Abstract
This article investigates the factors that act as barriers in obtaining customer complaints in public transportation services in the city of Kaliningrad, Russia. It seeks to understand what external and internal factors discourage dissatisfied customers from filing a complaint to the service company, and allocate regularities with regard to personal attributes of the individual groups of respondents. Data were collected from a survey held in May and June 2014 using a judgmental sampling method. Research results suggest that complainant’s gender, age, and income level predetermine individual perceptions over the influence of factors that might stop a customer from filing a complaint. On average, depending on the type of problem, up to 90% of dissatisfied customers do not voice their complaints to the service provider.
Highlights
Public transportation services has long been a highly competitive market, represented by the ever growing modes of transportation—buses, trams, trolleybuses, metro, etc. (Atalik, 2009; Duval, 2007)
This article investigates the factors that act as barriers in obtaining customer complaints in public transportation services in the city of Kaliningrad, Russia
It was found that the strongest impact over the passengers’ intention to engage in a complaint behavior has the time and cost factors, as well as lack of confidence in getting the desired result, the inability to eliminate the use of public transport, and unfriendly employees during the complaint process; factors are listed in descending order of importance
Summary
Public transportation services has long been a highly competitive market, represented by the ever growing modes of transportation—buses, trams, trolleybuses, metro, etc. (Atalik, 2009; Duval, 2007). Public transportation services has long been a highly competitive market, represented by the ever growing modes of transportation—buses, trams, trolleybuses, metro, etc. In recent years, urban transport companies have stumbled upon a fearsome competition on behalf of the substitute services, such as car and bicycle city rentals, car sharing, etc. The market offerings in the niche of public transportation services are being constantly refined. Given the variety of choices, are enticed by the ‘competitors’ (i.e. substitute offerings), often encouraged by the society, in example, due to environmental issues (e.g. in case of bicycles or electric vehicles). Customer feedback is regarded as an inexhaustible source of information on the service performance, whereas customer complaint is the most valuable piece of knowledge. While the importance of obtaining customer complaints is left undoubtable, researchers are faced with the challenge of non-complainants
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