VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY NGUYEN HONG HANH IMPACT OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT’S TICKET SERVICE QUALITY ON CUSTOMERS’ BEHAVIORAL INTENTION: A CASE OF BUS RAPID TRANSIT (BRT) LINE 1 (KIM MA-YEN NGHIA) IN HANOI CITY, VIETNAM MASTER’S THESIS BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Hanoi, 2019 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY NGUYEN HONG HANH IMPACT OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT’S TICKET SERVICE QUALITY ON CUSTOMERS’ BEHAVIORAL INTENTION: A CASE OF BUS RAPID TRANSIT (BRT) LINE 1 (KIM MA-YEN NGHIA) IN HANOI CITY, VIETNAM MAJOR: BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION CODE: 60340102 RESEARCH SUPERVISORS: DR. MAI ANH PROF. MOTONARI TANABU Hanoi, 2019 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1. Subjects of research.
Scope of research. Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction. Service Quality and Behavioral Intentions. Customer Satisfaction and Behavioral Intentions.
Customer Satisfaction on the relationship of Service Quality and Behavioral Intentions. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK, METHODOLOGY. RESULT ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS. Validity of measurement.
Descriptive statistics and correlation. Hypotheses tests and result analysis. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS. 46 APPENDIX 2 SPSS results.
53 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis has become a reality thanks to the kind support of many individuals. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all of them. Firstly, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisors Prof. Motonari TANABU of the MBA Faculty at Yokohama National University and Dr.
Mai Anh of the International Faculty at Vietnam National University for their continuous support and assistance whenever I encountered trouble or had questions. I am also highly indebted to all Professors and Doctors of the MBA Program at Vietnam – Japan University of Vietnam National University for their guidance and provision of necessary information regarding this research. I would like to express my special gratitude to officers of MBA Program for your patience and endless assistance during the implementation of this thesis, as well as for Department of Academics and R&D Promotion for consistent backup of the thesis’ execution. My appreciations and thanks also go to my colleagues and people who have willingly helped me to complete this thesis.
Nguyen Hong Hanh LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLES AND FIGURES LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. BRT Line 1 alignment. Service Quality model by Gronroos (1984). Service Quality model by Rust and Oliver (1994).
Service Quality Model by Cronin & Brady (2001). Expectation Confirmation Theory (Oliver, 1980). Theory of Planned Behavior. Conceptual research framework.
20 LIST OF TABLES Table 3.2 Demographic Profile of Respondents. Rotated Component Matrix. KMO and Bartlett's Test. Exploratory Factor Analysis and Reliability Estimated Results.
Descriptive Statistics and Correlations. Linear regression results. Summary of Hypothesis testing results .35 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABBREVIATIONS AFC: Automatic Fare Collection HPC: Hanoi People’s Committee DOT: Hanoi Department of Transport TRAMOC: Public Transport Operation and Controlling Center of Hanoi TRANSERCO: Hanoi Transport and Services Corporation IC Card: Integrated Chip Card FeliCa: Operating System for IC card invented and marketed by SONY BRT: Bus Rapid Transit MRT: Mass Rapid Transit (Urban Railway) TPB: Theory of Planned Behavior LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Rationality The role of public transport in mega city In a megacity, transport would be the most critical system among various urban structures.
The scale for demand growth in transport services is in line with a city’s growth, which is more than any other urban services like water, electricity, internet, etc. It is distributed by space, flow direction and time unevenly. In addition, this system also needs to take care of different kind of services which are dependent on individual choices. Therefore, this system has uncertainties in terms of demand and service quality (Morichi et al.
Public transport includes Mass Rapid Transit (MRT or Urban railway network), Bus, Bus rapid transit (BRT) and Taxi. However, there are problems in transport systems in developing megacities in Asia. Passenger mobility in these cities are high thanks to high economic growth and rapid urbanization. Meanwhile, the infrastructure is insufficient to respond to the growing demand.
Model share in public transport seems declining in comparison to private ones due to increasing affordability. In developing big cities like Hanoi which has the population of about 9.8 million as of 2018, the introduction of public transport like bus or BRT has been considered early approach to gradually provide incentives for passengers to stick more to public transport, decreasing private modes. Still, how to encourage more passengers to this system is always a headache to policymakers. Among many different policies and strategies to enforce the use of public transport, the improvement in service quality is always crucial matter.
Importance of Ticketing system in public transport operation The operation of public transport includes various services such as transport service, station services and ticketing services, etc. Ticketing system is considered one of important factors since passengers firstly interact with a transport system by its ticketing system. 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com The Government always discussed about how to provide incentive policies to assure the ridership for public transport and decreasing the private vehicles. There are PUSH and PULL policies, in which, PUSH focused on forcing measures such as imposing high tax or banning private vehicles in certain conditions, and PULL refers to those with more incentives to attract passengers such as improving the service quality.
As a part of the overall services of public transport, any improvements in ticketing service quality shall contribute to the realization of the Government’s goals. The introduction of new technology for public transport in Vietnam BRT Line 1 (Kim Ma – Yen Nghia) is the only BRT line in Hanoi so far, which was constructed by the support of World Bank to Hanoi City. This line started its operation on December 31, 2016 by TRANSERCO as operator. This line included 27 stations along the alignment, spreading through Giang Vo, Lang Ha, Le Van Luong, To Huu, Le Trong Tan and Quang Trung (Ha Dong District) streets.
BRT buses operate on their own dedicated lane which is marked on the road. Dedicated lane for BRT does not allow any other vehicles, this characteristic ensures the frequency of BRT which is designed as 30 minutes per round and 60 turns per day. This makes BRT differentiated to ordinary city bus because it will be faster by using dedicated lane. Source: TRAMOC Figure 1.
BRT Line 1 alignment 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com The Government of Vietnam is getting more and more concerned with introducing high technology in operation and management of public transport. New electronic ticket system applying smartcard and QR code tickets is expected to benefit the operation and management of public transport system such as bus services, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and future Mass Rapid Transit (MRT). Hence, Hanoi City has recently introduced the first electronic ticket system for BRT Line 1 (from Kim Ma to Yen Nghia) as a pilot to evaluate and understand the feasibility of this application in the context of Hanoi City. The experience of a new ticketing system which is mostly automatic and very advanced would cause different behavioral intentions of passengers in Hanoi City – who have been, for very long time, only familiar with manual paper-based system.
Due to characteristics of the local people, it is necessary to know how loyal the passengers would like to be thanks to the introduction of this new service. The research is focusing on ticketing service in public transport, i. the case of BRT line 1 in Hanoi City, Vietnam. In this system, the ticketing was changed from ordinary manual paper-based tickets to smartcard and QR code-based tickets.
Passengers, after purchasing the card/QR code ticket, can pass through the automatic gates at BRT stations by tapping on the validators/scanners. This research will inspect the impact of service quality aspects based on Brady & Cronin model (2001) with constructs mostly related to the ticketing service of BRT Line 1 (Proposed conceptual framework is explained later). Pilot application of ticket service for BRT Line 1 in Hanoi, Vietnam The pilot of ticketing system for BRT 01 was launched on October 10, 2018 to inspect the community’s reaction as well as seeing the system performance. The pilot was instructed by Hanoi People’s Committee, and organized and invested by a consortium of technology and operating companies including Viettel Telecom – the biggest network carrier in Vietnam, Hanoi Transport and Services Corporation (TRANSERCO) 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com – Hanoi’s major bus operator, MK Smart – a card-maker based in Vietnam, and Nhat Cuong Software.
The ticket system of BRT issues smart cards or QR code tickets and validate the tickets by the device at automatic gates installed inside BRT stations. The issuance is made by the customer’s online operation, or computer operation by ticket staff at ticket office in Kim Ma station. Since this is the transition period from manual ticketing system to automatic system, ticket staff is always allocated in stations to support passengers whenever passengers have problem in operation. According to the implementer and management organization (Hanoi Public Transport Control and Management Center (TRAMOC) under Hanoi Department of Transport), passengers are getting used to the operation of the system, but they have both positive and negative opinions on this new electronic system of ticketing.
It is the goal of municipal government to realize e-ticket system for the whole public transport network in Hanoi. However, its realization will be executed based on the evaluation’s result of the pilot system, and the subsequent improvement and implementation strategy will be discussed after the pilot. Thus, to understand how service quality of this ticket system would impact the behavioral intentions, i. the intention to reuse, recommend and to have positive word of mouth, is meaningful to managers and decision makers in Hanoi Department of Transport.
Advanced technology, or contactless technology as in this case, will be definitely the trend for application all over public transport system in Hanoi City in particular and in Vietnam in general. As a result, decision makers will always need to observe the quality of the service as well as the consequences it may cause to the passengers, since it is always the goal of the City that is to increase the ridership of public transport, and mitigating the number of private vehicles, contributing to easing the traffic congestion in such a crowded city like Hanoi. Hence, the research is not only theoretical meaningful because it would provide empirical evidence on the impacts of ticket service quality on behavioral intentions of 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com public transport’s customers, but also expected to imply practical managerial recommendations to operators, City’s decision makers and regulators on how to improve the service to realize incentive policies for public transport passengers. To understand and explain the relationship among service quality of ticketing system in BRT Line 1, customer satisfaction as well as customer behavioral intentions to repurchase, recommend and say positively about this service.
To inspect the impact of Customer satisfaction on the relationship between Service Quality and Behavioral Intention in both meditating and moderating roles. Research questions Main question: What are impacts of public transport’s ticket service quality on behavioral intentions of customers? Details: - Does Customer satisfaction have any impacts on the relationship between service quality and behavioral intentions? - Which service quality’s attributes affect the behavioral intentions of customers? 1. Subjects of research Subject of this research is the ticketing system being applied in BRT Line 1 (Kim Ma – Yen Nghia) in Hanoi City, which are using smartcard and QR Code for monthly pass and single journey ticket, respectively, with main focus on the quality of service provided to passengers.