(IV) Product Market Focus

Questionnaire 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.
 Speed Other, please
specify……………………………………….….
Sample of the Questionnaire
5. Have you ever seen or heard about the service of hi-speed
train in Thailand?
Yes, (where)……………………………………………………
The following questions are listed to identify the market No
potential of the service of hi-speed train in Thailand.
You will be asked to give your opinion and attitude. For 6. How do you feel if hi-speed train service is available across
each question please choose one and one alternative Thailand?:
only unless instructed otherwise. The results will Extremely
Interested Neutral
remain strictly confidential. interested
Extremely (please circle
Indifferent
indifferent only 1)

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 7. What destinations/lines would you like to see the high
speed train serving? (Can choose more than one)
2. Which provinces in Thailand have you visited? Pattaya Rayong Chiang-mai
…………………………………………………………………………………… Chiang-rai Phuket Nakhon
…………………….. Ratchasima
Chantaburi Khon-Kaen Nakhon
3. What mode of transportation you use when traveling to Sri-thammarat
other provinces? Please rank each mode from 1 to 5, 1 being
most frequently used and 5 being least frequently used 8. What type of services would you expect to receive on
Airplane Personal car Train the high-speed train?
Boat (Can choose more than one)
Bus (or mini-van) Online booking WiFi Music
Clean Restrooms Foot spa “Train”
4. What factors affect your decision in choosing the mode of attendant
transportation when traveling to other provinces? (Can choose Massage Movie Food & Beverage
more than one) service
Safety Cost Level of 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

High Quality

Our hi-speed train service

Budget airlines

Low Price High Price

SRT – diesel-powered train

Transport Co.,Ltd – tour bus

Low Quality

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.
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. ,