| Abstract | EVNHCMC is required to promote the increase of paymentr of electricity bills through eBanking, this is the general policy of entire corporation of EVN which also includes Tan Binh Power Company (TBPC) in Ho Chi Minh City. For the period 2010-2015, TBPC designed a strategy to develop the company in which e Payment is one of the objectives that the company will try to achieve.
The study aims to understand the behaviour of the customers and the factors that influence the behavior of customers. We concentrate on the form of payment electricity bills of the customers, especially payment online. The result of this research may help the company to set up efficient communication channels to reach customers and support they use of internet payment.
We sampled 78 customers of Tan Binh Power Company for the questionnaire survey and carried out face-to-face interviews with 2 experts and 2 customers to examine and identify the factors that affect the use of ICT (computer, internet) and the customers' mode of payment of electricity bills.
The results of the research show that four factors affect customers' perception for or against electronic payment; they are age, education, habit (tradition) and trust.
Despite the number of user the computer and internet are high, e Banking is very low, 85% customers (67 persons) have a computer and 70% customers (55 persons) use it to access the internet, just 9% of the customers choose e Banking. We can make out two distinct groups of customers. A small group (23%) is the potential e Payment customers: They are young with high education, work-full time, use the computer at their workplace and prefer to pay the bills online. In contrast, the majority of people (middle-aged, lower education, working full, or part-time, or are retired) they their bills in a traditional (habitual) way in form of cash at specific locations (at EVNHCMC, Bank or Post office). How can this behavior be explained including that of most that of the younger customers? All in all, tradition plays role: a cash economy coupled with face-to-face 'transactions'. This includes seeing the product as well as getting a warranty. Finally and most importantly, trust in the current (2015) internet is not high: 55% do not trust much or not all, 17% trust it much or very much with 28% not answering this question. This also explains why the number of e Commerce users is low.
Based on the two groups, we recommend EVNHCMC to concentrate its efforts on the young generation of customers (below 45 years) and promote e Banking. This can be done by after work introductory workshops (use of internet, Banking), by giving some bonus for those who do e Payment and introduce measures to increase trust in e Banking. However, this transcends EVNHCMC and we recommend that the government takes necessary steps like improving ICT infrastructure, increasing internet security accompanied by legal provisions and standardization for e Commerce and e Banking. |