Marketing analysis passenger transportation

Fundamental changes in the transport services market necessitated the transition of railway passenger transport to marketing management principles.

Marketing of the passenger transportation market in railway transport defines both a comprehensive system for organizing the transportation process, focused on more fully satisfying the ever-changing demand for transportation services and increasing the profitability of the industry. Key tasks include:

• -    an assessment of the actual volumes of traffic in railroads, railways, train categories and types of wagons;

• -    identification of unmet passenger demand for transportation by segments of the transport market and the development of a set of measures for its development;

• -    determination of the uneven volume of traffic by periods of the year;

• -    development of reliable forecasts;

• -    assessment of the use of the production potential of the passenger complex and determination of the strategy and tactics of its development.

However, marketing itself can be effective only when it is based on technical means that make it possible to quickly receive all the necessary and reliable information about transportation. Currently, on the basis of the developed marketing research methodology at the VNIIZhT on the roads and in the Ministry of Railways of Russia, an automated marketing system for the passenger transportation market is being created on the basis of the technical equipment of ACS Express. The set of tasks “Marketing of passenger traffic” is a combination of administrative, technological and economic-mathematical methods, means of computer technology and communication, quickly collecting and carrying out marketing analysis to make decisions on the regulation of the transportation process in the passenger sector. The set of tasks operates on the basis of the data banks of the Express-3 system and receives information from its following subsystems: Ticket and Cash Transactions, Ekasis, Esubr, ACS-PV Schedule, Efis, Service ACS-L.

Marketing analysis is a complex science-based process for obtaining conclusions from information collected by operators, appropriately grouped and processed. At the entrance, marketing information on the sales volumes of travel documents, on the amount of revenue, passenger train routes, etc. is an unordered data set for marketing purposes. As a result of grouping by the operator and processing in the ACS "Express" according to certain signs and criteria, the output information should be issued to the user in the form of graphs, charts, diagrams.

Marketing analysis conducted using the technical equipment of ACS "Express-3" includes:

• -    assessment and forecast of the state and development of the transport market as a whole or by its segments;

• -    identifying market reactions to the introduction of new transport services, increasing ticket prices, etc .;

• -    characterization and determination of the competitiveness of passenger railway transport in a given region;

• -    an assessment of the behavior and potential capabilities of competitors.

The receipt, processing and process of aggregating information on management tasks are aimed at providing an assessment and analysis of market processes for the adoption by the administrative apparatus of the right marketing decisions. The management process is not feasible without understanding the retrospective of the development of passenger traffic, assessing the present and forecasting the future.

“Express-3” made it possible to quickly solve problems related to the daily analysis of the operation of roads according to indicators such as the number of passengers departed, passenger-kilometers, revenues, etc. Wagon-kilometers are calculated independently by the “Express-3” system based on information about the trains embedded in it. Earlier, car-kilometers were calculated on the basis of a manually compiled driver’s route, in which passenger cars were not allocated according to their types.

Considering that various operational changes are being made on the railway network (the replacement of wagons of one road with wagons of another road, etc.), the Express-3 system should provide for re-processing of a data bank containing statistical indicators based on the results of its adjustment. Based on the results of the recalculation of income between the roads, it was possible to obtain results on the workstation of the corresponding road.

The list of the main tasks to be solved in the framework of the marketing of passenger transportation of the Express-3 system requires information:

• -    on the main indicators of the work of railway transport in the transportation of passengers (number of trains; number of passengers; income; number of cars, car-kilometers, passenger-kilometers; seat utilization, population, change rate);

• -    on the volume of passenger traffic in long-distance and suburban communications;

• -    on income received by roads for the carriage of passengers, baggage, cargo luggage, mail, and on the number of tons of luggage and cargo luggage transported;

• -    on the implementation of key indicators (network), on the implementation of key indicators on passenger traffic (passenger-kilometers, departed passengers, medium range, broken down by local, direct and suburban traffic);

• -    the number of requested seats for travel with transfers;

• -    on the sale of tickets (seats) by railway stations;

• -    about the performance of ticket tellers;

• -    on the population of passenger cars;

• -    on the results of a marketing survey of passengers (based on the results of a survey);

• -    about the results of processing the information array of the registration of unmet passenger requests.

For the most complete consideration of the needs of the population, a trip was organized on trains and wagons of interest to categories and types of information organized by the information array of unmet passenger requests sent to the Express-3 system.

Marketing information is issued on the AWP PC for each road and in Russia as a whole for a period of time and within the time period approved on its road (per day, month, quarter, etc.).

In order to be able to obtain comparative characteristics for the analyzed period in relation to the same period of previous years, the possibility of long-term storage of information on marketing research of passenger transportation within the framework of the Express-3 system (record keeping) is provided.