Attract online customers to job websites in Vietnam

This reality has posed urgent demand for the establishment of a model which can attract online customers to job websites so as to guarantee their survival and sustainable development. The article presents a model to attract online customers to job websites in Vietnam by making use of buying behavior of online customers.

Vu Thanh Tu ANH - Fulbright University in Vietnam, USA

Le Xuan BA - Centural Institude for Economic Managerment, Vietnam

Hervé B BOISMERY - University of La Reuinion, France

H Eric BOUTIN - Toulon Var University, France

Nguyen Thi DOAN - Vietnam Learning Promotion Association, Vietnam

Haasis HANS - Dietrich - Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics (isl) Bremen - Germany

Le Quoc HOI - National Economic University, Vietnam

Nguyen Thi Bich LOAN - Thuong mai University, Vietnam

Nguyen Hoang LONG - Thuong mai University, Vietnam

Nguyen MAI - Vietnam Economist Association, Vietnam

Duong Thi Binh MINH - University of Economics HoChiMinh City, Vietnam

Hee Cheon MOON - Korean Trade Research Association, South Korea

Bui Xuan NHAN - Thuong mai University, Vietnam

Luong Xuan QUY - Vietnam Economicst Association, Vietnam

Nguyen Van Song - Vietnam National University of Agriculture

Nguyen TAM - California State University, USA

Truong Ba THANH - University of Danang, Vietnam

Dinh Van THANH - Institude for Trade Research, Vietnam

Do Minh THANH - Thuong mai University, Vietnam

Le Dinh THANG - University of Québec à Trois Riviéres, Canada

Tran Dinh THIEN - Vietnam Institute of Economics, Vietnam

Nguyen Quang THUAN - Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, Vietnam

Le Nhu TUYEN - Grenoble École de Managment, France

Washio TOMOHARU - Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan

Zhang YUJIE - Tsinghua University, China

THE Members

Editor in chief NGUYEN BACH KHOA Deputy Editor in Chief

SECTRETARY OF EDITORIAL OFFICE

PHAM MINH DAT Editor in English NGUYEN THI LAN PHUONG Editorial SCIENTIFIC COUNCIL Dinh Van SON - Thuong mai University, Vietnam - President

Pham Vu LUAN - Thuong mai University, Vietnam - Vice President

Nguyen Bach KHOA - Thuong mai University, Vietnam - Deputy President

Trade Science

C O N T E N T S

1 Nguyen Thi Phuong LIEN - Solutions to Develop Government Bond Market in Vietnam

2 Nguyen Tran HUNG - Attract Online Customers to Job Websites in Vietnam

3 Nguyen Thi Kim OANH - Research Factors Affecting Hanoi Consumers Buying Decisions of

Fashion Products

4 Chu Viet CUONG - Trade development in the mountainous region of northern Vietnam: Lessons

from Chongqing and Yunnan, China

5 Dang Thi Minh NGUYET - Factors Affecting Productive Efficiency of Vietnam Joint Stock

Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade

6 Ying-Kai LIAO and Vu Minh QUAN and Alfiyatul Qomariyah - An Integrative Approach to

Investigate Antecedents, Moderators and Consequences of Brand Equity

Page

3 13

24

33

41

53

P Drucker (Management Revised Edition, 2008)

claims that the goals of every company are to create,

maintain and develop customers Customers are the

most essential entities to any businesses Customers do

not depend on enterprises but enterprises must depend

on them Customers are not outsiders but an integral

part in business operations of companies When

serv-ing customers, it is not just companies are helpserv-ing

cus-tomers but cuscus-tomers are creating opportunities for

companies to serve them [1] With enterprises which

offer services in an e-commerce environment,

espe-cially services of job information, the roles of tomers become more important because attracting cus-tomers represents a vital factor to their survival and development (T Zahra et al, 2011)

1 An overview of job websites Kenneth C Laudon (Electronic commerce 2016: Business, Technology, Society, 2016) believes that by nature, job websites are online job information net-work systems These websites are designed so that users can post job advertisements and/or view job advertisements posted by other users, or interact with other users [4] So job websites can be defined as

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Nguyen Tran Hung Thuongmai University Email: hung.tmdt@gmail.com

Received: 31rd January 2017 Revised: 13th February 2017 Approved: 20th February 2017

Keywords: Online customers, job websites

long with the country's deeper integration to WTO and participation in Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Vietnam's labor market has gone through constant fluctuations in supply and demand, quantity and qual-ity A large number of laborers need to find jobs appropriate to their qualification and experience while many companies are struggling with human shortage in various positions The appearance of job websites is a solution

to help both workers and recruiters to exchange information to fulfill their targets When the amount of informa-tion increases massively, exchanging it online becomes a useful tool to help job seekers reach their career objec-tives, at the same time brings recruiters qualified and suitable job applications However in Vietnam, the number

of job websites which can attract online customers to survive and develop is extremely low, many websites with significant supports from state administration agencies even had to close down after a short period of time such

as viechay.vn, timviec.net, nguoitimviec.com.vn, etc This reality has posed urgent demand for the establishment

of a model which can attract online customers to job websites so as to guarantee their survival and sustainable development The article presents a model to attract online customers to job websites in Vietnam by making use

of buying behavior of online customers

sites which are set up and operate with the aim of

becoming a bridge between laborers and recruiters,

specialize in providing services for online labor search

and job search Through the websites, recruiters can

rapidly find candidates most appropriate with their

demand, while job seekers have opportunities to find

desired jobs with some simple acts on the websites

In general, job websites have quite similar business

models, specifically as follows:

+ Customers participating in job websites: include

both individuals and enterprises, or in other words,

both candidates and recruiters They are organizations

or individuals who want to post job advertisements

and/or view jobs and job advertisements posted by

other members in the websites Customers who wish to

participate in the websites must register relevant

infor-mation and get approved by web administrators When

registering for member accounts or participating as

individual customers, members must agree with

regu-lations and articles of the websites

+ Products: with job websites, products are often

information generally categorized into two types:

"people looking for jobs" and "jobs looking for

peo-ple" With the first type of "people looking for jobs",

an individual chooses to post his/her personal

informa-tion and professional qualificainforma-tions on the websites so

that other organizations or individuals with demand

may contact him/her directly to interact, discuss and

arrange job interviews, etc With the second type of

"jobs looking for people", an enterprise may post job

descriptions as well as details of salaries for a position

in the websites in a hope to find suitable laborers for

the position Any individual can sign in the websites,

read the advertisements, contact the enterprise and

attend the job interview with it

+ Major business modes of job websites: job

web-sites collect data profiles including personal

informa-tion of job candidates such as names, genders, date of

birth, email, home address, home telephone, mobile

telephone, education, certificates/degrees, job

achieve-ments, experience, previous employers, etc as

declared by job seekers in the forms They then supply

the access services to data profiles to members

(most-ly enterprises) with demand to find candidates and vice versa In the reverse procedures, besides providing basic information about the jobs, enterprises which post job advertisements need to provide payment information to pay for posted information or for mem-bership fees in case they have registered for the web-site memberships

+ Revenue of job websites: the main source of rev-enue of job websites comes from the fees charged on information posts These fees vary depending on the kinds of services, ranging from normal posts to VIP posts Basically, job websites may charge on both enterprises which post job advertisements and people who look for jobs However in fact in Vietnam, job websites just often collect fees from enterprises which post job advertisements and provide services free of charge to individual customers who post personal pro-files to look for jobs The most widely-used way of collecting fees in Vietnam job websites is to collect membership fees when enterprises register for mem-berships or when they post job advertisements

2 The roles of online customers to job websites Simply speaking, online customers are organiza-tions and individuals that care of, follow or have demand for buying or using products, goods/services

to satisfy their daily consumption or production and business activities via electronic devices (R Martina et

al, 2015) In that sense, online customers of job web-sites may be organizations and individuals that partic-ipate in the market of online job information as seek-ers and usseek-ers of job information via electronic devices and the Internet Any online organizations and individ-uals can be potential or current customers of job web-sites in the online job information service market They both have great contributions to the development

of job websites as illustrated in the following roles: + Contributing huge database to the job market, including information about enterprises and vacancies, and database of candidates are constantly updated Besides accessing job websites to look for job infor-mation, individual job seekers will build up their per-sonal profiles under the forms, then these websites will collect the forms to make online profiles Accordingly,

enterprises with recruitment demand may refer to the

profiles and contact the candidates they find

appropri-ate With recruitment enterprises, besides accessing

job websites to look for suitable candidates from the

online profiles, they may post information about

vacancies so that job websites can collect and post

them under different categories to access the biggest

number of viewers to identify the most appropriate

candidates

+ Contributing to the development of the online job

transaction market for job websites with high

efficien-cy, operating 24/224 with much lower costs than

tradi-tional transactions The traditradi-tional transactions of job

information are often limited to the distances between

enterprises providing services and customers and can

only be conducted within working hours The too long

distance between customers and enterprises may cause

reluctance in customers and result in the cancellation

of the transactions The traditional transactions of job

information often take place in very small quantities,

the collection of information is mostly about the

vacancies and cannot be published, there is no

infor-mation on candidate profiles and the inforinfor-mation is not

continuously updated This may cause some

difficul-ties to both recruiters and job seekers when looking for

reliable information and they often have to pay high

costs if using intermediaries who provide job

informa-tion in the tradiinforma-tional way By contrast, with online

transactions of job information, customers including

both job seekers and recruiters are a constant source of

providing and updating information on jobs and

candi-date profiles to job websites with lower costs Online

customers can make job information transactions

24/24 without depending on the distances between

customers and job websites

+ Enabling job websites to expand markets,

cre-ate the circulation and introduce about

products/services to other users in the new marketing

channels of the Internet such as social forums and

networks, through which the presence and reputation

of job websites can be enhanced Before purchasing,

online customers tend to look for information about

products (job information services) to compare

prices and service conditions between different job websites from different sources (forums, social net-works) After purchasing, online customers of job websites tend to share their feelings and experiences

of using job information services, methods of solv-ing unexpected problems when ussolv-ing services on these forums and social networks This results in the circulation of the services of job websites to other users of social forums and networks, from which the presence, reputation and brands of job websites can

be strengthened and developed

+ Helping job websites to cut costs and increase profits by answering enquiries and providing consul-tancy and supports to potential customers They are activities that job websites have to take regularly at a high cost Online customers often demand higher cus-tomer care services than traditional ones because when transacting online, many problems may happen such as the procedures are too complicated, transactions are cancelled, payment cannot be made, etc In these cases, online customers often ask for supports or instructions

to deal with the problems immediately Therefore, it is essential that support services of job websites be

real-ly good and constantreal-ly perfected, this certainreal-ly results

in big costs In the meantime, the shares of experience

of services, discussions of ways to handle problems and complaints, advice and comments of customers who have already used the services on the forums and social networks can provide supports to other potential users and customers Here are free-of-charge activities and benefits that job websites can enjoy from online customers

+ By making use of the impacts of loyal customers, job websites can attract and encourage the participa-tion of a large number of potential customers at low costs but high efficiency Online customers often make transactions based on the reliability and reputation of sellers (sell websites, service websites), they are very much affected by but at the same time have big influ-ences on the community and friends That job websites have loyal online customers will help to spread the influence and attract more of potential customers with high efficiency and low costs via words-of-mouth,

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experience shares in both traditional and Internet

envi-ronment

+ Enabling job websites to have stable revenue

source and further develop by allowing information

posts at different levels with different requirements

Job websites may charge fees from job

advertise-ments posted by enterprises or charge membership

fees on access to online database of job seekers

These posts can be conducted in various levels such

as VIP posts, normal posts, gold, silver, diamond

reg-istration, etc Each post level corresponds to a fee

level enterprises or individuals must pay for job

web-sites So, with the stronger participation of online

customers, job websites can have stable revenue to

ensure stable development

3 Models to attract online customers to job

websites

Simply put, attracting customers means creating

good impressions, drawing attentions from people with

demand for buying or using products, goods/services,

making them care about enterprises or products that

enterprises supply via actions, gestures and words

With these concepts of customer attraction, job

websites and the roles of online customers, it can be

seen that:

Attracting online customers to job websites means

taking activities to create good impressions, attract

organizations and individuals to participate in the

online job introduction market of these websites as

those who post job advertisements or look for job

information via electronic devices In this approach, it

can be seen that:

+ About the targets, attracting online customers to

job websites is to draw customers with demand for

posting or searching information to attend to, access,

transact and interact with contents on the websites

+ About the content, attracting online customers to

job websites should involve developing the quantity

and quality of customers To this end, job websites

should start from developing demand for information

uses, developing the quality of information sources,

developing supporting services and e-marketing

com-munication activities

With these concepts, to attract online customers to job websites, it is necessary to operate and develop these components systematically:

a Developing the demand for using job informa-tion of online customers in job websites

Developing the demand for and behavior of using job information of online customers in the job websites

is considered the core factor of the models on customer attraction, of which online customers can use job infor-mation when they act as recruiters accessing the job websites to look for information profiles of appropriate candidates to contact or when they act as job seekers looking for job information to apply for job interviews Like other kinds of demand, the demand for using job information of online customers in the job websites ranges from the basic to advanced levels

+ Basically, the demand for using job information

of online customers in the job websites can be seen via the hierarchy of demand shown in Figure 1.1 as fol-lows:

Figure 1.1 illustrates that:

The most basic demand of individual customers (job seekers) when using job information in the job websites is to receive as much information as possible The information may be of different business areas and industries so that customers can have a wider choice and can easily find suitable jobs Besides, the catego-rization of information according to localities also cre-ates favorable conditions for customers to choose jobs

in their localities and avoid those in undesired places

or not appropriate to their preferences

The next demand of job seekers once they have accessed various sources of job information is to know which information is new, which one is updated every day, which one has gone outdated so that they can access the high-quality information sources

The higher demand of job seekers afterwards is to use job information provided in the job websites cate-gorized according to salary levels and recruiters This helps them become more active and they can look for the jobs they want more accurately

With job seekers, after being able to access the high-quality information sources, they then wish to

have fast and accurate search rather than surfing each

piece of information posts Therefore, a search tool is

an obligatory requirements that job websites should

have to satisfy the high-level demand of job seekers

With job seekers who are confident enough or hope

to find a better-suited job than those posted in the job

websites, they want to be able to create their own

per-sonal profiles so that enterprises or recruiters can

con-tact them to arrange job interviews Then job websites

should have devices to satisfy this high-level demand

Finally, the highest demand of job seekers is the

websites should have good customer care and

support-ing services in order to provide them with timely

con-sultancy and supports so that they can find jobs

suit-able with their desires

+ With customers as enterprises or recruitment

organizations, their demand of using information in the

job websites is quite simple compared to that of job

seekers, as illustrated in the hierarchy in Figure 1.2

below Accordingly, it can be seen that:

Firstly, recruiters wish to choose suitable

candi-dates for the jobs with lowest possible costs Therefore, the basic demand is to be able to post job advertisements free of charge Then, they hope that their posts can reach the highest possible number of candidates so that enterprises can have a wide choice;

to do so, job websites should distinguish forms of posts such as VIP posts, normal posts, highlighted posts so that recruiters can choose the right forms at the right costs (Figure 1.2)

The higher demand of enterprises or recruitment organizations is to be able to access personal profiles that job seekers have created on the websites to have better investigation and able to find and choose appro-priate candidates more actively and easily

The final demand of enterprises or recruitment organizations is good customer care and supporting services As recruiters with job advertisements are the main source of revenue to job websites, they require professional supporting services, accurate and timely responses, good supports to transactions, frequent cus-tomer care so that cuscus-tomers feel satisfied when they

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[Source: author]

Figure 1.1: Hierarchy of demand for job information of online customers as job seekers

+ There are free devices to create personal profiles for job seekers and job adverts for recruiters

+ Job information is updated everyday (new jobs)

+ There are notifications and marks of outdated post

+ Job information is diverse, of different industries,

sectors and localities

+ There is Search tool for quick and accurate search

+ There is categorization of jobs according

to salaries and recruiters

+ there are good customer care and supporting services

post job advertisements or participate in the websites.

b Diversifying forms of information provision of

job websites

The best way to attract online customers to use

information in the job websites is to create the

maxi-mum convenience for them to access information, in

other words, the forms of providing information

should be diversified

Like any other information websites, diversifying

the forms of information provision of job websites

should focus on the following ways:

Firstly, providing information in the websites: this

way has some advantages: information is provided

suf-ficiently, function keys are displayed clearly,

transac-tions are easy and convenient for both recruiters and

job seekers However, the disadvantages of this way

are it is only displayed well on personal computers but

with mobile phones and tablets, their display is often

limited by screen size, memory capacity and narrow bandwidth

Secondly, providing information via app: the advantages of this way are: information is displayed well with sufficient function keys, it is well compatible with mobile devices, suitable for small screens and limited memory capacity This is convenient for cus-tomers who use smart phones or tablets to access infor-mation, post advertisements, create profiles or find jobs easily in the job websites The disadvantages of this way is customers need to have certain knowledge and the app must be placed in an easily-navigated loca-tions for customers to download and use

Thirdly, using social networks and forums to pro-vide information: the advantages of this way are infor-mation and news are updated and spread rapidly among the network community Information can be provided sufficiently with good reliability and

subjec-[Source: author]

Figure 1.2: Hierarchy of demand for job information of online customers as recruiters

+ Free posts for recruitment and jobs + Able to access many candidates

+ There are different choice s of posts with different fee levels to highlight the posts

+ Able to access personal profiles of job seekers in the websites

+ Good customer care and supporting services

tiveness; users can publically evaluate and discuss the

quality of information, recruitment organizations,

applicant profiles, etc., through which information

users can receive advice and consultancy from other

participants However, the disadvantages of this way

are when customers register to post information, seek

jobs or create profiles, they must access the job

web-sites through links or registered keys on these social

networks and forums rather than do this directly as in

the two above forms

Generally, when creating more ways of providing

information to customers or online users, job websites

can attract more new customers Therefore, for job

information websites, diversifying the forms of

infor-mation provision is considered a prerequisite to

maxi-mize the benefits to customers when they use the

infor-mation

c Developing the quality of job information of job

websites

Job websites mostly do business based on the

con-tent of the information to meet the demand of

cus-tomers, both job seekers and recruiters Job

informa-tion and candidate profiles should be numerous and

various to attract customers to access the websites

However, this information is only significant if it is of

high quality

Basically, developing the quality of job

informa-tion of job websites should focus on the following

things:

Firstly, reliability: the top priority of any

informa-tion websites is to ensure that the posted informainforma-tion

must be highly reliable, or in other words, authentic

With customers as recruiters, job websites must verify

the information related to the fundamental elements

such as: company names, addresses, whether they are

recruiting laborers, which divisions are recruiting,

con-tact numbers, etc to ensure that the posts are truthful

With customers as job seekers, the information that

needs verifying is names, addresses, contact numbers

when they create profiles so that recruiters can contact

them for job interviews

Secondly, update: information in the job websites

must be constantly and promptly updated The update

should be not only in the number of jobs in the new areas but also in already-posted information in the websites as it should be re-updated For example, with customers as recruiters, after their job advertisements have been posted, job websites need to update (in daily basis) to see if they still have demand for recruitment for they have already recruited the needed candidates, although their posts are still within date Or with cus-tomers as job seekers, when creating personal profiles

to attract enterprises to view, job websites need to update to see if these seekers still want to be invited for job interviews or they have found stable positions else where Implementing these tasks effectively helps job websites to have fresh and valuable information all the time

Thirdly, information should be marked as 'expiry', 'updated on (date)', etc.: this is a necessary activity to inform information users in the job websites that whether the information is still valid to help them save time, costs and energy when searching

Fourthly, convenience: information in the job web-sites should be users-friendly to both job seekers and recruiters The arrangement and categorization of information, collection of database should be made simple, easy to find, easy to compare to create favor-able conditions for all users Information should be sorted according to dates, business areas, localities, even in more details such as desired salaries, career challenges, etc

Fifthly, low costs: all users, no matter recruiters or job seekers, hope to use free-of-charge or low-cost services in the job websites Therefore, the information will be really good and attractive to users if job web-sites can charge suitable fees for the services This pre-vents customers of job websites from being shocked or reluctant about whether they should use the informa-tion in the job websites

d Developing e-marketing activities of job web-sites

Nguyen Bach KHOA (E-commerce Marketing, 2010) believes that the fundamental features of e-mar-keting are customers can interact with advertisements, click on advertisements to make purchases, get

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mation about the products or compare this product

with others, this supplier with others, etc E-marketing

helps suppliers to choose the target and potential

cus-tomers that companies want to serve, through which

they can cut costs and raise business performance [2]

In theories, like other websites, developing

e-mar-keting activities of job websites should focus on the

following things:

+ Ad-network: Instead of going to each

advertis-ing agency or division of each newspaper, job

web-sites now can build up their advertising campaigns

via online ad-network to attract customers Online

ad-network is an intermediary to connect the sellers

and buyers of online advertisements, through which it

supports advertisement buyers to find appropriate

areas and advertisement sellers, from thousands of

websites, to their communication campaigns This

form has been applied by many websites and

e-com-merce organizations as it saves time and money In

Vietnam, Innity, Vietad, Ad360 and Ambient are big

advertising networks which can satisfy almost all

needs of advertisers

+ Search Marketing: As a habit, when an Internet

user wants to buy a product or service, he or she often

searches the information about that product/service

on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc

Enterprises often pay for these search engines, via

their sales representatives or directly, so that their

products or services can appear in prioritized

posi-tions For example, job websites may select

adver-tisement viewers according to their geographical

locations, age groups, genders or other specific

crite-ria Accordingly these websites can reach the right

target customers, raise marketing effectiveness, at the

same time track and evaluate the efficiency of each

key word to control the entire campaigns and build up

better brand image

+ Social Media Marketing: With the development

of a series of social networks like Twitter, Go, Yume,

etc., job websites now have a wider choice to approach

customers When using these networks, job websites

can advertise themselves as images, video clips which

can spread and attract comments The interactions and

spread are distinctive advantages of social media mar-keting over traditional marmar-keting

+ Buzz Marketing: Viral Marketing, Buzz Marketing or Words Of Mouth Marketing are different forms of buzz marketing conducted via blog, social networks, chat rooms, forums, etc with the hypotheses that people will share with others about products or services they feel satisfied with Job websites may use this strategy to encourage customers to spread the ben-efits, efficiency and value of their job information services to other users so that their products or

servic-es can be known to thousands or millions of users This marketing method may gain very high communication effects but it is also quite risky if the job information in the websites is not as good as advertised

+ E-mail marketing: E-mail is gradually replacing letters and enterprises can send marketing information

to a series of emails with low costs Another way job websites can apply is to encourage the receipt of e-newsletters so that customers can receive information actively, then they can feel comfortable and happy with the information provided by the websites In Vietnam, many websites have used e-mail marketing effectively to approach customers such as Vietnamworks with job newsletters, Jetstar with newsletter about airline tickets, Nhommua or Muachung with email informing discounted products However, like other advertising modes, online mar-keting must be based on the demand and habits of cus-tomers and the understanding of advertising tools Identifying the goals they need to reach and using online marketing modes flexibly will help job websites utilize their budget effectively

+ Online events: Nowadays organizing events has become one of the most popular tools in marketing and advertising a company's brand and image Like other marketing tools, the objectives of organizing an event are to draw attention to products or services of the Internet-based enterprises in general and job websites

in particular to create interests from customers,

there-by increasing the sales of products or services Reality has shown that many big websites have spent millions of dollars a year to organize events and