(IV) Product Market Focus

Question naire Methodology

So to understand our group of customers better, we will be collecting information by carrying out survey with a set of questions. The company will target the samples under the condition given below:

Number of individuals: 100

Gender: both male and female

Age: all ages started from under 18 years old to 60 years old

Income: 8,000 baht to 150,000 baht above

Lifestyle: - people who always use the service of transportation- people who have hometown at outer Bangkok- people who love to travel - people who prefer to cut down the time spend on traveling

Place: This questionnaire will be distributed to the samples that fall into the lifestyle mentioned which is love to travel or usually travel to outer Bangkok, therefore the places appropriate to launch the questionnaire paper would be:- Silom BTS station/ Silom area: Many office workers and expats which

may be good samples for our survey because they have income that enable them to travel during their leisure time.

- Ratchada MRT station: many people work in this area and most of them come from other provinces therefore these people usually travel back to their hometown during festivals and holidays.

Education: Education cannot be set because with or without it doesn’t affect the usage of the service.

Occupation: Office people, student, business owner, office workers.

Sample of the Questionnaire

The following questions are listed to identify the market potential of the service of hi-speed train in Thailand. You will be asked to give your opinion and attitude. For each question please choose one and one alternative only unless instructed otherwise. The results will remain strictly confidential.

1. How many times per year do you travel to other provinces? Less than 3 times 4 – 8 times 9 – 12 times More than 12 times Never

2. Which provinces in Thailand have you visited?…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

3. What mode of transportation you use when traveling to other provinces? Please rank each mode from 1 to 5, 1 being most frequently used and 5 being least frequently used Airplane Personal car Train Boat Bus (or mini-van)

4. What factors affect your decision in choosing the mode of transportation when traveling to other provinces? (Can choose more than one) Safety Cost Level of service Speed Other, please specify……………………………………….….

5. Have you ever seen or heard about the service of hi-speed train in Thailand? Yes, (where)…………………………………………………… No

6. How do you feel if hi-speed train service is available across Thailand?:Extremely interested Interested NeutralIndifferent Extremely indifferent (please circle only 1)

7. What destinations/lines would you like to see the high speed train serving? (Can choose more than one) Pattaya Rayong Chiang-mai Chiang-rai Phuket Nakhon Ratchasima Chantaburi Khon-Kaen Nakhon Sri-thammarat

8. What type of services would you expect to receive on the high-speed train?(Can choose more than one) Online booking WiFi Music Clean Restrooms Foot spa “Train” attendant Massage Movie Food & Beverage service Business class Other, please specify…………………………………..

9. On a potential BKK-CMX trip what would be the level of acceptable price for a “round trip”? 500 – 1000 1001 – 2000 2001 – 3000 3001 – 4000

Demographic questions

Gender: Male Female

Age: under 18 years old 19 – 29 years old

30 – 39 years old 40 – 49 years old

50 -59 years old 60 years old above

Occupation……………………………………………………………

Income: less than 10,000 10,001 – 30,000 30,001 – 50,000 50,001 – 70,000 70,001 – 90,000 more than 90,000

Market Research Analysis

(Please refer to the appendix C for the 100 sample results)and

(appendix D for Pie chart analysis)

After the gather of the research samples, we have generated sets of pie-chart to lay out the big picture of the choices made by the samples. With 9 questions in total, we focus on questions which would allow us to extract information from our samples.

Patterns:- Using question 1 and question 3, we find out that people do travel to outer

provinces at least once each year, and the most commonly used mode of transportation is “airplane”. Might travel due to personal leisure, collective activities, or business trip.

Frequency- Question 1 also help us know that more than 50% of the sample population

travel more than 3 times a year

Destination- The common provinces people often travel to would be Chiang-mai and

Phuket, which these 2 provinces also ranked in the top two for Question 7 where this mean they would want to see high-speed train available in these cities allowing connections to other provinces.

Buying behavior - criteria for purchase- Samples cared about safety more being the indicator that would affect the

decision on choosing the mode of travel

Services- Even if the samples cared about safeties, they also aspect all sorts of services

they can get too. An acceptable price for an ideal round-trip to Chiang-mai is in the range of “1001 – 2000” baht, we can see this as people would rather travel by air if the price of high-speed train is the same as air travel.

Positioning

For domestic traveling, we have mentioned before that threats from substitute products are coming from tour bus, diesel-powered train, and different budget airlines. Unlike those services though, our company positioning ourselves with better quality than those budget airlines and in the mean time our company charges the passengers at a lower price than most of the airlines. The reason behind this is because our company wants our passengers to experience positively plus also more reachable for all classes of people. If we base on the rates for a one-way trip to Chiangmai, these would be the prices of each modes of transport:

- Tour bus 300 Baht ~ 500 Baht- Diesel-powered train 600 Baht ~ 800 Baht- Airplanes 900 Baht ~ 1,400 Baht- Our service 900 Baht ~ 1,100 Baht

We will be giving better quality service than the tour bus and diesel-powered train too and definitely this pricing has been base on the market research analysis which we find out that passengers would find pricing at this level is reasonable and acceptable.

High QualityHigh Quality

Low PriceLow Price High PriceHigh Price

Low QualityLow Quality

Our hi-speed train service

SRT – diesel-powered train

Budget airlines

Transport Co.,Ltd – tour bus

Strategy & Point of Difference

In general, there are lots of modes of transportation available for inbound travel in Thailand. As for train though, right now the trains that are running across Thailand providing the inbound travel are the diesel-powered trains. Aiming to provide a better lifestyle and differentiate the company’s service from the others, we are to provide inbound travel with the running speed minimum at 250km/h.

According to the market research analysis, we will be providing services around major cities in Thailand and make sure “Safety” would be our “Point of difference”. We will provide smooth rides and make sure the passengers know that traveling by high-speed train is safer than traveling by air.

Our company also sees that there are spaces available to improve the traveling habits of consumers in Thailand. With the high-speed traveling provided to the consumers, the company in return generated more time available for consumers. Instead of spending hours and hours all on traveling, the high-speed will enable consumers to reach destination faster than they would have expected. This allows the consumers to make use of the extra time generated by our high-speed service.

We all know that time is precious, and by generating extra time available to the consumers, this means that we are providing something precious to our consumers and this definitely would lead to a better lifestyle and nevertheless, the company would successfully differentiate themselves compared to the others. ,