The effect of perceived web quality on e marketplace trust a case of vietnam

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY

TRAN ANH QUAN

THE EFFECT OF PERCEIVED WEB
QUALITY ON E-MARKETPLACE TRUST:
A CASE OF VIETNAM

MAJOR: BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
CODE: 16115034
\

RESEARCH SUPERVISORS:
DR. MAI ANH
PROF. DR. MOTONARI TANABU

Hanoi, 2018


ABSTRACT
Vietnam recently has witnessed a rapid rise in e-commerce. Based on the logic that
web quality is important in a self-service environment. It is important to understand
the impact of web quality to customers’ trust. In this study, the effect of web quality
is tested in relation with trust in Vietnam e-commerce context. The purpose of this
study is to answer two questions, whether or not web quality has an impact on
customers’ trust. And in the sub-dimensions of web quality, which would have the
biggest impact. The finding is highly practical and applicable for Vietnamese firms
or foreign firms that are wanting to build an e-commerce business in Vietnam.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This study cannot be finished without the tremendous help from individuals and
institutions. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude toward Vietnam Japan
University and JICA for providing unparalleled facilities and opportunities to study
and gather knowledge in incredible environments. Furthermore, I would like to give
a big thanks to the two wonderful advisors Professor Motonari Tanabu and Doctor
Mai Anh for giving me invaluable knowledge on researching. However, this thesis
can never be completed without the help from teachers from Vietnam Japan
University and friends.
Last but not least, I would like to give my biggest gratefulness to the support from
my family, helping me to take the chance I got and supported me regard of the
decisions I made.
Tran Anh Quan


TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES
LIST OF FIGURES
INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER 1: Literature Review ............................................................................. 4
1.1 E-marketplace ...................................................................................................4
1.2 Web quality .......................................................................................................4
1.3 Trust ..................................................................................................................5
1.4 Website adoption ...............................................................................................7
1.5 The gap in literature of web quality on trust .....................................................9
CHAPTER 2: Research model and data collection ............................................. 10
2.1 Research model and Hypotheses .....................................................................10
2.1.1 Web quality ..............................................................................................10
2.1.2 Technical quality ......................................................................................11

2.1.2 General Content quality ...........................................................................11
2.1.4 Specific content quality ............................................................................12
2.1.5 Appearance quality...................................................................................13
2.2 Data collection ................................................................................................13
2.2.1 Data collection method ............................................................................13
2.2.2 Questionnaire design ................................................................................14
2.2.3 Data collection process ............................................................................16


2.2.4 Data analysis procedure ...........................................................................16
CHAPTER 3: Analysis and results ........................................................................ 18
3.1 Data preparation ..............................................................................................18
3.2 Characteristics of participants .........................................................................18
3.3 Data Analysis and Results ...............................................................................20
3.3.1 Choosing acceptance level for criteria .....................................................20
3.3.2 Data analysis ............................................................................................20
3.3.3 Model testing ............................................................................................25
CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION, LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH . 27
4.1 Discussion .......................................................................................................27
4.2 Limitations and future research .......................................................................29
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 30
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................ 31
APPENDICES


LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1. Frequency table of the participants profile ................................................... 19
Table 3.2. Summary of criteria for evaluating measurement models ........................... 20
Table 3.3. Descriptive statistics and reliability, correlation .......................................... 23
Table 3.4. Regressions results ....................................................................................... 25

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1. Proposed research model ............................................................................ 10
Figure 3.1. Regression results ....................................................................................... 26


INTRODUCTION
Rationale and objective of this research
For the recent years, Vietnam has witnessed a big and steady rise in the number of
people using internet. On 4/4/2017, Mr. Hoang Phuoc Thuan, Head of National
Security, Department of Internet Security, Ministry of Public Security announced in
World Security Conference 2017, Vietnam had 58 million people using the internet,
increased 6% compared to 2016, placed itself in the top 30 countries in the world
with the most IPv4 addresses (Minh, 2017).
And with the great increasing number of internet users, economists also predict the
increasing usage of E-commerce. Based on the analysis of Vietnam E-commerce
Association (VECOM) in 2017, Vietnam’s E-commerce has risen by more than
25% and would continue this trend from 2018 to 2020. Furthermore, the revenue for
E-commerce websites also increased by 35%.
However, with big potential, comes great competition, many companies have to
withdraw from Vietnam market due to fierce competition. For example, Zalora, a
big e-retailer who had business in many countries of South East Asia like Vietnam,
Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines had to shut down in Vietnam market in 2016,
before that, many players also disappeared from Vietnam market as well, for
example: Deca.vn, Beyeu.com, Lingo.vn, etc. (My, 2017)
There are of course numerous factors affecting the success of an E-commerce
company, among them having great rate of usage is an important factor (DeLone &
McLean, 2016). And within many factors that can have an effect on the usage of a
service, trust is one of them (Lu, Yang, Chau, & Cao, 2011)
From long before and even until recently, the role of trust in business in general and

E-commerce in particular has been a wanted subject for researchers, many research
has been conducted in the name of this subject (Gefen, 2000; Hallikainen &

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Laukkanen, 2018; Gefen, 2003). However, in Vietnam market, the lack of trust is
still a fence that wards off customers from using E-commerce services, according to
Azhar Bin Adnan - chief marketing officer of Vietnam for leading US based CMC
Telecom (The voice of Vietnam, 2017). Thus, studying about trust in E-commerce
environment is still viable for Vietnamese researchers.
To increase the level of trust from customers, from the firm’s perspective, one must
understand the antecedents of trust in E-commerce. (San-Martín & Camarero, 2012)
proposed a model including 4 factors that affect trust in E-commerce shopping
context, including web design as one of the factors. Moreover, (Teo & Liu, 2007)
also states that website assurance and Integration also have effect on trust. And
while they seem to be separated, web design, assurance and integration are features
of website quality (Aladwani & Palvia, 2002). In other word, Website quality has an
influence on customer’s trust. To prove this point further, Hwang & Kim (2007) did
found perceived website quality has influence on customers’ trust after analyzing
the data given by 325 students in north of the U.S. Moreover, (Pennington, Wilcox,
& Grover, 2003) said that one of the main questions in building e-trust is how to
build and design the website to enhance the trust of a potential online customer,
which means researching on how Web quality would affect customer’s trust in
Vietnam is important.
This study aims to explore:
(1) Whether or not perceived Website quality whose components are technical
quality, general content quality, specific content quality, appearance quality
(Aladwani, 2006) influents customer’s Trust in Vietnam E-commerce context.
(2) In different components of Website quality, which has the most significant

impact on customer’s trust. Based on the result of this study, firms can analyze and
customize their website to fit better with Vietnamese’s preference.

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Scope of the study
This study investigates the effect of perceived web quality on perceived emarketplace trust. In some countries, such as Jordan (Al-Debei, Akroush, &
Ashouri, 2015), North America (Hwang & Kim, 2007) or Malaysia (Nilashi,
Jannach, Ibrahim, Esfahani, & Ahmadi, 2016), web quality has significant positive
impact on customers’ trust in E-commerce. However, the similar case in Vietnam is
unclear. So, the geographical scope of this study will be in Vietnam. The data of
this study is collected in May 2018, concluded the time scope for this study is
within the year of 2018 itself.
Structure of the study
This study will be presented as follow: In the beginning of the study, the author will
introduce the rationale, research questions and scope of the study. In chapter 1,
literatures support for the study’s theoretical foundation will be promptly presented.
Next, research model and hypotheses will be followed. Chapter 2 will be about
research methodology. Chapter 3 will have data analyzing results presented,
Chapter 4 will have discussion, limitations and implication. Lastly, the conclusion
of this study will be presented.

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CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1 E-marketplace
E-marketplace (EMP) is an online environment on the internet where different
buyers and sellers play as market players to exchange goods and services by

electronic means (Giovanoli, Pulikal, & Grivas, 2014). E-marketplace is often
divided into four categories, “private marketplace”, “public marketplace”,
“consortia

marketplace”

and

“community

marketplace”

(Sundareswaran,

Squicciarini, & Lin, 2012). Private marketplaces are usually owned by one
company, with function is to connect a set of limited pre-qualified buyers or sellers.
Public marketplace, also called independent marketplace or open marketplace, is the
type of marketplace which there is little qualification requirements. Public
marketplaces are owned by a neutral third party, such as Lazada group or Ebay.
Consortia marketplace is owned by several large buyers and sellers or joined
industry leaders. Convisint, originally owned by Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler, is
probably a well-known example of consortia marketplace. These marketplaces are
usually open to other equity partners after setting up their initial foundation (Wang
& Archer, 2007). And lastly, there is community marketplace, which is owned by
multiple players from different background.
There are three main functions of EMP, matching buyers and sellers, facilitate
exchanges of good, information, services, associate payment and providing
adequate infrastructure to keep the market function efficiently (Giovanoli et al.,
2014), with the first being the major role for EMP, while the second and the third
are also very important to keep EMP run smoothly.

1.2 Web quality
Perceived web quality refers to the quality and overall performance of an online
shopping web site, and it is a measure of the extent to which the web site design and
processes are simple, smooth, reliable, and effective. (Petter, DeLone, & McLean,
2008) In the area of IS, there has been quite a number of research about Web
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Quality throughout the years, most of them talk about usability attributes and design
of websites. Bell & Tang (1998) mentioned factors in technical quality to web
design like access to the web, navigation, graphics, structure, unique feature, user
friendliness and usefulness. On another hand, Johnson & Misic (1999), added to the
collection their findings, including speed, navigation, wording, color, style, and
especially, contact information (email, phone number, address and so on). In the
same year, Rose et al added download speed, web interface search function and
security. The year 2000 is a big year for web quality research, in this year, Liu &
Arnett, 2000 and Wan (2000) added a lot of categories and dimensions for Web
quality, including identified information, service quality, system use, playfulness,
system design quality, information, friendliness, responsiveness, and reliability.
Furthermore, Huizingh (2000) divided Web quality into 2 big dimensions: content
and design. Olsina & Rossi (2002) proposed and used a quantitative way to assess
web quality called Website Quality Evaluation Method (QEM), in which the
characteristics of a website would be evaluate are usability, functionality, reliability,
efficiency, and derived sub characteristics. However, all the above studies show
different attributes separately, without any unification. To solve that problem, in
2002, Aladwani and Palvia unified the above characteristics of web quality that
were found by peer into a holistic view, introducing the perceived web quality with
4 main dimensions: Technical quality, general content quality, service content (or
specific content) quality and design quality. These dimensions accounted for 67%
of the variance in perceived website quality (S. Kim & Stoel, 2004).

1.3 Trust
Same as any traditional business, behind the interface of a website of E-commerce,
there is an entity that run the business, and trust is crucial in buyer-seller
relationships (Gefen, 2003). Because there are several infamous harmful behaviors
of bad E-commerce sites, such as conveying inaccurate information or unauthorized
tracking of transaction, users tend to avoid E-vendors that they do not trust
(Reicheld, F.F. dan Schefter, 2000). In short, trust is vital for a business’ success,

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especially in online business since the uncertainty in this environment is higher than
in offline business (Y. Chen & Barnes, 2007) . Throughout the history, trust has
been conceptualized by many researchers, D. Gefen (2003) made a summary of
previous conceptualizations along with the measurements to measure the operation
of those constructs. In which until 2002, there has been 43 conceptualizations of
trust in research studys. In which trust can be understood as the “willingness of a
party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that
the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the
ability to monitor or control that other party” (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995).
It also can be understood as a strong defined aspect of many economics interaction,
implying a thinking that a certain result will occur. Moreover, trust also reduces risk
that believer will fall victim to an opportunistic behavior (Warkentin, Gefen, Pavlou,
& Rose, 2002). After 2003, the definition of trust is hardly revisited. Schoorman,
Mayer, & Davis (2007) revisit the model they made for trust, commenting and
making way for future research on the subject. In this conceptualization, Mayer
proposed Factors of Perceived Trustworthiness including three factors: Ability,
Integrity and Benevolence. And in the field of E-commerce, Gefen (2002) proposed
and validated the same conceptualization for E-trust, stating that e-trust is a multidimensional construct combining specific beliefs (sometimes labeled as
trustworthiness) and further investigation is meaningful.

Ability, also referred to be “competence” (Mcknight, D. H., V. Choudury., 2002), is
the skills and knowledge of service’s provider to provide a stable and desirable
performance that meet customers’ need (Yu, Pay Ling; Balaji, M.S.; Khong, 2011).
In E-commerce context, ability is the belief that a player will have enough
understand of the market they are in and what kind of the product/service that they
are providing, or in another word, ability contain a belief that the other party can
promptly do what is expected from them (Mcknight, D. H., V. Choudury., 2002).
Companies with good ability can reduce the uncertainty that are associated with ecommerce (Gefen & Straub, 2004). Ability is also domain specific (Mayer et al.,

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1995), meaning that a company that is good at this domain doesn’t necessary good
at other domains. An online apparel store may be really good at customer service,
but might not as equally good at general knowledge as a book store is.
Integrity, according to Mayer et al., (1995), is the perception from the trustor that,
the trustee will adhere to a set of principles that the trustor (as an individual) find
acceptable. It is understood that integrity is the trustee party being honest, fulfil
their promises, act ethically and maintain commitment, it convinces individuals that
the exchange that they will engage in will be fulfilled trustfully, and therefore, like
ability, integrity reduces the uncertainty involved in e-commerce (Gefen & Straub,
2004). So it can be concluded that, in e-commerce context, integrity reflect a
customer’s belief in which the orders they made will be deliver promptly as agreed,
their information will be secured through all the time using the trustee’s service.
Benevolence is the perception that the trustee that provide goods and services will
genuinely do good for their customers, truly care for the customers’ welfare beside
their profit motivation. According to McKnight (2002), benevolence reflects the
good and services providers’ caring and motivation to act in customer’s interest.
Benevolence has its root deep in the relationship of sellers and buyers since it
reduces the perceived uncertainty and risk that come with opportunistic behaviors

(Ba & Pavlou, 2002). In E-commerce context, benevolence, it can be understood
that the online vendor does not take advantage of their customers information, and
does not act unscrupulously toward them. Benevolence is also a relationship
between online vendors and their customers, not reflecting the vendors’ kindness
and good intention toward everyone (McKnight & Chervany, 2001).
1.4 Website adoption
Web quality on trust is placed in the website adoption site of research, which
usually involving purchase intention, trust, customer behavior by using website as a
tool for shopping. Gefen et al., (2003) made an integrative model for trust in online
shopping, combining the knowledge of previous researchers such as Straub (2000),

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Liao & Cheung (2001), Shim, Shin, & Nottingham (2002) and Ranganathan &
Ganapathy (2002). In which they examine factors from both individual side and
business side, such as media richness, convenience, ease of use, system quality,
service quality, transaction speed, information content, design, security, and privacy
on firm’s side and user experience, involvement, beliefs, IT education, familiarity
on consumer’s side. Aladwani (2006) used the four factors web quality to test of the
link between web site quality and forward enterprise integration with web
consumers. Hwang & Kim (2007) used Aladwani’s model to test effects of
perceived Web quality with service contents on enjoyment, anxiety, and e-trust of
self-service systems. Kuan, Bock, & Vathanophas (2008) tested the effect of
website quality on customer initial purchase and continued purchase at e-commerce
websites. Qutaishat (2012) examined whether or not website quality would attract
people to use E-government services in Jordan. Lee & Levy (2014), examined the
effect of information quality on trust in e-government system. Al-Debei, Akroush,
& Ashouri (2015) tested the effect of trust, perceived benefits, and perceived web
quality on consumer attitude toward online shopping. Nilashi (2016) used a

different conceptualization of web quality, including information quality, usability
and service interaction to test its relation to trust. Mcknight (2017) expanded the
literature, not online examining the relation between information quality, system
quality on trust, but also on distrust. And Hallikainen & Laukkanen (2018)
investigated the effect of national culture on e-commerce’s trust, meaning ecommerce trust is still an excellent topic for researchers. Furthermore, in the context
of Vietnam, there has been not been many research related to this topic. For website
quality, there have been research, mostly on the relationship between web quality
and loyalty, buying intention and satisfaction (Le & Pham, 2015; Võ Lý Thị Nhị,
2014). And they are in banking and tourist industries. There has not yet any study
on the relationship between web quality and customers’ trust in E-commerce
context in Vietnam. Thus, this study may prove to be the pioneer of this particular
niche in Vietnam research environment.

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1.5 The gap in literature of web quality on trust
The above researchers usually take Aladwani’s conceptualization of Web quality as
a whole and to see how influential it is on different aspects, including anxiety,
enjoyment and e-trust (Hwang & Kim, 2007), electronic word of mouth, trust and
intention toward online purchase (Al-Debei et al., 2015). It can be seen that they
approached figuring out the relationship between web quality and trust as a whole,
without focusing to see within the four dimensions of web quality, each of them
will have how much of an influence on trust. On the other hand, research focusing
on the four dimensions of web quality have touched different aspects such as
attitude toward the website and intention to purchase (Aladwani, 2006), intention to
use E-government services (Qutaishat, 2012) or initial purchase versus continued
purchase (Kuan et al., 2008). In addition, both Qutaishat and Kuan’s research do not
include appearance quality as one of the factors and added service quality as another
factor. To sum up, the previous literatures have not addressed the relationship

between perceived web quality and trust using Aladwani’s four dimensions model,
researchers use different combination aspects of the model, sometimes information
and system quality (McKnight, Lankton, Nicolaou, & Price, 2017), another time
information system only (Lee & Levy, 2014). For Vietnam context, there has not
been any research on this particular topic. This study will address the abovementioned issue.

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CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH MODEL AND DATA COLLECTION
2.1 Research model and Hypotheses
The main purpose of this study is to explore whether or not the perceived web
quality would have anyhow influent the trust in e-commerce websites in Vietnam
context. As mentioned earlier in the first chapter, trust is still a problem fencing off
people using e-commerce services. Furthermore, within the four dimensions of
perceived web quality proposed by Aladwani, which will have the most significant
effect on customers trust in Vietnam, hence, the research model is proposed as
below, along with relationship and hypotheses:

Figure 2.1. Proposed research model (Adapted from Aladwani, 2006; Heli, 2018)
2.1.1 Web quality
In this study, Web quality is the combination of the four different dimensions:
technical quality, general content quality, specific content quality, and appearance
quality. For recent years businesses, a wide reach of IT (Information technology)
has affected the retail industry as a whole. Many small e-retailers has been

10


established or shut down, even websites that help people to open their own ecommerce websites are established (shopify.com) which currently has more than

3600 stores operating every day. There has been research showing that web quality
has direct impact on trust (Al-Debei et al., 2015; Nilashi et al., 2016). Based on
their findings, a following hypothesis is proposed:
H1: Web quality will have positive impact on customer’s trust in E-marketplace site.
2.1.2 Technical quality
For anyone using the internet, they can see how companies and users interact
through different websites. On a website, information and medias are shown to
attract customers, but to increase the chance of getting opportunity for interactive
business transaction, technical characteristics of a website, including ease of
navigation, security, speed, interactive function and so on, become important as an
aspect of website quality (Aladwani & Palvia, 2002). And since E-commerce is
based mostly on online environment, the quality of those characteristics is also need
to be good. The technical dimension is related to how the content and services are
assembled and made available on a website (Rocha, 2012). Throughout the years,
the advancement in technical is undeniable, however, the old findings of previous
researchers are still remained true. Gao & Bai (2014) found that ease of use
(including ease of navigation and speed) has impact on intention to use internet of
things. Bonsón Ponte, Carvajal-Trujillo, & Escobar-Rodríguez (2015) proved that
perceived security has influence on customer’s trust in online purchasing. Hence
forth, websites with good quality can deem to be worthier in the eyes of customers
comparing to other websites with inferior technical quality. Thus, a hypothesis is
proposed.
H2: Technical quality will have positive impact on customer’s trust in Emarketplace site.
2.1.2 General Content quality
From decades ago, studies have shown that websites with sub-standard general
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content quality (completeness of content, accuracy, clarity of content, concise and
usefulness of content) would be a waste of resources and decrease the chance of

getting potential customers (Liu and Arnett, 2000; Misic and Johnson, 1999). One
of the main things that people will looks at when shopping online is the information,
from product detail’s information to retailer’s information, and even other facts
from the websites and products. Content deliver information, and if the information
does not meet the expectation of customers, then that will signal a negative reaction
from people visiting those websites. It’s very hard to gain customer’s trust if the
website provides them with ambiguous, unusable, or inaccurate information. And
even in recent studies, content quality is still contributing a great influence on
attracting customers that potentially will deliver transactions for companies. Calisir
et al., (2014) examined the effect of content quality on the intention to use a webbased learning system. In which content quality have significant impact on
perceived usefulness which is the strongest predictor of behavioral intention to use
that system. Nilashi et al., (2016) found out that Web quality (with information
quality) has positive impact on trust on Amazon.com and Lazada.com. McKnight et
al., 2017), Lee & Levy (2014) proved that information quality have significant
impact on trust from customers. Using Aladwani and Palvia’s model in 2002, in
which to create a website with favorable customer’s intention the information must
be useful, complete, clear, current, concise, and accurate, the next hypothesis is
proposed, arguing that general content quality would have a positive influence on emarketplace trust.
H3: General content quality will have positive impact on customer’s trust in Emarketplace site.
2.1.4 Specific content quality
Similar to general content quality, specific content quality also plays a big part in
attracting potential customers. However, while general content quality focuses
more on the quality of contents that are shown on website, specific content focuses
on a group of specific information that should be found on e-commerce websites,
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such as firm contact information, firm general information, products/services details,
customers’ policies, customer support (Aladwani, 2006). This is undoubtedly
correct in many senses because within a mass of information put on by different

seller/resellers, it should be more trustworthy that you can easily find information
that could reduce your risk on those sites. So, a hypothesis was made, controverting
that specific content quality would have positive influence on customer’s trust in ecommerce marketplace sites.
H4: Specific content quality will have positive impact on customer’s trust in Emarketplace site.
2.1.5 Appearance quality
The final component of Website quality (web quality for short) is the appearance,
which refers to characteristics such as attractiveness, organization, proper use of
fonts, colors, and proper use of multimedia (Aladwani, 2006). Bart et al., (2005)
proven that A visually appealing website demonstrates the e-vendor's capability and
professionalism, which would engender online trust. Naturally, it’s just hard for
users to continue looking for information, or simply just keeping attention on a
webpage with unfriendly colors, or with bad or inconsistent style. E-commerce sites,
aside from focusing on technical quality only, should pay attention to appearance
also to get higher chance to successfully accomplish their goals, whether it is to
bring more customers to their site, generate more transaction or to initiate online
trust from customers. Hence, the fourth hypothesis is proposed as follow.
H5: Appearance quality will have positive impact on customer’s trust in Emarketplace site.
2.2 Data collection
2.2.1 Data collection method
There are two main different data collection method, qualitative and quantitative.
For qualitative data collection method, the data collected usually is not presented in

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numeral form, but through another means like form of words or picture, because it
is used to explain the complex nature and to create and find new concept
simultaneously with the data collected. On the other hand, quantitative data is
formed by number collected by precise measurement. The data is used to capture
the detail found in empirical social world, and to analyze and express what is found

in the number (Neuman, 2014).
In this study, a questionnaire survey of quantitative method was chosen due to
several reasons. First, the study is used to test the relationship between different
variables (web quality and trust), second, it is effective for collecting a large amount
of data. And lastly, the use of questionnaire is less time consuming and more
economic efficient.
2.2.2 Questionnaire design
In this section, the formation of questionnaire is introduced. The questionnaire for
this study is developed based on previous studies’ measurement items with some
modifications to fit with the scale of the study and the context of Vietnam. The
questionnaire is composed of two sections with six different parts: questions about
participants’ general anonymous information, questions measuring technical quality,
questions measuring general information quality, questions measuring specific
content quality, question measuring appearance quality and questions measuring
trust. There is a small description for each part so participants can understand what
they will be asked. Each part of the questionnaire will be explained in detail.
The questionnaire was made using google form and is an online questionnaire. At
the beginning of the questionnaire, an introduction is written so that participants are
informed about what the research is about, the purpose of this study and information
of the author for any question given by participants.
In the first section, there are questions asking for participants’ general information
such as their age, gender, employment status, experience with e-marketplace and
frequency of shopping online.
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Next, the main questions of the questionnaire are introduced. In each part, there is a
description telling what participants need to do in order to complete the part, the
measurement items are measured using five-point Likert scale, with the range from
(1) “Strongly disagree” to (5) “Strongly agree”. Likert scale is a widely use

measurement scale (Joshi, Kale, Chandel, & Pal, 2015), it is easy for participants to
understand and is very straight forward to build and administer. The five-point scale
was chosen due to the ease of use and clear and simple user interface. In the second
section, first, participants are asked about the technical quality of their mainly use emarketplace sites. There were six questions in this part. Question 1, 2 and 3
measure facility, availability and speed, question 3, 4, 5 and 6 measure automatic
functionality and language support. Continuedly, participants moved to another part,
answering questions about general information quality. In this part, there are five
questions, they are used to measure information usefulness, completeness, clearness,
timeliness and accuracy. Similar to the second part, there are five questions in the
third part of the second section. Question 1 and 2 in this part are used to ask
participants about the readiness of firm’s general and contact information. Question
3 is used to ask about the information of products and services. Question 4 and 5 are
used to ask about the adequate and readiness of information related to customers’
policies and support. In the followed part, participants are asked by five questions
measuring websites’ appearance quality. The first question in this part is used to ask
participants about the attractiveness of websites. Next, participants are asked about
how good the websites’ layout are in the second question. Question 3 and 4 are set
to measure the proper use of font and color. And the last question is about
multimedia proper uses. The last part of the second section is totally focused on
trust. There are six questions related to benevolence, integrity and ability of vendors
that participants would have to choose from.
In conclusion, a 31-item online questionnaire (without questions about participants’
general information) was used to gather data from the participants (Appendix 1).
There are total 22 items measuring technical quality, general content quality,

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specific content quality, appearance quality (Aladwani & Palvia, 2002) and 9 items
measuring trust through perceived integrity, benevolence and ability (Schoorman et

al., 2007), adapted from the research of Hwang (2006).
2.2.3 Data collection process
The Vietnamese version of questionnaire’s URL was uploaded on several Facebook
university groups in Hanoi, mainly universities study business and economics. The
target sample for this study was mainly students and young employed people. The
reasons for choosing this type of sample are due to the internet and online purchase
familiarity of young people. The participants in this survey are people who are
capable of using the internet through PC or mobile phone, who have previously
purchased through the internet and used e-commerce websites.
Data collection was done in 3 weeks, there were around 67 participants attended the
survey in each week. In those three weeks, participants who joined the survey get a
return present, encouraging people to take part in the survey, also as a gratitude
toward people who take their time to join the program.
A total 199 responses were collected via online mean and all 199 responses are
adequate for further analysis.
2.2.4 Data analysis procedure
Data analysis, according to Sekaran (2013) has three main objectives. The first
objective is to getting the feel of the collected data, using descriptive statistics. The
second objective is to assessing whether or not the data have good quality by using
measurement models. And the third objective is to test hypotheses proposed for the
research. To meet the objective, data collected in this study will be analyzed
following these steps:
The first thing to do after collecting the data is to prepare the data, also called data
preparation step. In this step, the data will be cleaned, removing outliners, missing
observations and other discrepancies (Trochim, 2002). After that, demographic and

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characteristics of participants, along with descriptive statistics analysis will be

carried out to help getting the feel of the data. After preparing and running
descriptive test for the data, measurement models and analysis will be tested using
SPSS 25. All proposed hypotheses and research questions will be analyzed, using
methods such as EFA loadings, reliability test, correlation test and regression. The
details of those analyses will be presented and discussed later in this study.

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CHAPTER 3: ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
Based on what discussed in the last part of Chapter 2, Chapter 3 will be composed
of two parts, data preparation and data analysis. While data preparation focuses on
cleaning the data, data analysis will focus on testing the adequacy of data and
measure the model proposed.
3.1 Data preparation
After receiving the online results, raw data was imported into excel file. Since there
is no missing variable due to the nature of google form questionnaire with “require
answer option”, the next step is to reduce the outliers. To detect outliers, an explore
statistic test was conducted in SPSS 25 (Appendix 2). After carefully observe the
outliers detected, answer number 89 and 187 were removed from the data set,
showing sights that the participants purposely filled the questionnaire not
wholeheartedly.
3.2 Characteristics of participants
Getting the feel for the data is important before officially conduct analysis for
hypotheses testing (Sekaran, 2013). In this part, descriptive statistics will be carried
out and data normality will be checked, with in mind that when analyzing the
results gotten from the data, profile of participants should be taken account for.
As can be seen in table 3.1, the data is consisted of 135 female participants
(68.53%) and 62 males (31.47%). Furthermore, the current residency of the people
responding to the questionnaire is mainly Hanoi city with 182 participants (92.39%),

10 people are currently working in Ho Chi Minh city (5.08%) and the rest are
distributed in different northern and central provinces, such as Nam Dinh, Quang
Ninh, Thai Binh, Thanh Hoa and Da Nang. For the occupation of the participants,
most of them are in different universities studying (68.02%), whether it is

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ungraduated or graduated programs. Among working people, 95.23% are employed,
while 4.76% (3 people) are self-employed and have their own business.
Table 3.1. Frequency table of the participants profile
Number of participants Percentage
1 Gender
Male
Female
2 Working location
Hanoi
HCMC
Other
3 Occupation
Student/Graduated student
Employed
Self-employed
4 Age
18-25
26-35
5 Frequency of e-commerce shopping
Less than 1 order per year
1-5 orders per year
6-10 orders per year

More than 10 orders per year
6 Purchase within 6 months
Yes
No

62
135

31.47%
68.53%

182
10
5

92.39%
5.08%
2.54%

134
60
3

68.02%
30.46%
1.52%

166
31

84.26%
15.74%

25
87
32
53

12.69%
44.16%
16.24%
26.90%

158
39

80.20%
19.80%

Source: Author’s analysis of survey data
With the profile statistics described, it can be seen that for young people in Vietnam,
most of them would order 1-5 products from e-commerce sites per year (44.16%).
Second type will buy more than 10 orders per year (26.9%). It can be understood
that normally young people in Vietnam would buy very little goods online due to
the nature of uncertainty of product quality, since people would buy from 0 to 5
products per year took 56.85%, larger than people would buy from 6 to more than
10 products (43.14%). However, there are more people who buys more than 10
products per year than the people that buy from 6-10 products per year. Which

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