CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background to the Study

From time immemorial, people have being moving from one place to another in carrying out their daily activities. This simply refers to transportation and to say what transport industry of’ any country is an integral part of the structure of an economy cannot be overemphasized. The rendering of quality service to customer (passengers) is no doubt one of the most significant and a very important issue in the transport industry. Transportation which can be seen as activity that provide for the movement of goods and individual from one place to another, creating place utility fall under the service sector of the economy.

A service has been define as an intangible benefit provided to individual, business, government establishment of activity or the provision of physical facility, product or activity for another’s (Inegbenebor, 2008). The service sector covers a carried range of industries. The government provides a major array of service in most countries including Nigeria. These services include education, health, legal, military, and social, transportation and information services. Private sector services include profit-oriented business such as transport business, banks, insurance, and solicitors among others.

Managing services raise special issues. Thesearise from the characteristics of most services, the intangibility of offering the inseparability of production and consumption, the difficulty of achieving standardization and perishable nature of the service such feature prioritize three management concern not normally centre stage in marketing. These are quality, control problem concerned with the productivity of the operations and the management of human resources.

The general myopic view held by most of the transport business operation seems be that of providing quality. Service and crowning the customers as ‘number one” is necessary only because of the need for a large market share or increased customer patronage. Their traditional way of thinking is that passengers will always be there. Those views tend to ignore the fact that customers wants, need and satisfaction should be taken into consideration and that organization’s focus should be on the customers.

The study of customer’s satisfaction in relation to transport businesses is base on the conviction that the customers (passengers) in any service system are the only true judge of the service worth. In many cases, it is easier to access in quantitative terms business operators than in qualitative terms. The fact that, it is difficult to measure service delivery does not make it impossible to achieve. In the line of the foregoing this research work intends to investigate passengers’ satisfaction with various services they receive from transport service providers.