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MARKETING COURIER SERVICE IN ENUGU STATE

ABSTRACT

This research work attempted to investigate on the marketing of courier services in Enugu State with special reference to (TNT/IAS) Thomas Nationwide Transportation/International Airline Services of Nigeria which is the case study. Couriers are established to make profits.  Are these profit made at the expenses of the customers? Or is it as a result of the services provided by the courier.  It is the arm of this TNT/IAS of Nigeria market their courier services to their various customers.  In other words, is customer’s satisfaction what these couriers aim to achieve. To solve the research problem both primary and secondary data were collected.  The research instruments used in collecting the data were questionnaires and oral interview.  The respondents comprised of the couriers staff.  Customers of the courier. In organizing and presenting data collected, tables, frequencies, pie chart, histogram and percentages were used.  The various hypotheses were tested using the chi-square. Data analysis and interpretation gave the following findings: Marketing department is not established in all the courier’s branches. Thomas Nationwide transportation of Nigeria faced intense competition from other couriers. The interest charged by the courier are high. The customers know about the courier through advertising, friends employer and other means. Based on the findings the researcher recommends that: Marketing department should be established in all the courier’s branches to see that customers are satisfied. The courier should reduce its charges to its various customers. The conclusion of the study is that marketing of courier services should be done by TNT/IAS of Nigeria.  This is to increase the customers satisfaction and increase its profitability.

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, time-definite 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-2-Business 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)  To know if the courier has marketing department.

1.4       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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