ASSESSMENT ON SERVICE QUALITY IN BUS TRANSPORTATION SERVICE; A PARTICULAR CASE STUDY OF SELAM BUS LINE S.C.

Abstract

This study is to investigate service quality using SERVIQUL Model with regard to long distance public bus Transport Company, specifically at Selam Bus on the five operational routes. The SERVIQUAL Method which comprises the five dimensions namely; Tangibility, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy is used to assess the service quality using the 22 given statements. The targeted routes were Mekelle, Gonder, Jigijiga, Arbaminich and Assosa assuming that they can best represented the four axis (North, South, East and West) operational routes. In order to realize this, about 260 copies of structured questioners were distributed and filled by passengers during their traveling time. From those distributed questionnaire 246 of them were correctly filled and returned back for analysis, and the rest 14 of them were rejected to ensure the reliability of the data. In order to investigate the service quality in the company, first the mean value of their expectation was measured and then followed by the mean value of their perception. The overall result indicated that all of the attributes in the five dimensions have negative mean value which clearly convey the message that the company is delivering the quality of service under the expectation of its customer and need to do a lot of effort to improve the quality and reverse the current situation.