Marketing Courier Service (A Case Study Of TNT/IAS,
Enugu)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTENTS
PAGES
TITLE PAGE
i
APPROVAL PAGE
ii
DEDICATION
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
iv
ABSTRACT
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1
Background of the Study
1.2
Statement of the Problems
1.3
Objectives of the Study
1.4
Hypothesis Formulation
1.5
Significance of the study
1.6
Scope of the study
1.7
Definition of Terms
CHAPTER TWO
viii
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1
Meaning of Marketing
2.2
Meaning of Service
2.3
An Overview of Courier Services
2.4
The Needs of Marketing of Courier Services
2.5
The Place of Marketing in Courier Services
2.6
Strategies for Marketing of Courier Services
2.7
Problems Associated with Marketing of Courier
Service
2.8
Prospects of Marketing of Courier Services
2.9
Marketing of Delivering Services in Thomas
Nationwide Transportation
CHAPTER THREE
3.0
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1
Research Design
3.2
Sources of Data
3.3
Population of the Study
3.4
Sample Size for Courier’s Staff
3.5
Sample Size for Customers
3.6
Sampling Techniques
3.7
Research Instrument Used
3.8
Questionnaire Administration and Response
Rate for Courier’s Staff
3.9
Questionnaire Administration and Response
Rate for Courier’s Staff
3.10 Method of Data Treatment and Analysis
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
4.1
Analysis of Courier’s Staff Questionnaire
4.2
Analysis of Customers Questionnaires
4.3
Test of Hypotheses
CHAPTER FIVE
5.0
DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS RECOMMENDATIONS
AND CONCLUSION
5.1
Summary of Findings
5.2
Recommendation
5.3
Conclusion
BIBLIOGRAPHY
APPENDIXES
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
The alarming rate of courier distress in an economy where premium
domestic delivery, nationwide. They delivered consignment to major
cities in less than twelve hours and within twenty-four hours to other
location nation-wide and has gained steady recognition as Europe largest
and one of the world leaders in the express delivery field. In recent times,
the delivery industries while undergoing some operational and managerial
changes is also been faced with severe problems.
The researcher considered TNT/IAS of Nigeria PLC for the
purpose of this study because of the position it occupies in the industrial
sector and its strategic location to the researcher.
TNT/IAS of Nigeria is leading delivery institution in Nigeria with
many years of delivery experience. Industry and resilience behind it.
Although the journey has not been easy, IAS has been able to weather
through the storm, achieved so much within the years. With a highly
skilled and experienced man power, the company has been able to have a
strong asset base, state of the art infrastructure and high liquidity. Its
flexible power in synergy is tremendous and accounted for the impressive
performance of the company over the years even till June 1999 when it
entered into services partnership with TNT International, producing the
most effective quality, express delivery network for any customer.
Perhaps an insight into how it all began could help. IAS Cargo
Airlines pioneered cargo handling and freight business in Nigeria in 1971.
It remained essentially a British concern with head quarters in London
until 1974 when the Nigeria joint venture was formed.
Later in 1980 the company became fully indigenous and the
business areas were broadened to once again pioneer organized express
delivery service in the country, IAS Cargo Airlines therefore became the
forerunner of IAS International Express with headquarter in Maryland,
Lagos in June 1999 IAS became affiliated with TNT International Express
World’s largest provider of express, mail and logistics. The associate
gave birth to TNT/IAS Express which is the widest and most reliable
courier network in Nigeria.
A major diversification programme was
carried out in the company early in year 2001, whereby the logistics
division was established among others. The strategic move made the trial
blazing TNTIAS the first one-stop express and logistics services
supermarket nationwide with well over 260 outlets nationwide, TNT/IAS
moves consignment of various size, shapes and weight across the nation,
African continent and the world for clients in various sectors of the
economy. The network is sustained through a carefully planned use of a
large fleet of power motocycles, shuttle trucks, speed vans, telephones
and computer network.
Today, TNTIAS Express International provides on-demand, timedefinite and day-certain, door to door delivery services nationwide and
worldwide.
TNTIAS comprehensive network of offices and depots
extends to all countries of the world and operates everywhere with
uniform process and systems.
The TNTIAS domestic spread in Nigeria is extensive and
excellently run. It has outlets in more than 260 locations nationwide.
However, as competition business geared up, it became imperative
to run attention to the realization of the company’s mission or achieve a
recognized world leadership position through excellent service to
customers of its logistics services, the motorized delivery services would
soon start.
The company has the haulage capacity to move over 1,000 tons of
Express materials daily. Areas to be covered are Abuja, Benin, Aba and
many others. The marketing of delivering services holds that key to
achieving organizational goals consist in determining the needs and wants
of largest markets and delivery the desired satisfaction more effectively
and efficiently than competitors. Applying marketing concept in carrying
out delivery services is a frame of mind, which the marketer works with.
It is based on a market focus, efficiency, guaranteed service and
customers friendliness. It starts with a well defined market, determining
who its market will be. Who he hopes to satisfy, even after the market
has been defined, a company can still fail at customer efficiency. By
customer efficiency, the customers need is defined from the customer’s
view point and not from that of the company. Customer efficiency seeks
to crown the customer’s as “king” recognizing that he is the lifeblood of
the organization, and aims at satisfying the desires of the consumers.
The importance of marketing or the delivery industry which is a
licensed institution authorized to perform delivery functions of safe
custody of mail division services, logistics and express division services
cannot be over emphasized. IAS Express is the foremost indigenous
courier company in Nigeria, the express courier delivering company has
the largest office network in Nigeria with over 240 outlets in various
location including desert towns and crecks. We have more than 500 staff
and operate on a fleet of over 250 vehicles and 200 motocycles. IAS
Express has it corporate head quarters at 2nd Round about Lekki Epe
Expressway, Lekki, Lagos.
TNT International Express commenced operations in 1946 in
Australia, with its headquarters situated in Amsterdam as one of the
worlds leading courier companies. TNT International Express delivers
more than two million parcels a week with a staff strength of over
116,000 workers in over 200 countries worldwide.
In June 1999 IAS Express entered into service partnership with
TNT International Express, producing the most effective quality, express
delivery services for any customer.
TNT/IAS Express combines the
global network and efficient on-time delivery with the nationwide,
guaranteed services of IAS Express to the great satisfaction and peace of
mind of the customer.
TNT/IAS Express has a wide range of information technology
support services which include web collection, on-line collection ordering
services, web-tracker, a facility that allows you to pinpoint the
whereabouts of your shipments anywhere in the world, plus partnership
express and partnership tracker, just visit TNT website on WWW.tnt.com.
TNT/IAS DIVISIONS
(a)
Express Division Services: we aim to be the fastest, most
reliable provider of express delivering services. This division
guarantees tailor-made solutions for your most urgent, sensitive
and complex consignments, with the fastest possible pick-up and
delivery services, (D2D) Door-2-Door and (B2B) Business-2Business deliveries. Other ranges are, intra-city pick-up and
delivery services, Regional, Nationwide, Express documents
International, Express Parcels tps.
(b)
Logistic Division Services: This product merges one or more
components of a customer’s supply chain, including in bond
logistic, manufacturing materials management, production,
finished goods, warehousing, distribution, after-market services,
Reverse logistics, etc.
This is further expressed by our
significant presence in the Automotive industry.
(c)
Mail Division Services: Our mail division provides services for
collecting, sorting, transporting and distributing metro mails,
bulk and high volume mails, including letters, printed matter and
parcels, as well as for distributing addressed direct mail and
unaddressed mail, our long experience in the mail industry has
helped us become one of the world’s leading postal operators.
The marketing function in TNT core mail products focuses on the
following:
-
Capital market Express
-
The mail manager out integrated mail service
-
Metro delivery service – “metro priority” (time definite)
-
Mail advisory service working with national postal offices to
offer cross border mails services on global scale.
-
Bulk mail delivery service.
Therefore, the coming together of the two giants in the courier
industry has brought to your door steps the long awaited revolution and to
help their dear customers, stay out in front.
1.2
STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Players in today’s business environment are better informed about
the dynamic and strategies of getting a better chunk of the market share.
Companies especially those in the courier and logistics sub-sector of
Nigeria economy have graduated from the era of relying on only
marketing and the traditional customer services into exceptional customer
services.
In exceptional customer service enquiries and complain are
resolved now, being fast is not good enough. Furthermore, mechanism
has to be in place to not only meet customer’s expectations but exceed
them all pending issues must be resolved the one day and adhered to
religiously even in a situation where the final solutions are not ready.
Understanding the uniqueness of each customer’s requirement
offering a range of distribution of services that creates a single solution
specific to each customer’s operational needs is what TNT/IAS does best.
Companies that are doing well today have strived to make a lot of
infrastructure investments over the years, there by extending the gap
between the quality of services they render and those of their competitors.
Infrastructure may include human resources, more outlets or collection
centres, new innovation in the areas of IT, communication etc, there is no
doubt that in the courier and logistic sub-sector of the Nigeria economy,
companies doing today’s business with yesterday’s business ideas will not
be in business tomorrow. Now is the time to rise up to the challenges and
deliberately extend the gap that has been created between the quality of
services rendered by us and those of our competitors.
TNT, their services are designed to eliminate concerns associated
with packaging, handling and transportation of all categories of
consignment, ranging from bio-chemical, bio-medical, human diagnostic
specimen, as well as other temperature sensitive pharmaceutical products
as part of our customer’s satisfaction strategy, our packaging which is
designed to ensure express distribution, safe handling and priority
treatment of time service shipment of non-infectious human specimen,
like blood samples. In a bid to leave our footprints on the sand of history
of the courier industry. There is now keen competition and to compete
means to apply the marketing concept. Are these criticisms justified or
are they just a mere run down of the delivering industry because they are
making profit in an era of economic shrimp.
1.3
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
In view of the problems highlighted above, it is the aim of the study
to find out:
1)
Whether the customers of the above courier are satisfied with
the quality of delivering service they received.
2)
To find out the problems facing the courier.
3)
To determine the extent of which marketing of delivering
services have increased the volume of dispatch in TNT/IAS
of Nigeria Plc
4)
To appraise the contribution of marketing of delivering
services to the profitability of the courier.
5)
To formulate marketing strategies and make recommendation
that would be more effective in the marketing of delivering
services.
6)
To know the extent of the relationship between the courier
and its customers.
7)
1.4
To know if the courier has marketing department.
HYPOTHESES FORMULATION
Based on the problems and objectives of the study the following
hypotheses are put forward for testing.
1.
HO – The customers of courier (TNT/IAS) are satisfied.
HI – The customers of courier are not satisfied.
2.
HO – There is long delays in delivering goods and shipment of
consignment in (TNT).
HI – There is no long delays in delivering goods and shipment of
consignment in (TNT).
3.
HO – There is a lot of unfriendly attitudes exhibited by the staff
of (TNT/IAS) to its various customers.
HI – There is a lot of friendly attitudes exhibited by the staff of
(TNT/IAS) to its various customers.
4.
HO – Cordial relationship does not exist between the courier and
its various customers
HI – Cordial relationship exist between the courier and its
various customers.
1.5
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The researcher’s work would help to undispatch goods and
shipment into the delivering industry the marketing philosophy, which
helps organizations to achieve their desired objectives move effectively
and efficiently.
It will help to boost the image of the organization
(establishment and maintenance of good organizational image).
The study will strengthen the staff-customer relationship. It will
boost the loyalty and customer retention.
It will equally enable the
company to see their customer as king and direct its operations towards
the customer’s satisfaction.
The work will also serve as a reference for future research work
and add to the existing literature in a Nigeria situation, above all
marketing practitioners and students at graduate and undergraduate level
will find the research work useful.
1.6
SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The scope of this research work would be limited to Thomas
Nationwide Transportation/International Airline services (TNT/IAS) of
Nigeria Enugu. That is the study cover the personnel, customers of the
courier.
1.7
DEFINITION OF TERMS
The following terms used in this study should be taken to mean the
following:
MARKETING
Marketing according to ADIRIKA ERNEST OKEY EBUE BONA
CHUKS and NNOLIM DOROTHY (MRS) first published 1996 of
principles and practices of marketing II define marketing as a
management activities responsible for identifying, anticipating and
satisfying customer needs and wants through exchange process.
COURIER
Courier is defined as the business of receiving, collecting surplus
dispatch or shipment and notifies their dispatch to the forwarding agent in
the importer’s country and delivery services, time incentive documents.
Parcel and Logistic solution or planning services.
MARKETING CONCEPT
The marketing concept holds that, the key to achieving
organizational goals consist in determining the needs and wants of target
markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and
efficiently than competitors.
SERVICES
Services are separately identifiable tangible activities which
provide want satisfaction when marketed to customers and for industry
users and which are not necessarily tied to the sale of a product or another
service.
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