Solutions for Developing and Maintaining Public Bus Passengers in Ho Chi Minh City : Masters thesis of Business Administration

MEIHO UNIVERSITY

Graduate Institute of Business and Management

MASTERS THESIS

Solutions for Developing and

Maintaining Public Bus Passengers

in Ho Chi Minh City

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Masters of Business Administration

Advisor: Dr. Chih-Shing Tau

Graduate Student: Do Viet Khanh

December, 2010

I

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

After a period of study, research and investigation to collect information, the thesis:

"Developing and maintaining Solutions for Public Bus Passengers in Ho Chi Minh City" has

been successfully implemented. I would like to send many thanks to great teachers, family,

friends and colleagues, who willingly helped me in the process to implement the topic. They

are:

Dr. Chih-Shing Tau, who guides me from the first step of outline to the end to finish

this thesis. Dr. Tau also encouraged and helped me a lot in the investigation to collect data

and create the basis for my research in order to better collect and process data;

Dr. Le Cao Thanh and Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry, my Vietnamese

support through the whole studying process;

Meiho University and Graduate Institute of Business Management, which has created

very good conditions for my study and research to get this good result;

Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport, which helped me thoroughly understand

the operation of buses in the area as well as other secondary data;

Finally, I sincerely thank Ho Chi Minh City residents, who directly answered

interviews questions, and contributed to the research results.

II

Solutions for Developing and Maintaining

Public Bus Passengers in Ho Chi Minh City

ABSTRACT

A key element in achieving sustainability’s triple-bottom-line goals is a good public

transport system. Many studies have shown the relationship between effective public

transport services and sustainable development at the city level. However, in Vietnam so far,

there have been just a few researches on this issue. The purpose of this study is to introduce

and use a SERVQUAL framework and exploratory factor analysis, linear regression

analytical methods to measure public transport services within a master-planned community

in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. The stakeholder survey findings suggest a wide gap between

community expectations of public transport services and the actual service quality provided.

This was consistent across all commuter groups. In particular, the findings have been useful

in shedding broad light on the areas where improvements are needed most; i.e.

responsiveness, assurance, tangibles, convenience and reliability of services, to encourage

greater use of public transport within the community level.

Keywords: Service Quality, Public Transport, Bus Passengers, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

III

Solutions for Developing and Maintaining

Public Bus Passengers in Ho Chi Minh City

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .........................................................................................................I

ABSTRACT..............................................................................................................................II

Contents ................................................................................................................................. III

Tables ................................................................................................................................. VI

Figures ................................................................................................................................VII

Chapter 1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1

1.1 Background and Motivation ........................................................................................... 1

1.2 Research Purposes, Objectives and Questions................................................................ 3

1.3 Research Scope and Limitations..................................................................................... 3

1.4 Research Procedure......................................................................................................... 4

1.5 Definition of Terms ........................................................................................................ 4

Chapter 2 Literature Review..................................................................................................... 5

2.1 The Quality Service and Customer Satisfaction ............................................................. 5

2.1.1 Quality of service..................................................................................................... 5

2.1.2 Customer satisfaction............................................................................................... 8

2.2 Overview of Public Passenger Transport...................................................................... 11

2.2.1 General concept. .................................................................................................... 11

2.2.2 Characteristics of the public passenger transport vehicles in urban. ..................... 12

2.3 Quality of Public Bus Services ..................................................................................... 13

2.4 Status of Public Transport Passengers in Vietnam ....................................................... 14

2.5 Current Situation of Traffic in Ho Chi Minh City ........................................................ 15

2.5.1 Base network of road traffic. ................................................................................. 16

2.5.2 The puplic passenger transport in ho chi minh situation. ...................................... 17

2.5.3 Transport buses in HCM city................................................................................. 20

Chapter 3 Research Methodology........................................................................................... 25

IV

3.1 Research Progress ......................................................................................................... 25

3.2 Methods of Investigation and Interviews...................................................................... 26

3.2.1 Survey methodology. ............................................................................................. 27

3.2.2 Interview method. .................................................................................................. 28

3.3 Research Model ............................................................................................................ 28

3.4 Subject of Investigation and Interview ......................................................................... 29

3.5 Data Collection ............................................................................................................. 29

3.6 The Accuracy and Reliability of Data .......................................................................... 30

3.7 Analytical Methods....................................................................................................... 30

Chapter 4 Research Results and Analysis............................................................................... 31

4.1 Descriptive Statistics..................................................................................................... 31

4.1.1 Descriptive statistics on gender, age, occupation, income, location usually

catch the bus, the livel of use of the bus and the time often go bus................................ 31

4.1.2 Descriptive statistics on the factors affecting the satisfaction of customers who

use the bus in ho chi minh............................................................................................... 33

4.2 Assessing the Credibility of the Scale .......................................................................... 33

4.3 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA).............................................................................. 34

4.3.1 Exploratory factor analysis the independent variables. ......................................... 34

4.3.2 Exploratory factor analysis the dependent variable (Y). ....................................... 38

4.3.3 Adjusted research model........................................................................................ 39

4.4 Linear Regression ......................................................................................................... 40

Chapter 5 Conclusions and Recommendations....................................................................... 43

5.1 Conclusions................................................................................................................... 43

5.1.1 Responsiveness and assurance............................................................................... 43

5.1.2 Tangibles................................................................................................................ 43

5.1.3 Convenience........................................................................................................... 43

5.2 Recommendations......................................................................................................... 44

5.2.1 Completing technical infrastructure for bus transport. .......................................... 44

5.2.2 Develop the bus with hight quality, easy to identify and friendly with

environment. ................................................................................................................... 44

5.2.3 Improve quality...................................................................................................... 45