From the coded data, researcher conduct a descriptive analysis to define ranges of responses in categories and recurrent themes .
4. CHAPTER 4 – DATA ANALYSIS & FINDINGS
In this chapter, all data collected from in-depth interview and focus group is organized and analyzed based on the questionnaires to explain the research questions. In each questions, the answers are divided into two main groups: Individual – deciders and influencers (CEO, Business Owner, CTO,) and Focus group – sellers and SECUMAIL users (VNETWORK staff from departments of Customer experience, Sales, Technical support). All these three groups involved mainly in the buying process and evaluating the system in which researcher will base on the data of in-depth interview for data analysis; while data collected from focus group interview is researcher’s reference to make good and strong conclusion and recommendation for VNETWORK JSC.
The responses are categorized and compared to the literature review to define similarities and deviations from the proposed research model. In case, the interview results support for
a hypothesis, the empirical results will strengthen and prove the acceptance of null hypothesis. Otherwise, the hypothesis will be rejected in this case study. This research result cannot generalize for all SMEs or enterprises in Vietnamese market but it can be a reference for those having the similar structure and operation style.
In addition, this research is exploratory research, therefore, some other factors may appear during the interview. All of these factors will be collected and discussed for further studies.
4.1. Data analysis
4.1.1. Motives that makes the organizational buyers purchasing/ transferring to a new email system
From the in-depth and focus group interview result, there are four main reasons that makes the buyers changing their email system to another one or decide to buy an email system. The very basic reason coming from their need of getting
an email system for their business. However, there are a few customers bought SECUMAIL due to this reason (4%).
Other motives are coming from bad experiences with the previous product (71%) such as receiving many spam/ virus mails and phishing emails which is very high risk of leaking their confidential information or data. Besides, the customers also look for a better system supplier who can provide them a good customer service and support (15%); sometimes, when something went wrong
to the system, they can get the support very quickly instead of following a long process due to the supplier’s support policy. Customers also aware about the necessary of equipping a good email system that can really protect them from hackers. Hence, they will not be hesitated to change to the new email system that support good security features and functions (~9%).
In additional, the advertisements of SECUMAIL via well-known media channel such as VTV, VTC attracted the buyers’ attention about the product. This leads them to consider SECUMAIL as an option for the step of searching information. Big enterprises decided to consider doing POC in order to change the email system after knowing about SECUMAIL through the Cybersecurity event such as Vietsovpetro, Fahasa, Gilimex.
As the result of the survey, learning element in Internal factors plays an important
role of affecting organizational buyers making their purchasing decision.
Question
Motives that
customers SECUMAIL system
Factors affect
not selecting
for email system
- Introduced by experts (1)
- Good customer service policy (3)
- Good product quality (outstanding functions, etc) (5)
- Price (4)
- Promotion (1)
*** NOT SELECTING
- Unprofessional staff (4)
- No
functions (2)
- Brand
reputation (3)
- Bad product quality - Brand name with
(unable to perform well) (2)
- Not able to follow the company buying process (bidding etc) (1)
- Price (expensive) (4)
- Poor customer service (support ...) (2)
Reasons of
SECUMAIL
Factors
decision of
(from the
charge, the company)
- Nice design (UI/ UX) (2)
*** FROM THE COMPANY
- Complying customer's purchasing process/ rules
bidding) (2)
- Product with well-known
as a good brand name (1)
- Product quality that satisfycustomer's expectation &
requirements (9)
- Price (5)
- Professional staff (good manner, good
consulting) (1)
- Good customer service (support) (2)
- Certificates (3)
- Supplier's commitment (NDA, SLA) (10)
- Complying with customer's purchasing process/ rules (POC, bidding) (5)
Table 3: Result of In-depth and Focus Group Interview (motives that makes the
organizational buyers purchasing/ transferring to a new email system)
4.1.2. The importance of email security to the companies
With the development of Internet, business man do not have to travel as much as they used to. Communication is mostly done via email, video call via platforms
such as Skype, Google etc. Email is used as an official tool to communicate between people, not only for sending text but also files such as images, contract, videos etc. This makes the business become much easier, especially cross- country business. Hence, email plays a very important role in business. According to Mr Dang Thi Hong – CEO, HD Fabric Ltd., Co, Email system is very necessary in daily business, it is used not only for business communication but also for saving and recording data of the company for years. As the result, people pay a high cost for good system in which meets their expectation of system high performance and security.
We used to study and keep update on the latest technology in order to operate the email system well. It takes us pretty long time to study and do proof of concept (POC) to evaluate carefully an email system before moving to the step
of getting proposals or purchasing decision shared by Mr Nguyen Van Tam - IT manager, Taisun Vietnam Co., Ltd.
There are 94% of the companies in the in-depth interview confirmed that email security is important to them. The remain of 6% does not care about security, it comes from SMEs companies. While in the focus group interview, interviewees believe that everyone cares about their email security; however, the level of importance is not as high as the actual customer’s views.
The enterprises have got more security concern while 75% of them believe that email security is extremely important to their organization; none of the enterprise agree that email security is quite important or not important to them.
It is also explained why the enterprises usually spend more time to study about the email system before making purchasing decision. They have to study the information very carefully, after that, they start doing the POC (about one month)
to evaluate the system before moving to the next step in their purchasing process – Vietsovpetro company. It takes them from one week to a year to finish their purchasing process; whereas, SMEs companies can finish their purchasing in one day.
Question
The importance
of email security
to companies?
Table 4: Result of In-depth and Focus Group Interview (time of purchasing process)
Important Of
Email Data
Protection
Not important Quite
important Important Highly important
Extremely important
Table 5: Result of In-depth and Focus Group Interview (the
(H2) Product involvement has positive impact on business buyer
purchasing decision.
4.1.3. Factors affect decision of buying SECUMAIL
4.1.3.1. External factors
As the result of the interviews, there is no confirmation about influences coming from the external factors. From the firmographics point of view, the researcher finds that only the size of the business slightly affects purchasing behavior of the organizations, the differences will be followed by the researcher in the finding part that analyzing SMEs versus the enterprises.
There are the same patterns of the answers from the SMEs and enterprises which caused the conclusion from the researcher about no impact coming from the element of culture/ government in external factors.
In the contrast, Reference Group was given feedback by many interviewees about its importance in their purchasing process, especially selecting an email supplier (in-depth: 25% - focus group: 15%). Big brand names who are using the product, it means that they can trust that supplier – Mr Cuong, Gilimex Co. While other IT manager feels more confident with the system if they got the recommendation from the experts – Mr Tan, Toyota Hue.
(H3) Reference group has positive impact on business buyer purchasing decision.
4.1.3.2. Internal factors
As the result of the interviews, there is no such finding that shows clearly about the relation between internal factors with to internal factors. However, the elements of internal factors more or less also mentioned during the interviews which could be relevant. For example, regarding organizational values and perception, feedback from the interviewees were as long as the supplier follow their buying process and meet their expectation, they will proceed purchasing – Ms Thanh, VNETWORK Co. This answer is very broad and it could be included factors of product, people, or process. There are also many interviewees mentioned about the impact of the staff professionalism to their purchasing decision, researcher will count this as the comment for people in the marketing mix 7Ps. Interestingly, there is a case which the customer bought SECUMAIL because of their relationship with the company staff, researcher will count
it as the impact of People element.
As discussed above, Learning has positive impact on the business buyer purchasing decision.
4.1.3.3. Marketing Mix 7Ps factors
As sharing above theories on the importance of marketing in selling business for a product or service. It’s not surprised that marketing mix 7Ps factors have very big impact to the buyer purchasing decision. Among the 7Ps, Product and Price has got the highest influence level.
Product - factor plays the most important role in this buying business, it is
especially concerned in the individual interviews. They expected to have a good quality email service which is able to operate 24/7 smoothly with no
downtime commitment which is declared very clearly in the contract agreement – Mr Tri, Vhaiyen JSC. User interface is considered very carefully before actual implementation of the system, work performance is depended on the effective communication which is done mostly via email; knowing how to use the email system fluently will lead to good result at work. Hence, an email system which is free from virus/ hacker, user friendly interface, technical support, aftersales service policies, and function normally with commitment in Service Level Agreement (SLA) will have great impact on their buying decision
Most of participants tend to use popular service of common brand name or good credibility in the market to persuade standard product services. There are about 70% interviewees mentioned about the importance of product in their purchasing decision. It is almost 100% of the interviewees agreed that product play as one of the top key factor that affects their buying decision. More specific, for SECUMAIL, buyers concern the product attributes such as quality (good performance, smooth functions, user friendly, and its technology). Besides, an email system that has got nice design and convenience in use will be a value add for the buyers to make decision. Some features of SECUMAIL such as recall email, set password have driven the attention of the buyers to study more about the system.
Due to special characteristic of security product, brand name is specially paid attention to, a well-known brand name can increase the confident level of the buyer to make their purchasing decision. In addition, the customer service that can satisfy the customer during their purchasing process in terms of allowing for POC, providing proper technical support help the buyer to overcome the hesitation of using the system and willing to buy.
(H4) Product has positive impact on business buyer purchasing decision.
Pricing - As the results of the interviews, Pricing is the second factor that
has got high impact to the customer purchasing decision with about 21%.
In the question of top two factors affect purchasing decision, there are 31% voted for Pricing factor to be in the top two. The concern comes mostly from SMEs while enterprises pay more attention to the product and service quality. Companies always control on the expenses, they used to set a budget for spending on email system, In some companies, IT department has got KPI on spending money for IT system; hence, in some cases, they need to negotiate or change suppliers for cost savings. In the consequence, “we may stop studying further an email system if we find it
is expensive compare to our budget” – Mr . Nguyen Thanh Toai, CEO, VWA Co., Ltd. Being flexible in payment policy is an advantage of SECUMAIL that allows the buyers make purchasing decision faster. 75% interviewees have confirmed that Price factor affects their purchasing decision with 31% of pretty impact and 31% of high impact.
(H5) Price has positive impact on business buyer purchasing decision.
Promotion – this factor is a motive to encourage the buyers making
purchasing decision. It is not mentioned as one of the factor that affect the buyer buying decision; however, it is used to select a supplier in case the two suppliers provide the same product and service quality. It is shown in
a few SEMs while the big enterprises do not mention any about the influencing promotion factor. Between the two equal professional service
providers, the one who has better offer (promotion) will be more preferable and more likely to be chosen – Mr Khang, Travetco Co., Ltd.
In the focus group interview, sales and customer service teams agreed that promotion program can help them to close deal easier, the customers tend to maintain the service without hesitation – Ms Y, VNETWORK. While asking about the impact level of promotion to the customer buying decision, 77% of the interviewees confirmed that promotion has a little or
no impact to their purchasing decision; about 14% of the interviewees confirmed that it has impact and 9% of high impact.
The focus group interview has got higher vote for impact and high impact,
it comes from people from sales department while the customers do not make buying decision based on the promotion program.
How Promotion
Affects
Buying
Decision
No impact
A little impact
Impact High impact Very high impact
(H6) Promotion has positive impact on business buyer purchasing decision.
Place - Through all the interviews, there is no confirmation about the
influence of Place factor to their purchasing decision. As the result of technology trend, many email service providers transfer to provide PaaS via cloud base which allow everybody to buy and setup online anywhere anytime.
In the response to the question that is related to Place factor, Ms Nguyen Ngoc Puong Thanh, Sales Manager, VNETWORK JSC shared that
“Customers tend to more preferable of online as it is much more convenient for them. Especially, under the Covid19, most of the meeting with potential buyers have been done via online platform and it is not an obstacles for us while doing our business.”. Nowadays, more and more people use cloud service, it saves cost better and more convenient for deployment – Mr Hoang Xuan Huong, Technical leader, VNETWORK JSC. As long as the company can deliver their service professionally, location is not a matter – Mr Nguyen Minh Tuan, CTO, Vietsovpetro JVC. Therefore, this Place factor is not strongly supported by the research finding.
People - The buyers are very particular with the People who they are
going to work with, in particular of their professionalism, manner, attitudes. Even though People is not likely the key factor affect the buyer purchasing decision; however, it is a very strong support factor to the customers purchasing decision, People factor was mentioned many times during most of the answers of reason of buying SECUMAIL (13%), top two factors affecting buying decision (7%), factor affect buying decision (8%). One of the reason they made purchasing decision or rebuy SECUMAIL is due to the company staff – good working attitude showing through their willingness to support 24/7, talking in a good manner with them. We highly appreciate for the quarterly survey that VNETWORK has been conducting recently. It makes us feel like VNETWORK team care for our experience of using service and we are listened. – Mr Vo Minh Quoc, Konoike Vinatrans Co., Ltd. The professionalism of supplier’s staff can impress the buyers and it leads to the result of choosing a supplier. Both in-depth and focus group interviews said that they prefer to work with People who have high expertise and professional in their work as it brings them good feelings of being secure and comfortable.
According to Mr Pham Thanh Hung – CEO of Monopower Biopharmaceuticals Co., Ltd shared: we sometimes can accept big error from email system to be fixed willingly by the technical support team but
we cannot accept for the minor error which is refused to check or support
by supplier’s team due to their attitude.
(H7) People has positive impact on business buyer purchasing decision.
Process - Although there is no individual or focus groups mention the key
word: “Process” during the interview, Mr Vo Doan Quoc Duy – Head of IT department, HCM City Book Distribution Corporation JSC considered that fast and flexible procedure is preferable to save time. Therefore, there is
no supporting idea for this hypothesis.
Physical evidence - As the results of the interviews, there is no such
finding about the impact of physical evidence to the buyer purchasing decision. Customers sometimes concern about system creadibility, they may ask for certificate, however, it is not a strong support factor that affect the buyer purchasing decision. Good reference groups will help to build trust and confidence for them.
However, in the focus group, VNETWORK staff believe that physical evidence is important to their customers especially enterprises (70%). Therefore, the supporting ideas for this hypothesis are not strong for the research finding.
Top 2 Factors
Affect Buying
Decision (7Ps)
Product quality
Price
Promotion
People (staff
professionalism)
Process
Place
Physical
evidence
Factors Not
Affect Buying
Decision
Place
(distribution
channel,
location)
Physical
evidence
(office,
system
infrastructure)
Process
(selling
process)
Price
People
Table 8: Result of In-depth and Focus Group Interview (7Ps -
4.1.3.4. SECUMAIL assessment & system expectation
As the interview results, 100% customers are satisfied with SECUMAIL product in which 56% customers have got high satisfaction. While, VNETWORK people (in focus group) believe that customers have less satisfaction about SECUMAIL in which 18% customers are quite satisfied and 0% customers are extremely satisfied. There are many ideas from the interviewees that support to improve current SECUMAIL system.
SECUMAIL
System
Assessment
Not satisfy
Quite
satisfied
Satisfied
Highly
satisfied
Extremely
satisfied
Improvement Suggestion for SECUMAIL App development
User interface More function development System performance (fast loading, being stable)
Fix the current issues (email go to junk box, blocking email wrongly)
More features development (IMAP) Enhance system filtering capability Improve troubleshooting effectiveness More attractive price policy/ promotion More system innovation to be updated for the customers
More branding activities
4.2. Findings
The main purpose of this research is defining the factors that affect the customers in making their purchasing decision and the impact level of each factor. Since then, researcher will propose the approaches for VNETWORK JSC to improve their SECUMAIL business in Vietnam market. Following is the summary of the findings:
Research questions
What are the factors that positively
business purchasing SECUMAIL?