An experimental Customer Satisfaction Index to evaluate the performance of city logistics services

AbstractFreight transport in urban areas entails benefits (i.e. free access to goods when needed), but also negative externalities (environmental, social and transportation impacts). In response to these problems, the concept of city logistics emerged, for the purpose of planning, organizing, coordinating and controlling physical and information flows in order to find a compromise between efficient freight distribution in urban areas and protection of the environment. A typical city logistics initiative is the Urban Freight Consolidation Centre (UFCC), the benefits of which are significant. Its financial issues though represent a huge problem for public administrations. However, a large customer network, comprising retailers participating in the initiative, could make the UFCC a self-financing scheme. The key to expanding the scheme is closely linked with marketing campaigns and customer care. Therefore, customer care analysis represents an important tool in developing UFCC schemes. In this paper, a new C...

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