There are main chapters in this study to complete the research. Further detailed illustrations are stated as follow:
Research Conclusion and Suggestion
Analysis Results and Findings Data Collection and Analysis
Research Background, Motivation & Objectives
Literature
Research Method Design:
Survey Questionnaire
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Chapter 1: Introduction - This chapter includes general background about this study and then explains research motivation and objectives, with overview of research procedure and structure of this study,
Chapter 2: Literature Review and Propositions Development - First part of this chapter takes a close look at Customs in Vietnam before using electronic systems. Second part will introduce the new systems which is computerized and the strategy to reform and make E-Customs becomes popular and success. Last part discusses theories of information success model and explain how research propositions of this study are proposed.
Chapter 3: Research Method - This chapter explains research methodology conducted in this study, which includes interview plan, questionnaire measuring concept, and collections and analysis of data, with an overall conceptual research framework introduced at the beginning of this chapter,
Chapter 4: Results and Discussion – Qualitative analysis is conducted to analyze collected data.
Chapter 5: Conclusion – This chapter represents a short summary of this study and illustrates research findings and suggestions for correlated businesses and industries, and then proposes some directions for future studies.
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: Literature Review and Propositions Development 2.1 Customs in Vietnam
Vietnam Customs was established on September 10, 1945 according to Decree No. 27-SL with the name "Department of tariffs and indirect taxes" under the Ministry of Finance. In that time, Vietnam Customs had the jobs to collect taxes on entry and exit and collect indirect taxes. Subsequently, the branch was assigned the task of combating opium smuggling and having the right to dispose and mediate violations of tariffs and indirect taxes.
Until 1954, Vietnam Customs was changed to "Central Customs Department”
belongs to Ministry of Industry and Trade. In this period, Vietnam Customs is defined as a tool to ensure proper implementation of the regime of monopoly of foreign trade, foreign exchange, and implementation of tariff policies (tax collection of non-commercial goods) to receive goods aid and anti-smuggling across borders.
On August 20, 1984, the State Council established the General Department of Customs under the Council of Ministers. In that time, Customs had the function of inspecting and managing goods, luggage, foreign exchange and transport tools across the border.
However, in 2002, the Prime Minister issued a decision to transfer the General Department of Customs under the Ministry of Finance as the first day of establishment.
The process of formation and development through many different names, positions and scales, but Vietnam Customs still performs its full functions as the countries' customs. Vietnam Customs is member of the World Customs Organization (WCO). Vietnam Customs system is organized vertically from the General Department to the Customs Department, Customs Branch.
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2.2 E-customs of Vietnam
According to the plan of reform, development and modernization of the customs sector in the period of 2004 - 2006 issued under Decision No. 810 / QD-BTC dated March 16, 2004 of the Minister of Finance, the objective of Vietnam Customs Male to 2010 is striving to catch up with the level of Customs of ASEAN countries, expressed: professional and intensive customs force;
Customs clearance systems are mostly automation; apply risk management techniques; modern technical equipment. To achieve this goal, during the period 2004 - 2006, the Customs sector set out a concrete plan to implement the five major programs: the institutional reform program; information technology programs and professional equipment; organizational reform program; program of staff standardization and training - customs professional training and office building program. In particular, the pilot implementation of e-customs procedures in 2005 and 2006 is one of the important contents of the institutional reform program that needs to be implemented.
In implementing the Decision 149/2005 / QD-TTG dated July 19, 2005 of the Prime Minister, in 2005, the Customs sector implemented the pilot e-customs procedures at Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department. and Hai Phong City Customs Department. This is an important breakthrough of the customs sector in the administrative procedure reform. Through a period of implementation, the fact that e-customs procedures are a new form of procedure has many advantages compared to manual customs procedures, such as: saving time, saving costs, and saving time. saving human resources, quickly clearing goods, reducing paperwork, increasing revenue, increasing profits, increasing brand reputation for businesses and improving management efficiency. This work has been highly appreciated by the business community, public opinion and this is an important contribution, accelerating the integration process of Vietnam with the world economy.
After more than 2 years of implementing electronic customs procedures, the
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total number of import and export declarations is 67,538 sheets, including 14,714 export declarations and 52,824 import declarations with an average of 130 declarations /day. By applying electricity clearance, the customs documents are classified into 3 Channel (Green, Yellow and Red) corresponding to the customs clearance level. Green flow includes goods that are not on the list of prohibited goods, imported and exported goods subject to conditionals, exempted from inspection and customs clearance immediately, enterprises do not have to produce customs documents in order to register declarations but only It is necessary to use the customs declaration which has been accepted through the online customs clearance procedures. If the goods are in the gold stream, the flow is required to check the records before customs clearance, the customs will check the e-customs documents or paper documents. As for the Red channel, it is necessary to check both documents and goods. Ho Chi Minh City Electronic Customs Department said that after more than 2 years of implementing electronic customs clearance (from October 2005), the average time for carrying out green procedures is 10-20 minutes, yellow flow 30 - 40 minutes, red flow 1-2 hours.
The total tax collected is VND 5,967 billion. Particularly in 2007, VND 2,553 billion was collected (exceeding the tax collection target of more than VND 840 billion). A result was assessed as having improved in e-customs development.
Therefore, on August 8, 2007, HCMC Customs continued to develop e-customs in the period of 2008-2010.
If compared in Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, E-customs procedures only account for about 1% of the total number of declarations and the number of enterprises engaged in import-export activities, with the collected tax and import-export turnover accounting for about 7% of the total revenue and total import and export turnover in the global. The number of enterprises participating in electronic customs declaration is not large, so far only 350 strong enterprises participating in electronic customs clearance are too small compared to the number of tens of thousands of enterprises participating in import and export in Ho Chi Minh City, and From the beginning of 2009 to July 20, 2009,
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Ho Chi Minh City Electronic Customs Department handled 20,000 import and export declarations with a total turnover of over USD 2.5 billion and collected VND 1,800 billion in tax. Leadership Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee, Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department and representatives of some businesses highly appreciated the type of e-customs procedures thanks to saving travel time, less use of paper and goods to be cleared quickly, increase revenue for businesses.
In May 2009, Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department organized training for subordinate customs departments and enterprises on E-customs declaration. Up to now, 11 branches are under Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department with more than 90% of enterprises.
E-customs is built based on simple and harmonious information technology and professional processes, consistent with international standards and practices.
Electronic customs procedures have the advantages that conventional customs procedures do not have. Therefore, when implementing E-customs clearance, it will bring a lot of benefits to businesses while ensuring revenue for the State.
This is very important when international economic integration deepens.
With the form of electronic customs clearance, enterprises only need to use computers with direct network connection with customs authorities or through an intermediary enterprise to carry out the declaration and direct transmission of information about import and export goods. to customs. Enterprises can send declarations at any time of the day to customs, but not in office hours. After that, the customs will divert goods and decide the form of inspection through the processing system. Automatic electronic data on the basis of analyzing and processing information about goods. With the data processing results of the intranet system and the specialized software provided, the customs will decide whether to clear the shipment or not.
2.3 IS Success Theory
Information system success model is widely used in researches nowadays.
The original IS success model was created by William and Ephraim (1992) and
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extended model was introduced to maintain relevance William and Ephraim (2003). By studying many previous researches in commination, empirical management information systems from 1981-1987, the theories advocated that there are six major dimensions of the IS success, including system quality, information quality, system quality, intention to use plus use, user satisfaction, and net benefits. The IS success model reported in 2003 was created to present the relationships among these dimensions in a more understandable form.
The purpose of the research thesis is to compare the satisfaction of after-use of E-custom with before-use of custom system. As aforementioned, the E-custom has been developed and implementing by the Vietnam government with the characteristics of IS success. The first proposition is defined as follow.
P1: The performance of after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
2.3.1 System Quality
System quality refers to how much the users are satisfied with the information system used. It highly depends on the user’s demand, as evaluated through the system development and analysis. In general, there are totally nine criteria requirements certified by research of Sedera and Gable (2004) for a perfect system; they are ease of use, ease of learning, system features, user requirements, system accuracy, flexibility, sophistication, integration and customization. Based on previous study, Gorla, Somers, and Wong (2010) combined all elements needed for system quality into two group: system flexibility and system sophistication. The system flexibility deals with the system usefulness, with no redundancy and easy to change according to needs. The system sophistication concerns with whether the system is a user-friendly system, easy to use, well document, with a quick turnaround time, using a modern technology enabling user-friendliness of systems.
The effect of system quality on satisfaction and ease of use in IS success
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model was reported in the IS success model William and Ephraim (2003). The assumption is about benefit of organization can be improved indirectly by a developed, well-designed, and smart system. On the other hand, an inferior system which is slow to response, weak at security, and without update will make the whole process become slowdown and corrupted. To prove relationship between system quality and satisfaction, two empirical studies were performed by P. Seddon and Kiew (1996). They pointed out that there are existing “positive and significant” relation of system quality and satisfaction of users. Another research from Ahn, Ryu, and Han (2007) also indicated that users will likely feel more comfortable, secured, as well as satisfied with higher-level and faster responses of system.
The purpose of the thesis research is to compare before-use of E-custom’s system with after-use of custom’s systems. Since the E-custom has designed with system quality, the current research thesis defines the second proposition as follow.
P2: The system quality of after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
2.3.2. Information Quality
Information quality was defined as the quality of information generated by an information system (William & Ephraim, 1992). Research by Huh, Keller, Redman, and Watkins (1990) showed that there are four objective dimension of information quality; they are accuracy, completeness, consistency, and currency.
Accuracy refers to as an agreement of measurement and generated by an identified source. Completeness stands for the notion of relevance between the purpose of data and the contents from data. Completeness in application is specific; it can be known to the lack of needed fields or empty fields in records.
Consistency needs the format consistent, logically consistent (i.e., two given data do not conflict with the other) and the strongly consistent (i.e., the correctness of one data is implied by the correctness of another data). Currency stands for the
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characteristic “up-to-date” of data.
From the research of Nelson, Todd, and Wixom (2005), the dimensions that are needed to reflect information quality are accuracy, completeness and currency, and format. The format is about the representational quality which is measured by the performance of employees to complete tasks with system; this implies how much interpretable and understandable of given forms are the information. The content is tested as a part of information quality in the study by Doll and Torkzadeh (1988) and showed a positive result. In this case, content was built by four criterions, which are: precise data is matched to the demand, the data content is matched to the demand, the correctness of data and sufficiency of data are acceptable.
To fit to the actual needs, the dimensions used to represent information quality are not conclusive and will be in the manner of case by case. Normally, the dimensions depend highly on the background knowledge that will take one or more dimensions to relevantly represent how qualifies the system information can offer. To deepen this concept, Gorla et al. (2010) reported that format and content were used as the indicators in their research, revealing how information quality influences the organization merits.
Extended from the IS success model William and Ephraim (2003) many studies have contributed to the improvement of the relationship between information quality and the feedbacks of users. Wang and Liao (2008) reported that the positive links between user’s satisfaction and information quality in research were disclosed which confirms the role the IS success model plays in the eGovernment system success. The test for relationship between Information quality and Ease of use was confirmed from the research findings of Ahn et al.
(2007). It showed that user’s interpretation related to web’s information content quality is important. To examine the IS success model, Seddon (1997) found out that information quality reveals an important impact directly on the system usefulness.
In Vietnam, E-system for freight forwarding has been developed and upgraded for many times to gradually meet both government policy and user’s
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demands. Users are frequently working with E-custom and asking for more understandable information format and content. They also believed that the higher level of information quality can provide higher satisfaction toward performance of their works. The research thesis argues that satisfaction of E-custom of after-use will be higher than that of before-use, and therefore the third proposition is defined as follow.
P3: The information quality of after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of Before-use.
2.3.3 Service Quality
Service quality was first mentioned as a measurement for IS success model and validated in research of Pitt, Watson, and Kavan (1995). Service quality can be simply known as the results of comparison between the customers imagine for the service they will receive and the real service they have obtained. Based on researches about service quality from 1979 to 1993, Pitt et al. (1995) studied and combined previous definitions into five dimensions to evaluate a complete service quality; they are tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. The notion of tangibles contains the concerns of facilities, equipment, person in physical form. The reliability stands for the ability to complete the promised service with accuracy and faithfulness. The responsiveness is tied to how fast a service is provided according to the quality the customer cares.
Assurance is about individual skills of employee to attractive customers and maintain high trust with regard to the service. The empathy is defined as the attention or caring which customers need from service provider.
The effect of service quality on satisfaction was mentioned by (DeLone and McLean, 2003) in which poor level of service quality will lead to lose customers and decrease total sales. Relationship of service quality and satisfaction was also proved positive and significant in the study Wang and Liao (2008) in which IS model was used to assess E-government systems success. Their finding indicated that the satisfaction of users is impacted by service quality. Accordingly, the
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fourth proposition is defined as follow.
P4: The service quality of after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
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: Research Method
This chapter firstly illustrates the conceptual model and constructs, including System Quality, Information Quality and Service Quality of E-Customs project performance. The propositions are also defined followed by the sampling plan, survey outline, and data collection and analysis.
3.1 Research Model
A qualitative methodology was implemented in this study by using survey for collecting data and testing the proposed research model which is shown below. The proposed research model is presented in Figure 3.1. The variable System Quality contains sub-variables Flexibility and Sophistication. The variable Information Quality has Contents and Formats whereas Service Quality has Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, Empathy, and Tangibility.
Figure 3.1: Research Model 3.2 Propositions
Based on the literature review in Chapter two and the Section 3.1, the research proposition was developed in this study for the bellowing experimental validation.
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Table 3.1: Propositions and their sub-proposition Propositions and sub-propositions
P1 Performance of after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
P2 System quality of after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
P2-1 Flexibility factor after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
P2-2 Sophistication factor after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
P3 Information quality of after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
P3-1 Contents factor after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
P3-2 Format factor after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
P4 Service quality of after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
P4-1 Reliability factor after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
P4-2 Responsiveness factor after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
P4-3 Assurance factor after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
P4-4 Empathy factor after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
P4-5 Tangibility factor after-use of E-custom is more satisfied than that of before-use.
3.3 Survey Plan and Subjects
The sampling plan is designed to ensure that certain types of respondents are included in the final survey. Since the purpose of this research is to understand the difference between before-use and after-use of the E-custom in Vietnam, the Vietnamese workers who have experienced applying for permission document
The sampling plan is designed to ensure that certain types of respondents are included in the final survey. Since the purpose of this research is to understand the difference between before-use and after-use of the E-custom in Vietnam, the Vietnamese workers who have experienced applying for permission document