Strategic Market Planning for Public Transit Systems (Part 3)
Submitted by G. Tomas M. Hult, Ph.D. |
Organizational Opportunities and Resources
Once the public transit organization has established its mission and goals, it must then take stock of its opportunities as well as the resources it has available to take advantage of those opportunities. There are three major considerations in assessing opportunities and resources in the public transit marketplace, including: environmental scanning, evaluating market opportunities, and understanding the organization’s capabilities and resources.
* Environmental scanning refers to the process of collecting information about forces in the public transit system’s marketing environment. Companies can derive substantial benefits from establishing an "environmental scanning (or monitoring) unit" within the strategic planning group or including line management in teams of committees to conduct environmental analysis. This is important because results of forecasting research show that even simple quantitative forecasting techniques outperform the unstructured intuitive assessments of experts.
* Market opportunities refer to the right combination of circumstances and timing that permit an organization to take action toward reaching a target market. For example, in Uppsala, Sweden the local public transit company identified a target market niche about five years ago that focused specifically on the needs of the elderly. In this case, the combination of higher gasoline prices coupled with the larger number of elderly wanting to be mobile in the local community led to specialized public buses for retired people. While only two "elderly" routes were established initially, resulting in longer travel times for the passengers since the buses had to serve a larger area of the community, the new public transit offering was a success. The elderly got a public transit system targeted at their needs that included buses customized to have easy on and off access, and the company increased their market share since most of these customers previously had used taxis to get around.
* Capabilities and resources A public transit organization’s capabilities relate to distinctive competencies that it has developed to do something well and efficiently. Some organizations use their competencies to create a competitive advantage over their rivals. A competitive advantage is created when a company matches its distinctive competencies to the opportunities it has discovered in the market.