Comparison of customer relationship management systems perceptions among container shipping companies in Vietnam and Taiwan

Trang 1

African Journal of Business Management Vol 5(15), pp 6515-6526, 4 August, 2011

Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJBM

DOI: 10.5897/AJBM11.605

Full Length Research Paper

Comparison of customer relationship management systems perceptions among container shipping

companies in Vietnam and Taiwan

Yi-Chih Yang* and Hoang Hai Nguyen

Department of Shipping and Transportation Management, National Kaohsiung Marine University, No 142, Haijhuan

Road, Nanzih District, Kaohsiung City, 81143, Taiwan

Accepted 28 April, 2011

The goal of this study is to compare perceptions of customer relationship management (CRM) among Vietnamese and Taiwanese maritime transport service providers, and specifically container shipping companies The study uses the t-test and factor analysis to analyze major differences in CRM usage between the shipping industries in Vietnam and Taiwan, and determines the perceived importance of CRM services employing Importance Performance Analysis The study finds that perceptions of CRM are clearly different in the two countries due to their divergent socioeconomic backgrounds Significant differences between the application of CRM by the shipping industries in the two countries existed in connection with four major factors (e-commerce marketing, interactive marketing, contact marketing, and customer service marketing) It is concluded that shipping companies should improve their computerized CRM systems in order to collect and analyze valuable marketing data from their customers, which will enable sales personnel and customer service staff to make appropriate decisions, improves service quality, and create greater value for customers in the highly competitive maritime transport business

Key words: Maritime transport, customer relationship management, importance perfomance analysis

INTRODUCTION

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a concept

that enables an organization to tailor specific products or

services to each individual customer In its most

sophis-ticated form, CRM may be used to create a personalized,

one-to-one experience that will give the individual

customer a sense of being cared for, thus opening up

new marketing opportunities based on the preferences

and history of the customer (Wilson et al., 2002) CRM

also represents a customer-focused business strategy for

increasing customer satisfaction and customer loyalty by

offering more responsive and customized service to each

customer

A customer's relationship with a shipping company

involves prices, services, scope of service, schedule,

customer relations, company history, convenience, brand

name, and value-added services There will be no

signifi-cant differences between two shipping companies within

*Corresponding author E-mail: hgyang@mail.nkmu.edu.tw

the same strategic alliance group for a customer consi-dering the factors of price, service, scope of service, schedule, and convenience As a consequence, the main distinguishing factors for customers comprise company history, brand name, customer relations, and value-added services (Wong, 2007); in particular, customer relation-ships are considered to be an important marketing tool facilitating customer retention, development of potential customers, and enhancement of corporate competitive advantage

While Vietnam and Taiwan are both located in the Asia-Pacific region, there were many significant macroeco-nomic differences between two nations in 2009 (JETRO,

2010) With regard to population, Vietnam had 87.2 million

people, while Taiwan had 23.2 million; in terms of geographic area, Vietnam occupied 331,689 km2, while Taiwan occupied 36,191 km2; in terms of GNP, Vietnam had a GNP of 1,060 dollars, while Taiwan had a GNP of 16,432 dollars; in terms of balance of trade, Vietnam had 12.8 billon dollars, while Taiwan 30.7 billon dollars; with regard to balance of payments, Vietnam had 7.1 billon

Trang 2

6516 Afr J Bus Manage

dollars, while Taiwan had 42.5 billion dollars; and with

regard to foreign currency reserves, Vietnam held 16.4

billion dollars, while Taiwan held 348.1 billion dollars In

summary, while Vietnam is larger than Taiwan in terms of

both area and population, Taiwan is considerably stronger

than Vietnam from a macroeconomic perspective In view

of the different levels of economic development of

Vietnam and Taiwan, the chief motivation of this study is

to determine whether there are any significant differences

in their maritime transport service providers' perceptions

of CRM

Thanks to its strong economic development

environ-ment and vigorous export capability, Vietnam constitutes

a potential trading partner and place of investment for

multinational enterprises based in the U.S.A, Japan,

Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore, etc However, the majority

of foreign enterprises and foreigners are still unfamiliar

with this socialist state thanks to the scarcity of data and

documents available for reference As a consequence,

CRM knowledge and information connected with

mari-time transport in Vietnam is a worthwhile issue for both

academic researchers and practical workers

There have been few recent studies concerning CRM

in maritime transport The following two papers assume a

shipping company perspective: Fakhredaei (2007)

pro-poses and tests a series of hypotheses concerning

factors influencing adoption of CRM technology at the

organizational level in Iranian shipping companies; Wong

(2007) argues that CRM and the internet, together with

application systems, have impacted shipping operations

in many ways In another paper from the perspective of

freight forwarders, Lu and Shang (2007) evaluate the

crucial dimensions of CRM from the point of view of

freight forwarders in Taiwan In addition, some studies

have focused on individual countries For instance,

Minami and Dawson (2008), who defined CRM as the

use of IT-based relationship development programs,

conducted a survey project involving the retail and

service industry in Japan in order to test CRM-related

hypotheses The current paper makes comparisons

between countries with different states of economic

development, where one is an advanced country and the

other is a developing country, and one of the purposes of

the study is to determine whether there are any

signi-ficant differences in perceptions of CRM in the shipping

company arising due to economic status

CRM is often associated with the use of information

technology to implement relationship marketing strategies

(Payne and Frow, 2004) A properly integrated IT system

can significantly improve customer service by providing

accurate shipment data for both the company and

cus-tomer, and an integrated IT-based CRM program ensures

a more efficient and effective quoting and

communi-cations system for sale departments and beyond Gander

(2009) CRM systems facilitate collection and analysis of

customer data, resulting in more effectively managed

customer interactions For example, the Anchor CRM 1.2

software is used by Yang Ming line (YML), and has

helped YML increase sales This application gathers detailed information about YML’s customers through an updating system, and also enables service units to track customer preferences and requirements

This study has the following goals: first, to determine CRM assessment factors for shipping companies through

a review of literature concerning CRM and interviews with managers in representative shipping companies in Vietnam and Taiwan Second, to compare the CRM systems of shipping companies in Vietnam and Taiwan, using the t-test and factor analysis to assess perceptions

of CRM in the shipping industries of the two countries Third, to identify the strengths and weaknesses of CRM implementation, by employing important performance analysis (IPA), and provide strategies for enhancing strengths and remedying weaknesses

RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a widely-implemented strategy for managing a company’s interac-tions with customers, clients and sales prospects It involves the use of technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service and technical support The information and communi-cation technology components of a comprehensive CRM strategy are integrated into CRM systems that enable the automation of business processes in the area of mar-keting, sales and service in order to build and maintain profitable long-term customer relations (Peppard, 2000) Effective management of customer information is increasingly crucial in CRM

Customer information processes consists of two sequential aspects: customer data acquisition and data interpretation, which transforms the data into customer information (Campbell, 2003) CRM can enable a company's marketing department to identify and target their best customers, manage marketing campaigns, and generate quality leads for their sales teams Furthermore, CRM may help an organization to improve telephone sales, account, and sales management by optimizing information sharing among multiple employees and streamlining existing processes For example, the Marina Logistics Company derives much of its annual profit from logistics services provided to the Honda Vietnam Company Marina puts considerable effort into managing this customer, and examines and reviews all activities with them (including customs brokerage, consolidation, full container loads, and less than container loads, etc.,)

in order to compare these activities with those of other shipping companies

For liner shipping companies, CRM services can improve coordination and communication among ship management, terminal operation, vehicle arrangement, and infrastructure management Additionally, CRM

Trang 3

encompasses interactions and activities at all nodes in

the context of policies, regulations, and contract

require-ments Liner carriers must deal with business items

including service scope, schedules, customer

relation-ships, company history, convenience, brand names, and

value-added services Since coverage and schedule

differences have been reduced by the formation of liner

consortiums, a customer selecting a carrier must look at

such other elements as relationships, company history,

brand names, value-added services, and, most

impor-tantly, what services a carrier provides that others do not

and cannot CRM can thus provide a competitive

advantage for carriers in the shipping industry (Wong,

2001)

CRM may also seek to minimize shipping operating

costs in order to generate maximum profits Overall costs

for a typical shipping company chiefly consist of ship

operation and corporate management costs, each of

which accounts for roughly 50% of total costs

(Fakhredaei, 2007) Ship operation costs include ship

finance, ship crewing, insurance, ship administration,

engineering, crew management, chartering, bunker costs,

repair and maintenance, ship supplies, ports and dues,

and inspection, etc Corporate management costs include

corporate management and administration, sales and

marketing, accounting, documentation, information

sy-stems and communications, public relations, legal affairs,

claims, rental, and real estate, etc According to Swift

(2001), the many benefits that companies can gain from

CRM include lower cost of recruiting customers, no need

to recruit so many customers to preserve a steady

volume of business, reduced cost of sales, higher

customer profitability, increased customer retention and

loyalty, and evaluation of customer profitability Moreover,

Zeng et al (2003) argued that internet-enabled software

applications such as ERP, e-commerce applications,

CRM packages, and enterprise portable applications

have enabled businesses to improve their process, adopt

best of breed practices, slash costs and improve

efficiency

To review the current status of CRM use in the

shipping company, this paper conducted interviews with

personnel at three representative shipping companies in

Taiwan (Wanhai, Evergreen, and Yang Ming Line) and

two representative shipping companies in Vietnam

(Vinalines and Vosco) The study discovered that, due to

the competitive and mature nature of Taiwan's maritime

market, Taiwan's shipping companies use various CRM

systems (including interactive marketing, sales

auto-mation, customer service and support) to communicate

with their customers Banner advertisements are one of

the dominant forms of online advertising For example,

the Evergreen Line website contains the advertising

banner “Evergreen, guarding our green earth." Customer

feedback consists of customers' responses concerning

service quality For example, in the "Cargo claim" section

of the Yang Ming Lines website, customers can send

Yang and Nguyen 6517

cargo claim messages or information to the Yang Ming Lines website, and the cargo claims department will handle cargo claims cases and customer contact In summary, the CRM concept and systems already prevail

at most shipping companies in Taiwan (Table 1)

In contrast, both of the leading shipping companies in Vietnam only engage in banner advertising and only pro-vide customer service at contact centers, but only limited use of CRM applications It appears that a majority of Vietnam's shipping companies neglect the importance of CRM, and, under the inflexible mechanisms dictated by state ownership, attempt to establish relationships with their customers through traditional marketing techniques, such as low-freight strategies seeking to retain existing customers and giving special service to large and loyal customers Vietnamese shipping companies must increase their use of CRM in the near future if they are to meet their customers' expectations in the highly compe-titive maritime shipping market, however In this regard, Vietnamese shipping companies can learn valuable and constructive CRM knowledge from their Taiwanese counterparts, including the use of CRM software to manage customer information, application of the CRM concept to management of customers and maintenance

of good relations with customers, and attraction of customers using company services For instance, contact management systems can help companies and individuals to manage and organize their contacts, and manage customer details and customer interactions The

“service calling information” section of the Wan Hai line website is an example of the application of contact management Vietnamese shipping companies should therefore use CRM functions to perform interactive marketing, automate sales, and provide customer service and support, allowing them to serve their customers in a more effective and efficient way

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Research procedures

This paper seeks to compare perceptions of CRM among Vietnamese and Taiwanese maritime transport service providers using the t-test, factor analysis, and IPA The study survey focuses specifically on shipping companies among maritime transport service providers The questionnaire design and research methods are described further

Step 1: Questionnaire design

To assure the appropriateness of questionnaire content, a preli-minary questionnaire survey was conducted in both Vietnam and Taiwan The content of the final questionnaire was confirmed after several preliminary tests and discussion with some professional shipping industry personnel

Since the purpose of this study was to assess perceptions of CRM in Vietnam and Taiwan from the perspective of maritime service providers, rather than from the perspective of customers, the respondents were therefore mainly sales representatives

Trang 4

Table 1 Comparison of CRM use at Vietnamese and Taiwanese shipping companies

√ means the company provides the service in question

(including sale managers, directors, and staff) at shipping

companies

Step 2: Reliability and validity test

In the process of determining the questionnaire items, it was crucial

to ensure the validity of their content, which is an important

mea-sure of a survey instrument’s accuracy The assessment of content

validity typically involves a systematic review of the content to

ensure that it includes everything it should and does not include

anything it should not A reliability test was conducted to examine

whether the selected CRM factors were valid

Step 3: T-test analysis

The t-test is most appropriate when the values for the sample

population are expected to have an approximately normal

distri-bution (which implies that the t-distridistri-bution becomes closer to the

normal distribution as degrees of freedom increase) T-values may

be calculated from the values of the sample population ( Gosset,

1980)

The t-test was applied in this paper to examine whether there are

the significant differences in CRM factors between the shipping

industries of Vietnam and Taiwan

Step 4: Factor analysis

Factor analysis is a technique used to reduce a large set of

variables to a smaller set of underlying factors, detecting the

pre-sence of meaningful patterns among the original variables, and

extracting the crucial dimensions Principle component analysis with

VARIMAX rotation was employed to identify key dimensions in this

paper

Step 5: Importance performance analysis (IPA)

The final step involved use of importance-performance analysis

(IPA) IPA was proposed by Martilla (1977), and was termed action

grid analysis (AGA) by Blake et al (1978) Rather than just an analytical methodology, it is an implicit theory of behavior, and was introduced as a means of understanding clients’ needs and desires

so as to make good management decisions regarding how to respond to them IPA can facilitate the derivation of reasonable conclusions concerning modification of attribute performance in order to effect improvements such as increased profit or customer satisfaction

IPA was constructed based on mean importance/performance values, and provides insight for management recommendations based on each attribute's position in one of the four quadrants: keep up the good work, concentrate here, low priority and possible overkill The intersection of the importance/performance axes is a critical aspect of IPA, and can potentially impact interpretation Some IPA studies determine the intersection based on the mean value of importance and performance of observed attributes (Black

et al., 1978) However, another study has shown that this place-ment can lead to the problems with interpretation, and recommends mean centering of the importance/performance scale This paper

adopts the suggestion of Black et al (1978) of locating the

intersection of axes based on the mean values when setting up an IPA graph for the shipping industries in Vietnam and Taiwan

Assessment factors

According to Dickie (2006), customer relationship management is a broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy for managing and nurturing a company’s interactions with clients’ and sales prospects

It involves the use of technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes, principally sales activities, but also the functions of marketing, customer service, and technical support The overall goals of CRM are to find, attract, and win new customers, nurture and retain existing customers, entice former customers back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and customer service

Once simply a label for a category of software tools, CRM today generally denotes a company-wide business strategy embracing all customer-facing departments and even beyond When CRM implementation is effective, people, processes, and technologies work in synergy to increase profitability and reduce operational costs

Trang 5

CRM systems can provide enterprises with an integrated view of

prospects and customers, and provide a channel for interactive

marketing, sales automation, and customer service and support

(Wilson, 2005) This study believes that the comparison of CRM

functions at Vietnamese and Taiwanese shipping companies can

provide some good lessons for each of these countries, and can

also reveal the advantages and disadvantages of application of

CRM functions by shipping companies

Companies have a need for CRM functionality to support the

marketing, sales, order, production, and service process Perrson

(2004) stated that CRM functionality can be divided into three main

categories, which are, marketing automation, sales force

automa-tion, and customer service and support Sales automation includes

the support of all sales activities associated with individual contact,

and the focus of so-called computer aided selling systems is on

supporting the internal and external sales process (for example,

tracking customer interaction, contact management system, order

management system and sales forecasting system) through

information and communications technology (Xu et al, 2002;

Ahearne et al, 2007; Torggler, 2009)

Interactive marketing refers to the evolving trend in marketing

whereby marketing has moved from a transaction-based effort to a

conversation The definition of interactive marketing comes from

John Deighton at Harvard, who states that interactive marketing is

the ability to address the customer, remember what the customer

says, and address the customer again in a way that illustrates that

the company remembers what the customer has told it (Deighton,

1996) Electronic commerce and catalog companies commonly

make use of order management software

This software facilitates the entering of orders, both via a

web-site shopping cart or a data entry system (for orders received via

phone and mail), and typically captures proprietary customer

information and account level information Credit verification and

payment processing is performed to check validity and/or

availa-bility of funds Once entered, valid orders are processed for

warehouse fulfillment, such as picking/packing/shipping (Leeuwen,

2009)

Many benefits can be derived from customer service and support,

and companies are increasingly realizing that the quality of their

customer support has great influence on their customer

relationships (Xu et al, 2002) Customer service and support (CSS)

is the part of a company's customer relationship management

(CRM) department that interacts with a customer for their

imme-diate benefit, including components such as the contact center, the

help desk, call management system and the customer

self-service(Williams, 2006; Zeng et al., 2003)

To identify the feasibility of CRM assessment dimensions and

factors for shipping companies, this paper conducted personal

interviews with several specialists involving CRM tasks in

Kaohsiung, Taiwan from June to August in 2009 (these personnel

were affiliated with Yang Ming Line, Wan Hai Line, Evergreen,

OOCL, APL, Han Jin, OOCL logistics and Yes Logistics) The CRM

assessment factors that were ultimately confirmed are shown in

Table 2

Data collection

Two of the aforementioned recent articles (Fakhredaei, 2007; Lu

and Shang, 2007) analyzed CRM attributes from perspective of

maritime service providers, and thereby extended the scope of

CRM investigation from customers to the service provider In

addition, sale representatives at shipping companies are

consi-dered to be frontline personnel because they are responsible for

communicating and negotiating with customers The opinions of

sale representatives can therefore be considered to be a valuable

means of investigating consumer behavior As a consequence, the

survey questionnaires, which were distributed by mail, e-mail, and via personal interviews, were aimed at specialists in the sale departments of shipping firms

Data collection from two different countries proved to be a some-what difficult task This paper employed two methods of acquiring useful data: The first was to obtain the names of shipping companies from lists maintained by shipping organizations, and the other was to rely on personal relationships by asking experts at shipping companies and forwarders for information In particular, when surveying companies in Vietnam, since the majority of Vietnamese shipping companies were unfamiliar with CRM, it proved to be quite time-consuming to explain the definitions and characteristics of CRM to the questionnaire respondents

The survey was conducted using Vietnamese- and Chinese-language questionnaires translated by researchers who are native speakers of the respective languages The framework of the questionnaire consisted of three parts addressing demographic information, degree of importance, and degree of satisfaction respectively The respondents consisted chiefly of personnel at shipping companies We collected data from shipping organizations

in Kaohsiung in Taiwan and Hanoi and Haiphong in Vietnam by mail, e-mail, and personal interviews from September to November

in 2009 The respondents were selected by random sampling among the aforementioned Vietnamese and Taiwanese container shipping companies A total of 100 questionnaires were administered to 50 personnel at companies in Vietnam and Taiwan respectively by e-mail, personal interview or telephone interview The questionnaire used a five-point Likert scale to rate degree of importance and degree of satisfaction; with regard to degree of importance, possible responses ranged from “strongly disagree (1)”

to “strongly agree (5)"; with regard to degree of satisfaction, responses ranged from “strongly dissatisfied (1)” to “strongly satisfied (5)."

EMPIRICAL ANALYSES Basic data analysis

This paper sought to discover the differences in the per-ception of CRM among the shipping industries in Vietnam and Taiwan by means of various methods, including literature review, personal interviews, and a questionnaire survey Comparing the different systems in the two countries was not a simple task; for example, Vietnam is

a socialist country, and the majority of its shipping com-panies and forwarders are state-owned enterprises with conservative attitudes, which resulted in many difficulties involving data collection and questionnaire adminis-tration In contrast, because Taiwan is a democracy with free market mechanisms, we could easily obtain valuable comments and suggestions from domestic or internatio-nal shipping companies located in the port of Kaohsiung The majority of company names and addresses were obtained from local shipping company associations or, and some companies were also obtained from lists of companies in shipping newspapers and magazines As shown in Table 3, a total of 54 questionnaires were received from 26 shipping companies in Vietnam and 28 shipping companies in Taiwan, hence the total response rate was 54%; the questionnaire response rates by country were 52 and 56% for Vietnam and Taiwan

Trang 6

Table 2 CRM assessment factors for shipping companies

Banner advertising Deighton (1996), Perrson

(2004) , Wilson (2005), Leeuwen (2009)

Banner advertisements are one of the dominant forms of advertising online For example, the Evergreen Line website contains the advertising banner “EVERGREEN guarding our green

earth.”

Website design Deighton (1996), Perrson

(2004) , Wilson (2005), Leeuwen (2009)

Web design is the creation of content presentations that are delivered to end-users through the Internet

Online media

Deighton (1996), Perrson (2004), Wilson (2005), Leeuwen (2009)

Improvement of customer satisfaction (e.g., enabling customers to share experiences online by creating a self-running community where customers can interact with and learn from their peers)

Sales presentation

Deighton (1996), Perrson (2004), Wilson (2005), Leeuwen (2009)

A salesperson or a sales team presents detailed information (often

including a live demonstration) about a product or product line

Customer feedback

Deighton (1996), Perrson(2004), Wilson (2005), Leeuwen(2009)

Feedback from customers about service quality For example: the

"Cargo claim" section of the Yangming Lines website

Tracking of customer

interaction

Xu et al (2002), Perrson (2004), Wilson (2005), Ahearne et al (2007), Torggler (2009)

Personalized customer information is retrieved from the interaction database and used while interacting with the customer

Contact management

system

Helps companies and individuals to manage and organize their contacts, and manage customer details and customer interactions Example: the “service calling information” section of the Wan Hai line website

Order management

system

Xu et al (2002), Perrson (2004), Wilson(2005), Ahearne et al (2007), Torggler (2009)

Used to keep track of orders from customers, and packing and shipping to customer

Sales forecasting

system

A sales forecasting systems facilitate forecasting and analysis of various sales opportunities Forecasts will help the company calculate profits, make decisions concerning investments, and launch new products and services

Contact center

Perrson (2004), Wilson (2005), Williams (2006), Zeng et al (2003)

A contact center is the central point in an enterprise from which all customer contacts are managed A contact center typically includes one or more online call centers but may include other types of customer contact as well, including e-mail newsletters, postal mail catalogs, Web site inquiries and chats, and the collection of information from customers at time of in-store purchases

Help desk

A help desk is an information and assistance resource enabling troubleshooting of problems with computers or similar products Corporations often provide help desk support to their customers via a toll-free number, website, and/or e-mail

Call management

system

Perrson (2004), Wilson (2005), Williams (2006),

A call management system is a database, administration, and reporting application helping businesses identify operational issues and take immediate action to solve them

Customer self service

Customers can check the status of their requests online, thereby reducing unnecessary follow-up calls to a help desk

Trang 7

Table 3 Questionnaire response rate

Type of business Questionnaires sent Questionnaires returned Response rate (%)

Table 4 General profile of questionnaire respondents

Office location

Job title

Working experience (Years)

respectively

As shown in Table 4, the demographic characteristics

of the respondents were as follows: 48.15% were at

Vietnamese companies and 51.85% at Taiwanese

com-panies Office locations included Kaohsiung (51.85%),

Hanoi (33.33%), and Haiphong (14.81%) Respondents’

job titles included manager (37.04%), staff (25.93%),

director (22.22%), and general manager (14.81%) In

terms of working experience, 31.48% of respondents had

6 to 10 years of experience, 18.52% had 21 to 25 years,

and 16.67% had 5 years or less The respondents’ job

titles, lines of business, and working experience suggest

that their opinions are informed and representative The

fact that almost all the respondents worked at shipping

companies may indicate that the results are

represen-tative views concerning CRM in the shipping company

Validity and reliability test

The term “validation” refers to the demonstration of

measures’ validity and reliability (Morse et al., 2002)

Validity comprises content validity, unidimensionality, and

convergent validity (Mentzer et al., 2001; Steenkamp and

Van Trijp, 1991) The content validity of the study questionnaire was tested through a literature review and interviews with practitioners, that is, the questions in the questionnaire were based on previous studies and discussions with a number of liner shipping and forwarder executives and experts The questionnaire items were judged to be relevant by 54 shipping executives The interviews resulted in minor modifications to the wording and examples provided in some measurement items; the modified measurement items were included in the survey questionnaire, and this questionnaire can therefore be accepted as possessing content validity

Unidimensionality and convergent validity are assessed

by fit indices, standardized residuals, factor loadings and t-values The measurement model involves four latent factors: 'Factor 1', 'Factor 2', 'Factor 3' and 'Factor 4' The minimum requirements for model identification were satisfied in the model All the factor loadings were greater than 0.6 and their t-values are significant at the 0.001 level Notably, the four indicators 'Online Media,' 'Contact

Trang 8

Table 5 Summary of degree of importance and satisfaction

The mean scores are based on a five-point scale; S.D = standard deviation

Management System,' 'Order Management System,' and

'Call Management System' were deleted since their

standardized residual covariance values were larger than

1.96 In addition, the fit index criteria were marginally

satisfied (CMIN/df: 1.964, CFI: 0.970, GFI: 0.913, AGFI:

0.813; FRMR: 0.028 RMSEA: 0.096) Unidimensionality

and convergent validity requirements were therefore

satisfied

In additional to reliability testing, the Cronbach's alpha

reliability test yielded a value of 0.869 Since, according

to the suggestion of Nunnally (1978), a Cronbach's alpha

value of > 0.7 indicates good reliability, this result

indicates adequate internal consistency

Descriptive statistics

As seen in Table 5, the factor “Customer feedback” was

more important than the other factors due to its high rank

In addition, the factors “Tracking of customer interaction”

and “Call management system” were ranked 2nd and 3rd

respectively Customer feedback plays an important role

in the shipping industry since it can provide sales

per-sonnel with important information, such as the needs of

existing customers, perceptions of customer service

quality, ways of remedying service shortcomings

com-ared with other competitors and new businesses models

that may be adopted with potential customers, etc

With regard to degree of satisfaction, the factor “Call

management system” ranked highest among these

questions, and was followed by “Sales presentation” and

“Help desk" in that order Shipping companies can use

call management systems to handle large quantities of

phone calls from customers, and can thereby avoid

missing any offers or requests from their customers

Furthermore, call management can enable customers to obtain useful information from shipping companies before making final decisions concerning booked space, freight rate, shipment schedule, custom clearance date, and B/L issuance date, etc

T-test analysis

As shown in Table 6, among the assessment factors, the perception of sales automation differed significantly (P = 0.000 < 0.05) among Vietnamese and Taiwanese ship-ping companies In addition, the perception of the sales automation factor can be seen as the importance assigned to managing customers at a shipping company The foregoing table shows that the factors “Banner advertising” and “Order rmanagement system” are per-ceived differently by shipping companies in Vietnam and Taiwan Taiwan's shipping companies can support CRM’s activities with advanced high-tech software and hard-ware, which can help such companies to gain many advantages For example, the factor “Banner advertising” was commonly used by shipping companies in Taiwan to communicate the corporate image and services to customers in a fast and effective manner In addition, Taiwanese shipping companies also employed “Order management system” to help them manage their custo-mers’ booking of space, shipping routes, container equipment, cargo tracking, and shipment tasks based on customer requirements In contrast, due to backward IT and budget restrictions, Vietnamese shipping companies did not use high-tech equipment to facilitate their CRM activities

This makes it clear that significant differences in the im-plementation of CRM services exist between Taiwanese

Trang 9

Table 6 T-Test of CRM assessment factors

Assessment factor Vietnamese shipping

company

Taiwanese shipping

* means that the value is significant (P < 0.05)

and Vietnamese shipping industries

Factor analysis

Factor analysis was performed via principal component

analysis with Varimax rotation, and principal components

analysis with Varimax rotation was employed to identify

key dimensions Factor analysis results yielded

eigen-values exceeding 1 and factor loadings exceeding 0.65

Four factors were consequently identified and defined

thus:

Factor 1

E-Commerce marketing, which consisted of the four

items of website design, banner advertising, online media

and order management system; website design was the

service item with the greatest load, and these factors

accounted for 87% of total variance

Factor 2

Interacting marketing, which consisted of the four items of

tracking of customer interactions, customer feedback,

sales presentation and call management system; tracking

of customer interactions was the service item with the

greatest load, and these factors accounted for 72% of the

total variance

Factor 3

Contact marketing, which consisted of the three items of

contact center, contact management system and help

desk; contact center was the service item with the greatest load, and these factors accounted for 80% of the total variance

Factor 4

Customer service marketing, which consisted of the two items of customer self-service and sales forecasting system; sale forecasting system was the service item with the greatest load, and these factors accounted for 79% of the total variance

Important performance analysis

As Table 7 illustrates, no CRM factors appear in the area

of “keep up the good work" for Vietnamese shipping companies, which implies that these companies have not really developed CRM services, and their customer do not feel very satisfied with their services In fact, in com-parison with foreign shipping companies, Vietnamese shipping companies provide poor transport and customer services even in the domestic market This is primarily because Vietnamese shipping companies own small fleets (mainly feeder services), and also, since transpor-tation demand connected with international trade is increasing rapidly in the Vietnamese market, a majority of cargo in this market is handled by foreign shipping com-panies Moreover, Vietnamese export-import enterprises generally perform purchasing and sales transactions on the basis of buying CIF and selling FOB international trading terms Foreign trading partners consequently always have the right to choose ships, and the owners of Vietnam shipping companies do not have any marketing capabilities or communication channels with which to

Trang 10

Table 7 Summary of CRM IPA for Vietnamese and Taiwanese shipping companies

industry

Vietnamese shipping companies

Taiwanese shipping companies

Keep up the good

work

Call management system Help desk

Help desk Customer feedback Concentrate

here

Customer feedback Customer self service

Online media Help desk Tracking of customer interaction

Customer feedback

Customer self service The call management system Online media

Help desk Tracking of customer interaction Low priority Banner advertising

Website design Online media Tracking of customer interaction

Contact management system Order management system Contact center

- Contact management system

- Sales presentation

- Banner advertising

Contact management system Website design

Banner advertising

Possible overkill - Sales presentation

- Sales forecasting system

- Website design

- Contact center

- Customer self service

- The call management system

- Order management system

Sales forecasting system Contact center

Sales presentation

search for foreign customers

In the case of the Taiwanese shipping companies, there

are some CRM factors in the area of “concentrate here,"

which implies high importance and low satisfication The

CRM factors “Online media," “Help desk,” and “Tracking

of interaction system” are very important with regard to

managing customers at both Taiwanese and Vietnamese

shipping companies Furthermore, the CRM “customer

feedback” factor is very important for Vietnamese

ship-ping companies; these companies need to improve their

rigid existing marketing systems and service qulity via the

communication channel of customer feedback in order to

increase market share and maintain a sustainable

competitive advantage under tough market conditions

In the case of Vietnamese shipping companies, almost

all CRM factors are in the area of “lower priority,” which

implies low importance and low satisfication While the

Vietnamese shipping market currently still has great

development potential, Vietnamese shipping companies

are weak in the area of customer service compared with

foreign shipping companies There are many reasons for

the weaknesses of domestic shipping companies,

including Vietnam's poor infrastructure and high inflation

rate

Finally, in comparison with the Taiwanese shipping companies, the Vietnamese shipping companies have many items in the area of “possible overskill," which implies that while the customers of Vietnam shipping companies are satisfied with these CRM factors, these factors are not really important As a consequence, Vietnamese shipping companies should organize and design services with distinguishing features that will enhance their profit and competitive ability

While Taiwanese shipping companies have acquired considerable experience in developing their customer services, the CRM concept is just beginning to emerge at

a few of the larger Vietnamese shipping companies It should be noted that Vietnamese shipping companies have only an 18% share of the market as a whole, and the large remaining portion is controlled by foreign corpo-rations; this is because Vietnamese shipping companies have no mega container ships providing long-haul ocean-going service, and do not enjoy the open-market policies

of WTO members

Most Vietnamese companies are therefore forced to sell FOB (free on board) and purchase CIF (cost, insu-rance and freight) Vietnamese companies must therefore bear the burden of chartering or renting larger vessels

Định dạng
Số trang	13
Dung lượng	128,6 KB