Cargo Service Tracker (CST)


How does a cargo agent decide which airline to choose for a particular shipment? How is your airline’s service perceived compared to competitors’?

What?

  • The CST is an annual syndicated telephone survey of freight forwarders, which collects and analyses customer feedback on reasons for airline choice and service perceptions and drivers.
  • The results provided include comparisons with major competing carriers (individually named and identified, whether participating to the survey or not) and over time.

Where?

19 countries/locations were surveyed in the 2007 edition of the CST:

  • Brazil and the US (split  among the top 8 regions: ATL, DFW/IAH, LAX, MIA, NYC, ORD and SFO) in the Americas
  • France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain and the UK in Europe
  • China, Hong-Kong, India, Japan and Thailand in Asia
  • South Africa and the UAE in Africa/Middle East

Other countries/locations are available upon request.

When?

  • The CST is a yearly survey. Fieldwork takes place in late spring. Reports are delivered in the fall.

How?

  • Participating airlines meet early in the year to discuss the questionnaire (2008 user meeting is tentatively scheduled on March 7 in Rome, right after the World Cargo Symposium).
  • Between 10 and 35% of freight forwarders are interviewed by phone in each country/location.

Why?

  • The CST provides high quality benchmarking data at an affordable price thanks to syndication. Participants get to know where their strengths and weaknesses are, so as to focus their efforts on the improvements most meaningful to their customers. Competitors are named and identified individually throughout the report. Their list includes all major players in the given country location, whether participating or not to the survey.
  • Since the CST comes out every year in a comparable format, participants can track both their competitors’ moves as well as the effectiveness of their own action plan.

Who?

  • The CST is well suited for any cargo carrier eager to understand how to grow its business most efficiently through better knowledge of its customers… and competitors!
  • This includes smaller players: thanks to CargoIS data, IATA can target effectively respondents who have used any given carrier no matter how marginal, and get a meaningful number of ratings for it.

The IATA Advantage

  • As the organization officially representing more than 250 of the world's airlines, IATA is at the forefront of all commercial aviation activities, including airline satisfaction surveys. It is unchallenged in terms of depth of industry expertise worldwide.
  • Because of its status, IATA acts as an independent consultant and provides unbiased analysis, plans and recommendations in a unique range of dedicated cargo products: CargoIS, CST, cargo consulting...
  • Thanks to CargoIS data, IATA can target respondents to ensure a meaningful number of ratings for subscribers, as well as weigh results by tons shipped to give a more accurate picture of the market.

For more information, please contact us at: businessinsight@iata.org