COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF PREFERENCE FOR ONLINE BOOKING AND BILLING BY CONSUMERS OF CONTRASTING DEMOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND

Abstract

The present study was conducted to investigate and assess the preference of male and female respondents for online booking of rail tickets, air (flight) tickets, hotels and the taxi (cabs) booking based on nine different criteria’s viz. satisfaction, convenience, time saving, cost effectiveness, compatibility, future preference, accessibility, acceptability and reliability. The majority (~51.1%) of respondents were young (18-40 years), had medium family size (5-8 members; ~47.8%) and qualified (~35.6% graduate and ~46.7% post graduate). These results revealed that ~52.9% of the total respondents who preferred online rail ticket booking were male, while ~47.1% were female. About 1/3rd (~33.3%) of male respondents consider online rail booking as highly convenient, while ~44.4% observe it as moderate and ~22.2% considered it as less convenient. Nearly ~44.4% of male respondents consider online rail booking as highly time saving method, while ~33.3% observe it as moderate and ~22.2% considered it as less time saving method. The distribution of respondents based on cost effectiveness of online booking revealed that ~33.3% of male and ~25.0% of female respondents considered online rail ticket booking as cost effective, while a large proportion observe it as low to moderate cost effective means of ticket booking. The study revealed that ~55.6% of male and ~50% of female respondents reported high compatibility for online rail ticket booking, while ~11.1 and 12.5% of male and female, respondents respectively had low compatibility. These results revealed that ~88.9% of male and 87.8% of female respondents would prefer online rail ticket booking in future.