A New Market Segmentation Approach: Evidence from Two Canadian Cities

Lierop, Dea van; El-Geneidy, Ahmed

doi:10.5038/2375-0901.20.1.2

Cited by 30 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Traditionally, transit market research has categorized transit users as either captive or choice riders according to their vehicle access and travel behaviour (12)(13)(14). While more recent research started to segment the market further by incorporating additional factors such as attitudes and personal motivations, travel behavior and trip details and sociodemographic information in order to develop more specific policy recommendations targeted towards each group (15)(16)(17)(18). Yet such an approach to market segmentation leads to the generation of system-wide policies that require an abundance of resources to implement, while only the targeted segment of the market will benefit from this policy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where is the happy transit rider? Evaluating satisfaction with regional rail service using a spatial segmentation approach

Grisé

El-Geneidy

2018

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice

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Public transit agencies are delivering transport services in a rapidly changing and highly competitive transportation market. Ensuring rider's satisfaction in such an environment has led several public transit agencies to adopt different marketing strategies. For example, market segmentation analyses are commonly employed by transit agencies to identify groups of users, which are subsequently used as a base for developing policies and strategies aimed at improving customer satisfaction. However, previous studies adopting this market segmentation approach have predominantly ignored spatial and contextual factors related to the transit network and the built environment of where a user resides, resulting in network-wide policies that are difficult to implement especially for agencies with scarce resources. This study presents a new segmentation approach that incorporates spatial and contextual factors in addition to other rider's preferences and satisfaction levels with commuter rail service in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, Canada. Including these factors in a market segmentation analysis has enabled us to recommend service interventions at a local and finer scale compared to previous studies, while at the same time providing the greatest impact on a specified segment of riders. This research provides transit planners and policy makers with a spatial segmentation approach, which can be used to maximize the benefits of service improvements intended to increase satisfaction with public transit among certain groups of users in a region.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where is the happy transit rider? Evaluating satisfaction with regional rail service using a spatial segmentation approach

Grisé

El-Geneidy

2018

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice

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“…Based on the analysis of the existing customer data, it became clear that different segments are present among Wheel-Trans customers. This will be true of any transit agency, and previous studies have identified common transit market customer segments (9,14,15). Customer segmentation analysis allows researchers to develop a deeper understanding of who their customers are (5) through assessing their needs, emotions, characteristics, and behavior.…”

Section: The Five Steps To Developing Effective Customer Journey Mapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many paratransit customers are captive riders owing to disability, age, and/or income, meaning that they rely primarily on public transit services ( 7, 8 ). This means that mode choice does not occur in the same way it does for captive-by-choice users ( 9 ), who decide to take transit even though they have the possibility of using different modes—including a private vehicle. However, not all captive paratransit users are restricted to the use of a single (paratransit) mode.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanizing Transit Data: Connecting Customer Experience Statistics to Individuals’ Unique Transit Stories

Lierop

Eftekhari²,

O’Hara³

et al. 2019

Transportation Research Record

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Transit agencies often collect valuable information about their customers, through opinion and behavior surveys that assess travel experience and customer needs. The results of these questionnaires can be used to gain a representative snapshot of the behavior and opinions of a transit agency’s customer base. These assessments are often based on large sample sizes and are therefore useful for understanding broad trends related to users’ overall travel experience. However, these large-scale analyses generally do not capture the important and rich nuances that individuals experience while in a transit station, or on-board a train, conventional bus, streetcar, light rail, subway, or a paratransit vehicle. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how transit agencies can gain a better understanding of paratransit customers’ experiences during their interactions with paratransit and conventional transit services. Using data from the Toronto Transit Commissions’ paratransit division and the results of in-person customer interviews, a five-step mixed-method approach for mapping paratransit customers’ travel experiences is developed. Specifically, the aggregate analyses of customers’ experiences and opinions which are derived from agency-wide customer satisfaction surveys are combined with the information obtained through in-person discussions. Four example customer journey maps (CJMs) are presented, and findings demonstrate that by using CJMs, transit agencies can gain a broad understanding of their customer base while also understanding the emotions, needs, desires, and stories of individual transit users.

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“…In this regard, the transit market is often classified, among other classifications, into current and potential transit users [4][5][6][7], and/or captive and choice users [8][9][10][11]. Choice users have access to multiple modes of travel, while captive users have access to only one mode of travel.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Transit Market: A Persona-Based Approach for Preferences Quantification

Eldeeb

Mohamed

2020

Sustainability

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The study aims at utilizing a persona-based approach in understanding, and further quantifying, the preferences of the key transit market groups and estimating their willingness to pay (WTP) for service improvements. The study adopted an Error Component (EC) interaction choice model to investigate personas’ preferences in a bus service desired quality choice experiment. Seven personas were developed based on four primary characteristics: travel behaviour, employment status, geographical distribution, and Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC). The study utilized a dataset of 5238 participants elicited from the Hamilton Street Railway Public Engagement Survey, Ontario, Canada. The results show that all personas, albeit significantly different in magnitude, are negatively affected by longer journey times, higher trip fares, longer service headways, while positively affected by reducing the number of transfers per trip and real-time information provision. The WTP estimates show that, in general, potential users are more likely to have higher WTP values compared to current users except for at-stop real-time information provision. Also, there is no consensus within current users nor potential users on the WTP estimates for service improvements. Finally, shared and unique preferences for service attributes among personas were identified to help transit agencies tailor their marketing/improvement plans based on the targeted segments.

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A New Market Segmentation Approach: Evidence from Two Canadian Cities

Cited by 30 publications

References 33 publications

Where is the happy transit rider? Evaluating satisfaction with regional rail service using a spatial segmentation approach

Where is the happy transit rider? Evaluating satisfaction with regional rail service using a spatial segmentation approach

Humanizing Transit Data: Connecting Customer Experience Statistics to Individuals’ Unique Transit Stories

Understanding the Transit Market: A Persona-Based Approach for Preferences Quantification

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