 2 3 4 5
5. IRCTC provide credible information during online reservation. 1 2 3 4 5
6. The amount charged for IRCTC is affordable. 1 2 3 4 5
7. IRCTC online reservation provide safe and secure payment getaway. 1 2 3 4 5
8. Making reservation through IRCTC provide a good experience. 1 2 3 4 5
30
9 Personal Details
9.1 Name
9.2 Age o <20 o 20 – 40 o 41 - 60 o >60
9.3 Gender o Male o Female
9.4
Annual
Income (Rs.
Lakhs) o <1.5 o 1.5-2.99 o 3-4.50 o >4.5
9.5 Occupation o Student o Business
Person
o Service
Person o Professional o Household
o Other
(Specify)
-------------
Thank you for your contribution