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 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. 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. I 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. 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 II Solutions for Developing and Maintaining Public Bus Passengers in Ho Chi Minh City Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .VII Chapter 1 Introduction .1 Background and Motivation .2 Research Purposes, Objectives and Questions.3 Research Scope and Limitations.5 Definition of Terms.
4 Chapter 2 Literature Review.1 The Quality Service and Customer Satisfaction .1 Quality of service.2 Overview of Public Passenger Transport.2 Characteristics of the public passenger transport vehicles in urban.3 Quality of Public Bus Services .4 Status of Public Transport Passengers in Vietnam .5 Current Situation of Traffic in Ho Chi Minh City .1 Base network of road traffic.2 The puplic passenger transport in ho chi minh situation.3 Transport buses in HCM city. 20 Chapter 3 Research Methodology.2 Methods of Investigation and Interviews.4 Subject of Investigation and Interview .6 The Accuracy and Reliability of Data. 30 Chapter 4 Research Results and Analysis.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.2 Descriptive statistics on the factors affecting the satisfaction of customers who use the bus in ho chi minh.2 Assessing the Credibility of the Scale .3 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) .1 Exploratory factor analysis the independent variables.2 Exploratory factor analysis the dependent variable (Y).3 Adjusted research model. 40 Chapter 5 Conclusions and Recommendations.1 Responsiveness and assurance.1 Completing technical infrastructure for bus transport.2 Develop the bus with hight quality, easy to identify and friendly with environment.4 Improve management capacity.
Variables of SERVQUAL Scale. Situation of Traffic Safety HCMC. Summary of Research Methods. Descriptive Statistics Results on Age, Gender and Work.
Descriptive Statistics Results on Locations Usually Catch the Bus, Ride the Bus Frequency and Time Usually Catch the Bus. Descriptive Statistics on the Factors Affecting the Satisfaction of Customers Who Use the Bus in Ho Chi Minh City. Exploratory Factor Analysis Results of the Independent Variables EFA. Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis the Dependent Variable.
Summary Results of Regression. 40 VI Figures Figure 1. Map of Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnam. The Functional and Relationships Model of Customer Satisfaction.
Causal Model between Quality Perception of Customers with Customer Satisfaction. Volume of Passengers Carried by the Transport Industry in Vietnam (million passengers). Volume of Goods Transported by Transport Industry of Vietnam (Thousand tons). Volume of Goods Transport by Road of HCM City (thousand tons).
Volume of Passenger Transport by road of HCM City (million people). Volume of Goods Transport by Waterway of HCM City (thousand tons). Volume of Passenger Transport by Waterway of HCM City (million people). Volume of passenger transportation by public transport 2005-2009 ( million paseople).
40 VII Solutions for Developing and Maintaining Public Bus Passengers in Ho Chi Minh City Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Background and Motivation Ho Chi Minh City has an area of 2095 km2 and a population of 6.725 million, if including visitors), is a largest economic - commercial, industrial, cultural - science center and communication hub of Vietnam. It is divided into 24 districts. The average population density is 35,000 persons per km2. The districts within the city have a population density from 70 to 52 thousand persons per km2.
It has tropical monsoon climate near the equator, near the sea. In addition to prolonged heavy rain, Ho Chi Minh City also suffered the tide caused many road sections in the "central area" flooded from 1-2 hours. Morning tide appears to 6:00 am - 6:30 am is the time people go to work, so it is very easy to make the traffic jams in some routes. GDP in 2009 was about 340,000 billion VND ($18 billion), accounting for more than 20% of Vietnam GDP and annual GDP growth about 10%.
Ho Chi Minh City lies in the geographical coordinates 10°10' - 10°38' north latitude and 106°22' - 106°54' east longitude. In the Northern it borders province of Binh Duong, Tay Ninh province bordering North West, East and North-east province of Dong Nai, Southeast Ba Ria - Vung Tau province, west and southwest borders Long An and Tien Giang provinces. Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi nearly 1.730km road, located at the intersection between international maritime routes from North to South, from East to West, is at the heart of Southeast Asia. City Center to East coast 50 km as the crow flies.
This is a traffic hub linking the provinces in the region and the international gateway. With the largest port and airport systems in the country, Saigon Port with the operational capacity of 10 million tons per year, Tan Son Nhat Airport with dozens of lines just 7km from the city center. Ho Chi Minh City is located in the transition region between the Southeast and Mekong River Delta.Topography is a general form of lower from north to south and from east to west. It can be divided into three primary areas of terrain.
Highlands in the north - North East and part of North Western (north of Cu Chi, Thu Duc District and Northeast Nine District), with 1 wavy terrain type, average height of 10-25 m and interspersed with the high-altitude hilly to 32m, as the hill Long Binh (Nine District). Low-lying area is in the South - Southwest and Southeast of the city (Nine, Eight, Seven, Binh Chanh, Nha Be and Can Gio district). The region has an average elevation of around 1m and 2m highest and lowest 0.5m, distributed in the center of the City, including most of the old inner city, part of Two District, Thu Duc district, the entire Twelve District and Hoc Mon district. The region has an average elevation of 5-10m.
In general, the topography of Ho Chi Minh City is not complicated, but also quite diverse, with conditions for development in many aspects. Map of Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam Map Figure 1. Map of Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnam In the trend of international economic integration, particularly since become an official member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Vietnam has had many opportunities to expand business relationships and attracting foreign investors, forming many new industrial parks, promoting create new urban areas and megacities. Transportation of people in the metropolitan become difficult because of long traffic jams, traffic accidents increase.
Thereby, it leads to economic losses and environmental pollution. 2 To solve the traffic jam, there are many solutions, including important solutions to development of public passenger transport. If solving problems of public passenger transport will help the business activities of enterprises and other industries are also favorable, contributing to enhanced economic efficiency, reduce traffic accidents. The research of public passenger transport contribute to improving the quality of transport services, attract people to use public passenger transport, which propose solutions for maintaining and developing passengers of public bus in Ho Chi Minh city.
If we are not solving the field of public passenger transport it will lead to more economic damage on society caused by traffic jams. This is my motivation to choosing the topic "Solutions for Developing and Maintaining Public Bus Passengers of in Ho Chi Minh City.2 Research Purposes, Objectives and Questions Research purposes: Seeking solutions to maintain and develop the number of passengers traveling on buses in Ho Chi Minh, to contribute to promoting economic growth and stability. Research objectives: 3 goals 1. Status of public bus quality in Ho Chi Minh City.
The satisfaction of passengers using public bus system in Ho Chi Minh City. To propose solutions for maintaining and developing passengers of public buses in Ho Chi Minh, to contribute to promoting economic growth and stability. Research Questions: 3 questions 1. Quality of service status of public bus system in Ho Chi Minh City? 2.
The level of satisfaction of customers using public bus system in Ho Chi Minh City? 3. Solutions to maintain and develop the number of passengers traveling on buses in Ho Chi Minh City, to contribute to promoting economic growth and stability need to have? 1.3 Research Scope and Limitations Combining theoretical research with practical approaches through proper surveys to assess the situation, and maintain and develop passengers of public buses in Ho Chi Minh City in recent years.4 Research Procedure Based on the research purpose, the objectives were set up and concretize with research questions. The next step was reviewing the relevant literature on public bus quality to propose a theory framework for the research. Later the data was collected from In-depth interview and secondary data source.
The following step was to conduct qualitative analysis and make the comparisons to answer the research question. Finally, the conclusions and suggestions were made, marking the end of the research process.5 Definition of Terms Quality of service Quality of service is to provide excellent service compared to the expectations of customers (Zeithaml & Bitner, 1996). Customer satisfaction This is the response of consumers responding to the expectations (Oliver, 1997). Public passenger transport - Public transport passengers (VTHKCC) Passenger transportation in general and urban transportation in particular are the modes of service to satisfy the travel needs of the people that they themselves do.
In urban areas, public passenger transport is a component of the system of urban transportation and has close ties with other parts of that system. Urban transport keeps vital functions in the urban system. Its function is to ensure that the exchange between areas of the city to another (residential, industrial, commercial, services .