Market Research Services
Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) is committed to providing quality service, creating a positive image for
transit, ensuring that transit is recognized as a value to the community and increasing ridership. CATS recognizes
the importance of understanding how its customers as well as non-riders rate its customer service, service
performance, and other aspects of the transit system. Conducting market research studies is one way to gain a
measurement of these ratings. CATS uses market research survey results to compare performance ratings on
service elements to importance ratings on those same elements to give CATS further insight into each market
segment's perceptions.
CATS wants to conduct a market research study each year or every other year to measure customer and non-rider
perceptions of CATS and public transit, importance and performance of customer service elements, and other
public transit issues in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area. The customer and non-rider surveys will be almost
identical, with differences serving to ensure that the questions are relevant to the respective group and/or to address
additional issues per group. Using similar surveys will allow for comparisons between the two segments.
