The effect of service attributes’ hierarchy on passengers’ segmentation. A light rail transit service case study

[EN] Market segmentation can help transit operators to identify groups of passengers that share particular characteristics and specific needs and requirements about the service. Traditionally, socioeconomic variables have been used to perform a simple segmentation, although satisfaction rates about...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Diez de los Rios Mesa, Francisco, De Oña López, Rocío, De Oña López, Juan
Tipo de recurso: capítulo de libro
Fecha de publicación:2016
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Repositorio:RiuNet. Repositorio Institucional de la Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia
Idioma:español
OAI Identifier:oai:riunet.upv.es:10251/90386
Acceso en línea:https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/90386
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Latent Class Clustering
Heterogeneity,
Service Quality
Public Transportation
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] Market segmentation can help transit operators to identify groups of passengers that share particular characteristics and specific needs and requirements about the service. Traditionally, socioeconomic variables have been used to perform a simple segmentation, although satisfaction rates about service attributes were not similar among individuals belonging to a group. Cluster analysis emerges as a novel analytical technique for extracting passengers’ profiles. This paper investigates passengers’ profiles at the metropolitan Light Rail Transit service of Seville (Spain). Latent Class Clustering algorithm is applied and satisfaction rates about different service quality attributes are considered for the segmentation. Particularly, two different cluster analyses are accomplished: first level, with only socioeconomic attributes; and second level, with eight service quality factors and socioeconomic attributes. The service quality factors are obtained through a principal component analysis, at which, the large number of attributes describing the service is reduced into constructs underlying them. Equivalent satisfaction rates are calculated for these service factors. Then, homogeneous groups of passengers are obtained. Additionally, the main differences among cluster are identified.