Courier Service Performance And Customer Satisfaction Research

The substantial growth during the past 20 years makes China's express delivery business become a highly profitable service industry with a considerable market full of potential. Especially in recent years, it grows annually at 30% and is forecast to surpass 100 billion Yuan by 2010. Though China's express industry has gained a glorious achievement, its services are frequently complained by many consumers. According to related agreements reached with the WTO, China's internal express industry opened to foreign countries at the end of 2005, China's express delivery enterprises are facing the challenge from International Express Delivery Giants directly. Therefore, it is very urgent to improve the service performance, promote the customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.Although there are many papers on express service, they always simply describe the present situation and characteristics of China's express industry. Studies on the service performance and customer satisfaction of China's express industry specifically are quite scarce. Therefore, this study tries to research the service performance, customer satisfaction and the relationship between them in China's express industry systematically.On the foundation of the service performance and customer satisfaction theory by former researchers, the study takes present situation of China's express industry into consideration, constructs the service performance and customer satisfaction evaluation system and develops a SP-CS Relational Model to examine the relationship between service performance and customer satisfaction. In order to confirm the validity of the model, the study applies the PLS (partial least squares) path model to analyze the data collected by questionnaire survey. Moreover, the differences between China Post's EMS and the main private-owned express service are also discussed from three aspects: the service performance, the customer satisfaction and the relationship between them. In general, this study explores the relationships among dimensions of service performance (relational, operational, and cost performance), customer satisfaction and customer loyalty both qualitatively and quantitatively. We expect the research results can help China's express enterprises improve their service performance and enhance their customer satisfaction.