Service Quality of on-Line Taxi Cabs

Service Providers In Tiruchirappalli

District
Mahesh D, Bharathidasan University

Citation Information: Raturi, R. (2022). Did going back to

shopping make you happy? consumer behavioral changes in
their purchase decision and preference of shopping experience
after covid 19. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, 26(3), 1-
10.

Abstract

Transportation after the invention of wheel has revolutionized

the world in communication of goods and services. The man
has made use of this technology to his favour in all possible
way. Vehicles are exclusively used for transportation of goods
are the primary one and later during World War I and II, soldiers
were also communicate from one place to the another to wage
a war with their enemy. Later the bad lessons learnt from the
world wars has made the man to realize that if there is any
more world war broke out, the chance of human race will
extinct from mother earth. Later, majority of the business men
has decide to continue their traditional business through roads
which were been performed through sea in large volume. Trade
has made every enemy into a best friend. This trade extension
and exploration has made the world a meaningful place to live
and survive.

Keywords

Service Quality, Taxi Cabs, Service Providers.

Introduction
Being the promising business of today, taxi services in India
and all over the world is booming. One up on the time, taxi is
parked in front of Railway station or Central Bus stand or
Airport or for that matter anywhere in a city for commuting
passengers from one place to another. At those times, people
to move physically to the taxi stand to hire a taxi for a ride.
Chance of accepting your request lies with the driver mode and
attitude. The fare charged by the taxi driver being monopoly is
not at all economically at those times Adam & Al-Masrey
(2019).

Uber and Lyft in the World and Ola and Fast Track in India are
the prominent leaders in serving the market In the initial levels,
owners of the taxi will rent taxi for ride, later the owner is
interested to lend his taxi to an online taxi service provider in
order to have a consistency of ride per day is guaranteed. A
new term of business has evolved called taxi aggregators, they
who provide service to the public and does not have any taxi
vehicle of their own but provide ride sharing business through
their business strategy using internet and Mobile Application
technology. Before these companies evolved, travelers have to
depend on unorganized taxi operators and various challenges
and issues were faced both economically and psychologically.
After the evolution of smart phones and mobile application
(App) technology, the things of favoritism and flexibility have
changed the side to customer. Using a Mobile App installation
in a smart phone, a passenger can identify the branded taxi
services availability using GPS facility, hire one of the closer
proximity free Taxi available through computer algorithm and
confirm a ride. Hence passengers have a freedom to stay from
the boarding point for hiring a taxi with no hassle and a best
transportation choice in India (Chaudhary et al., 2016).

Service Quality Dimensions taken for Research

With respect to this research, the researcher has used the 10

Service Quality dimensions declared by Emel Kursunluoglu
Yarimoglu. He believed that these ten Service Quality
dimensions are the enhanced set of five dimensions of
SERVQUAL model postulated by Parasuraman and Zeithaml;
(Agyemang et al., 2014). The following are the ten dimensions
that have been considered for appraising the leading online taxi
service providers in Tiruchirappalli district. They are:

1. Reliability

2. Responsiveness

3. Competence

4. Access

5. Courtesy

6. Communication

7. Credibility

8. Security

9. Understanding / Knowing the customer

Classification of Taxi Service Providers

The following are the classification that the taxi market evolved
in India.

1. Model 1 – Fully Owned Fleets

2. Model 2 – Aggregation Fleet Model

Classification of the Taxi Cab Service is further Classified

as

Organized

1. Aggregators – Ola cabs and Uber cabs, D drivers.

2. Owners –Meru Cabs, Easy Cabs, Aisswaryam Track Call Taxi
Tack Call taxi.

Unorganized

1. Agencies –Car agency, small travel agency

2. Individuals – car drivers and Car owners

3. Registered taxi aggregator’s at regional transport office

4. The following are the data on the cumulative registered taxi

cabs at RTO offices of Thuvakudi, Srirangam and Pirattiyur of
Tiruchirappalli district Table 1.

Table 1 Cumulative Registered Taxi Cabs at RTO Offices of Thuvakudi, Srirangam and Pirattiyur of Tiruchirap
Sl. No. 2015-16 2016-17
Taxi cabs Registered 67 185
Source: District regional transport office, Tiruchirappalli.
Service Quality Reviews

Julie Paquette have found that studies on quality of service

provided by the organizations responsible for the operation of
dial-a-ride service for people with reduced mobility. The article
incorporated various measurement scales and particular
dimensions and service quality attributes are reviewed. Finally
the impact on quality of various elements, like the size and
type of organization and the operational rules used, are
discussed (Minhans et al., 2014).

Parul Gupta & R.K. Srivastava through Kano two-dimension

Quality Model has found 34 quality elements and two essential
quality factors be classified as “attractive quality elements”; 28
quality items are “must-be quality elements”; and 4 quality
items are “indifferent quality elements”. They have analyzed
the customer satisfaction (CS) coefficient about the satisfaction
increment index (SII) and dissatisfaction decrement index
(DDI). The result showed that DDI higher than SSI in all service
quality. It indicates that hotel industry should improve the
service to decrease the dissatisfaction of customer. Especially
in “Clear and comfortable:, “Accuracy of settlement”,
“Friendliness services”, “Disciplined attendants”. “Thorough
fire protection equipment”, and “Exit direction smooth and
clear”.

Chenggang Wang found at initial level that taxi business

intelligence service system of Singapore’s has inherent
randomness with low efficiency, high fuel consumption and low
customer satisfaction. He created and analyzed a large-scale
transportation datasets with value-added information that were
extracted from spatial-temporal data mining technologies. He
also analyzed the population of travel behaviour characteristics
and then put forward various taxi business models to describe
both passengers and taxi drivers’ behaviour. As a result taxi
business intelligence system can overcome many of the
limitations for existing taxi business system and thus chance
for improvement on quality of service is guaranteed (Canale et
al., 2019).

Kundan Dutta Koirala & Sajeeb Kumar Shrestha has used

SERVQUAL model to examine the relationship between
customer satisfaction and service quality in commercial
banking sectors undertakings in Nepal Khade & Patil (2018).
This study has the potential to make theoretical, managerial,
and methodological contributions to the analysis of service
quality. They have attempted to investigate the casual
relationship among service quality dimensions, service quality,
and customer satisfaction. The level of service quality has
positive impact on customer satisfaction. This study has
generated an insight to understand on how to increase
customer satisfaction level Awasthi (2020).

Corinne Mulley & Rhonda Daniels has said that public transport
is important for social inclusion, for providing access to
participation of life opportunities and to reach activities and
services such as work, education, health, shopping, and social
recreational activities. While planning public transport
networks, tradeoffs must be made in network design between
coverage and frequency when the budget is constrained
(Panigrahi et al., 2018). A change in emphasis from coverage to
frequency will inevitably lead to winners and losers in access to
fixed route services. Thus, the provision of flexible transport
service to access the higher frequency trunk schedules routes
offers the ability to ensure existing passengers do not lose
accessibility Ashish (2019). The proposed network design (new
trunk scheduled fixed routes with a flexible transport service for
access) provides much higher accessibility top public transport
overall on the suburban fringe and offers the possibility to
patronage growth through higher frequency services. Present
scenario in the domestic consumer market segment is
overflowing with lot of online opportunities and possibilities to
develop Vilakazi & Govender (2014). Every market segment
place has got a pivot location. The Domestic Taxi Cabs vehicle
segment is one of the most sought by the consumers and has
fast growing market spreading all over the Country.

The present day consumers are choosy and are seeking very
good comfort, pride, reliability, tangible service and prompt
service with safety associated with hygiene.

Objectives of the Study

1. To Study the implications of Socio-Economic Factors on

customer satisfaction.

2. To find out the customer satisfaction towards the on-line call-

taxi services.

3. To suggest inputs to enhance the on-line taxi cabs services

to delight the customers in the long run.

Pilot Study

It was found that there was feasibility to conduct the present

study among people of cabs consumers of in Tiruchirappalli
District affiliated. A pilot study was conducted by circulating a
sample Questionnaire among prospective respondents. A
sample of 91 samples was collected from all the five zones in
Tiruchirappalli district. Based on the pilot study results, the
questions were modified and few questions were added for
obtaining unbiased results. Reliability is the ratio of true
variance to the total variance yielded by the measuring
instrument. The Convergent Validity is achieved. We found the
Cronbach’s alpha value is 0.970.

Sampling Design

Data collection was performed using simple random sampling

method. The sample size is arrived as 785.

Data Collection Instrument

Data was collected using a well-structured and non-disguised

questionnaire from the public customers of on-line taxi cabs
service users in Tiruchirappalli District. The questions in the
questionnaire were designed pertaining to the problem and
objective of the study.

Limitations of the Study

1. This study covered only Taxi Cabs service users and public at
large in Tiruchirappalli District.

2. The study covered Five different locations like Center, North ,

South, East and West zone of Tiruchirappalli District, comprising
752 Respondents (Omitted 33 from the planned sample size of
785 (4% ).

3. The Bias of the Respondents was prevalent in some answers.

Data Analysis and Interpretation - Demographic Profile

of the Respondents

Inference: It is inferred from the above Table 2 that majority

of the respondents 52.9 % were by Male and Female responded
47.1 % from the Study the service quality of leading online Taxi
Cabs service providers with a special reference to
Tiruchirappalli at five different locations.

Table 2 Showing the Gender-Wise Classification of Respondents

Sl. No. Respondent’s Genderwise Classification Number of Re
1 Male 398
2 Female 354
Total 752
(Source: Primary Data).
Inference: It is inferred from the above Table 3 that majority
(37.1%) of the respondents were in the age group of 36 to 40
years and 23.8 % of the respondent were in the age group of
above 40 years 17.2 & 17.4% in the age group of 24-29years
and 30-35 years respectively. Only 4.5% belongs to the age
group of 18-23 years

Table 3 Showing Age-Wise Classification of Respondents

Sl. No. Respondent’s Age-wise Classification Number of Respo
1 18 – 23 years 37
2 23 – 29 years 111
3 30 – 35 years 152
4 36 – 40 years 282
5 Above 50 yeas 170
Total 752
(Source: Primary Data)
Inference: It is inferred from the above Table 4 that majority
of the customers were utilizing the service for less than 10
kilometers travel (31.7%), 23.8% travel between 10 kilometers
and 25 kilometers ,19.8 % utilize the service 25 to 100
kilometers , 15.9% utilize for 100 to 150 kilometers and 8.9 %
utilize the service for more than 150 kilometers travel distance.

Table 4 Showing the Travel Distance Made by the Respondents by Utilizing the Taxi Cabs
Sl. No. Respondent’s Travel Distance using Taxi Cabs in Kilometers N
1 Less than 10 2
2 10 to 25 1
3 25 – 100 1
4 100 – 150 1
5 Greater than 150 7
Total 7
(Source: Primary Data)
Inference: It is inferred from the above Table 5 that majority
of the customers were utilizing the service at centre part of the
city 23.0%, 20.3% from the East, 19.5% from North and west
respectively and 17.6 % were utilizing the services from south
part of the Tiruchirappalli.

Table 5 Showing the Locations of the Respondents for Utilizing the Cabs
Sl. No. Respondent’s Residential Location Number of Respon
1. South 132
2. East 153
3. North 147
4. West 147
5. Center 173
Total 752
Inference: It is inferred from the above Table 6 that majority
of the customers are having two to five members (39.2%),
30.8% belongs to single member who are utilizing the services ,
19.8% belongs to five to seven members family size and 10.2
have a family size of above eight members.

Table 6 Showing the Number of Family Members of the Respondents

Sl. No. Number of Family Members Number of Responses
1 One 232
2 Two to Five 294
3 Five to Seven 149
4 Above Eight 77
Total 752
(Source: Primary Data)
Inference: It is inferred from the above Table 7 and PIE chart
that majority of the respondent belongs to urban area (42.2%),
33.8% Belongs to Semi Urban and 24.1% are belongs to Rural
area.

Table 7 Showing the Area Wise Response of the Respondents

Sl. No. Area Description Number of Responses
1. Urban 317
2. Semi Urban 254
3. Rural 181
Total 752
Source: Primary Data
Inference: It is inferred from the above Table 8 and BAR chart
that majority of the respondent response for the service
providers are Ola (17.0%), Red (16.6%), Fast (15.3%), Friends
(15.0%), Best (14.5%), Aisswariyam Track Call Taxi (10.9%) and
Trichy Cabs (10.6%) respectively.

Table 8 Showing the Service Providers Respondents Response

Sl. No. Service Providers Number of Responses
1 Ola Cabs 128
2 Red Taxi 125
3 Fast Track 115
4 Friends Track 113
5 Best Track 109
6 Aisswaryam Track Call Taxi 82
7 Trichy Cabs 80
Total 752
Source: Primary Data
Inference: It is inferred from the above Table 9 and PIE chart
that majority of the respondents’ response for the motivating
criteria it was found that Previous Experience (28.5%), 23.1%
responded as based on word of mouth, (18.8 %) response
towards Brand, 15.7 % based on Advertisement, and 14% easy
access respectively.

Table 9 Showing the Motivating Factors for Respondent’s Preference Responses

Sl. No. Motivating Factors Number of Responses
1 Brand 141
2 Access 105
3 Previous Experience 214
4 Word of Mouth 174
5 Advertisement 118
Total 752
Inference: It is inferred from the above Table 10 and PIE chart
that majority of the respondents’ response for the expectation
criteria it was found that Cheaper (28.0%), 21.0 % response
based on safety requirements, 20.0% Comforts, accessibility
(16.0 %), and 15 % based Pleasant respectively.

Table 10 Showing the Customer Expectation Factors by the Respondents

Sl. No. Customer Expectation Factors Number of Responses
1. Accessible 122
2. Safety 157
3. Easy and Pleasant 114
4. Comfort 150
5. Cheaper 209
Total 752
Inference: It is inferred from the above Table 11 and PIE chart
that majority of the respondents’ prefer to pay cash (49%), 38
% prefers Card and only 13 % prefers Transfer.

Table 11 Showing the Customer Payment Mode

Sl. No. Respondent’s Payment Mode preference Number of Re
1. Credit / Debit Card 283
2. Cash 369
3. Transfer 100
Total 752
Inference: The normality was ensured based on statistical
inferences require that a distribution be normal or nearly
normal, if a normal distribution has skewness and excess
kurtosis of 0, The column skewness and excess kurtosis in the
above Table 12 reveals that the Kurtosis and Skewness are
within the range of +/- 2.0 (Schutz ve Gessaroli). Therefore the
normality is ensured Table 12.

Table 12 Multivariate Descriptives: Analysis of the Mardia's (1970) Multivariate Asymmetry Skewness and Kur
Sl. No Coefficient Sta
01 Skewness 1374.755 183
02 SKewness corrected for small sample 1374.755 184
03 Kurtosis
Summary and Findings

1. It is observed that majority of the response of around 52.9%

from Male and 47.1% response from Female members from the
Study.
2. It is inferred from age wise response that majority (37.1%) of
the response were from 36 to 40 years and 23.8 % response
were from above 40 years, 17.2 & 17.4% between the age
group of 24 to 29 years and 30 to 35 years respectively. Only
4.5% belongs to the age group of 18 to 23 years.

3. It is observed from the analysis that majority (37.5%) of the

customers were, passed 12th Standard , 22.6% were less than
SSLC, 20.2% were from Under Graduate category and 14.8%
and 4.9% were belongs higher qualification responded in the
Study.

4. The study reveals that majority (29.4 %) of the response

related to monthly income of between Rs. 25,000 and 30,000
Rupees, 23.1 % were in the income profile above Rs.35,000
Rupees, 20.2% were in the income category of Rs.20,000 and
25,000, around 17.4 % respondents were in the income profile
of between RS. 15,000 and 20,000.

5. It is observed from the study that majority (31.7%) of the

customers were utilizing the service for less than 10 kilometers
travel, 23.8% travel between 10 kilometers and 25
kilometers ,19.8 % utilize the service 25 to 100 kilometers,
15.9% utilize for 100 to 150 kilometers and only 8.9 % utilize
the service for more than 150 kilometers travel distance.

6. As utilizing location from the study reveals that majority

(23.0%) of the customers were utilizing at centre part of the
city, 20.3% from the East, 19.5% from North and West
respectively and 17.6 % were utilizing the services from south
part of the Tiruchirappalli.

7. The study reveals that majority (39.2%), of the customers

are having two to five members, 30.8% belongs to single
member who are utilizing the services, 19.8% belongs to five to
seven members family size and 10.2% have a family size of
above eight members .
8. It is inferred that majority of the respondent 42.2 % belongs
to urban area, 33.8 % belongs to Semi-urban and 24.1% are
belongs to Rural area.

Suggestions

1. Taxi cab service must be made to all the possible location

such that majority of the commuters can get benefit of the
service.

2. Cancel of a trip ordered must be avoided by the concerned

driver. The driver switch off their aggregator’s app and driver
on their own board with regular customers. Once the driver
logged in, he / she has to undertake all the commuters
irrespective of pickup location. The Call centre of the taxi cab
aggregators will be identifying the close taxi available.

3. OTP (one Time password) has made a revolutionized on

picking the right order customers. Some of the taxi
aggregator’s app have started including these good features.

4. If the driver rating by a user is very poor, call centre of the

taxi aggregators has to talk to the concerned passenger and
get the right information why he / she has rated that driver
poor and cross verification has also to be made with concerned
driver whose rating is found to be poor. On consistent poor
service quality, measure is to be taken to remove that driver
from the fleet system since, one bad driver will spoil the brand
of the taxi.

Conclusion

The research study has been undertaken on the service quality

of leading on-line taxi service providers to study precisely with
specific reference to Tiruchirappalli District. The Cabs market is
one of the growing service industries in the District getting
faster momentum in this segment. The cab services has a
tremendous potential for growth in Tiruchirappalli District as
the transport needs of the present advanced technological
world all segment customers are using the services in specific
equally female consumers are using this services irrespective of
middle-class or upper segment. It is growing day by day due to
paradigm shift in the consumer market to enable quick and
economically a faster transportation available at consumers
door step through easy access.

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Received: 08-Apr-2022, Manuscript No. AMSJ-22-11307; Editor

assigned: 09-Apr-2022, PreQC No. AMSJ-22-
11307(PQ); Reviewed: 23-Apr-2022, QC No. AMSJ-22-
11307; Revised: 25-Apr-2022, Manuscript No. AMSJ-22-
11307(R); Published: 29-Apr-2022