Specifics of the competitiveness of railway transport enterprise services and the factors of its formation

The article substantiates the expediency of analysing competitiveness at the level of services as the direct form through which the market advantages of an enterprise are manifested. It is proved that this approach is of particular importance for railway transport enterprises, since services are the carrier of consumer value through which clients assess timeliness, reliability, safety, accessibility, convenience of service, the quality of information support, and the ability of transportation to be integrated into a logistics chain. The paper generalizes scientific approaches to the interpretation of transport service competitiveness and уточнює the content of the category “competitiveness of services of railway transport enterprises.†It is proposed to interpret it as an integral characteristic reflecting the ability of an enterprise to create and provide services with higher consumer value in comparison with alternative transport solutions according to a set of quality, time, cost, safety, service, information, and logistics parameters, on the basis of the effective use of infrastructural, organizational-managerial, human, innovation, and digital potential. It is established that the sector-specific nature of the competitiveness of services of railway transport enterprises is determined by infrastructure dependence, high capital intensity, technological complexity, regulatory constraints, increased safety requirements, and the growing role of digital services. The factors shaping the competitiveness of services of railway transport enterprises are systematized according to their functional content, and the following blocks are identified: consumer-service, organizational-technological, economic, digital, and adaptive-market. It is proved that the competitiveness of services of railway transport enterprises is formed as an integrated result of the interaction of internal and external conditions. Its improvement requires the coordination of transportation process quality, economic feasibility of service provision, organizational and technological support, digital tools of customer interaction, and the enterprise’s ability to respond to market changes. The practical significance of the obtained results lies in the formation of a theoretical basis for the further development of methodological tools for assessing and managing the competitiveness of services of railway transport enterprises in the digital economy.