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

3

CHAPTER-1

INTRODUCTION

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.

5

CHAPTER-2

COMPANY PROFILE

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.

7

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.

8

CHAPTER-3

LITERATURE REVIEW

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).

10

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.

13

CHAPTER-4

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

14

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.

15

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.

16

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

17

CHAPTER-5

DATA ANALYSIS AND

INTREPRITATION

18

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

19

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.

20

CHAPTER: 6

FINDINGS OF THE STUDY

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.

22

CHAPTER: 7

RECOMMENDATION

23

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.

24

CHAPTER-8

LIMITATIONS

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.

26

CHAPTER: 9

CONCLUSION

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