Interdisplinary Journal of Research and Development “Alexander Moisiu“ University, Durrës, Albania Vol (I), No.2, 2014 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 96 Paper presented in VI th International Scientific Conference on Economic Policy and EU Integration Business Faculty, “Aleksander Moisiu” University December, 2014 THE QUALITY OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT SERVICES: A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS Francesco D. d'OVIDIO 1 , Domenico LEOGRANDE 2 , Rossana MANCARELLA 3 , Domenico VIOLA 4 1 Department of Economics and Mathematics francescodomenico.dovidio@uniba.it 2 Department of Business and Private Law Studies domenico.leogrande@uniba.it 3 Department of Business and Private Law Studies rossanamancarella@gmail.com , University of Bari “Aldo Moro”, Largo Abbazia Santa Scolastica, 70124 Bari, Italy Abstract The purpose of this study is to investigate what kind of observable and non-observable factors can influence passenger satisfaction on the quality of public transport services in a local context, on the basis of a sample survey. Of course, these results can be used by the transport company in order to modify its business strategies and to improve its business performance and competitive advantage. In the first step, relationships among the intangible dimensions such as quality, satisfaction and loyalty are defined using suitable statistical measuring techniques (Factor Analysis on the results of a Categorical Principal Component Analysis). Successively, multivariate methods are used in order to explore the characteristics of the customers and their weight on the quality perception. The final result of this analysis is a Structural Equation Model, assumed as representative of the customer’s behaviour towards quality in public transport, useful to understand the challenges of the strategic orientation and those of the marketing management. Key words: Passengers survey, Service’s quality, CatPCA, Factor Analysis, SEM. Purposes of the research This paper briefly describes an analysis of customer satisfaction about a public service (the public bus service of the town of Bari), with respect to its several aspects. But the main aim of this analysis is to extract the main quality elements from such a large set of satisfaction’s items (about 50 questions), able to give to the managers some indications about the more important interventions in order to improve service’s quality. The survey covered the whole bus network of Bari, using a questionnaire derived with modifications from a previous one (used in the same context some year ago) with three sections. The Section A (15 questions) analyzes personal information of interviewees (e.g.: age, profession and residence district), raw opinions and characteristics of use of the service (e.g.: time- band, frequency of use, lines, type of ticket, etc.). The Section B (38 questions) concerns judgements on various aspects of the perceived quality of the bus service (e.g. staff courtesy and professionalism, cleanliness and hygiene, safety, comfort, etc.), expressed by the interviewees in a 6-levels Likert Scale (from “very bad” to “excellent”). The Section C contains only 4 questions: about the overall satisfaction of the customer (from 1, as minimum, to 10, as maximum), the dynamic of the service’s quality in the last year, the modalities of complaints and the possible motives of low use of the bus services. In order to respect the editorial limits, only the principal results of the analysis are described here. The survey and its main results Because this survey is a sort of “pilot experiment”, the sampling design was very simple: in the course of two weeks, in random hours along the day, the interviewers walked randomly in each district of the town (randomly assigned to interviewers), submitting the questionnaire to travellers waiting at the bus stops