Case Studies of Market Research for Three Transportation Communication Products

The following is one of a series of papers developed or produced by the Economic Analysis Division of the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center as part of its research project looking into issues surrounding user response and market development for selected Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Systems (IVHS) products or services. The project, sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Policy Development, was one part of FHWA's 1992 Institutional Issues Program entitled-" Public Acceptance and Markets for Various Consumer IVHS Services ". John O'Donnell of the Volpe Center and James March of FHWA served as Project Managers for their organizations. The objective of the Volpe Center project was to better understand factors affecting the development and deployment of selected advanced traveler information products and services (ATIS). The Center addressed the objective by examining the development of markets for selected ATIS-related products and services and reviewing factors affecting the public acceptance and user response to existing traffic information services. Deployment of many of the newly emerging and projected M-IS products and services will depend upon consumers purchasing and otherwise choosing to make use of advanced traffic and travel information products and services. Through four different projects, each with a distinctive approach to understanding consumer response and market demand, the Volpe Center explored the question: Given the opportunity to buy a product or subscribe to a service that promises to deliver traveler information, will the consumer perceive that there is sufficient benefit to be gained to justify the investment? The Volpe Center and FHWA jointly conducted a workshop in the Fall of 1992 to discuss issues involved with assessing the market for IVHS products and services. The objectives of the workshop were to help define a research program which would address measuring user acceptance and response to ATIS products and services and the role market research plays in understanding emerging markets for new or unknown products and services. The results of the workshop are reflected in the four research tasks initiated as part of this program and the seven papers which comprise it. The four task areas are summarized below. Copies of the papers will be provided upon request to the Volpe Center. The first project was designed to answer the question of how consumer response and market demand are measured in the commercial sector, where these market demand questions are fundamental to the survival and success of the business. This project …