La percepción de los usuarios potenciales para el desarrollo de estrategias de mercadeo para Tren Urbano y ATI

Abstract

Puerto Rico is experiencing the construction of an unprecedented infrastructure project, the “Tren Urbano”. Behind this ambitious project there is a strategic vision focused on changing the lifestyle of the Puerto Rican citizens, the implementation of an efficient multimodal transportation system. The goal of this project is to deal with the frequent traffic congestions, a problem that affects the quality of life. To some degree, this problem is related to the dependency on the usage of the private automobile as the main transportation medium. The “Tren Urbano” project offers a genuine alternative to address this difficulty, because it will complement the current public transportation system, creating the concept known as the Integrated Transportation Alternative system. In order to ensure the success of the system it is important to motivate and persuade the system’s potential riders to use it as their main transportation medium. This research employs a methodology that follows the marketing research process using a survey as the main component. This survey uses Stated Preference Techniques that focus on compiling the preferences of the persons surveyed based on several transportation situations presented. For the development of this research the Hato Rey and Roosevelt stations of the “Tren Urbano” were selected because they are part of the urban segment of the system’s alignment and because of their proximity to the economic heart of the island, known as the Golden Mile. These conditions led to the identification of a potential market which is composed of the employees in the zone that use their private automobile to travel to their work places. Therefore, throughout this research, marketing strategies based on the perception of the potential riders were developed in order to fulfill the stated objective.