Along the 3,200km-long coastline, Vietnam has a significant number of seaports, which are relatively large and named as the keys to economic development. However, most ports are relatively small with obsolete facilities and poor supporting services. Among three largest ports countrywide, Ho Chi Minh City seaport has had the highest throughput and productivity per annum of the country for years, assumed the role of the major port in the south, where cargos and containers come and go from all industrial parks in the southern region. Situated on what was the outskirts but is now the outskirts or suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City, it has however shown some drawbacks, i.e., expansion of the port is not an option regardless of the high throughput. Apart from the inadequate infrastructure, ports are facing another setback due to backward pricing. The rapid increase in number of ports also created a “race to the bottom” situation, where Vietnam ports have reduced their price to attract customers. The direct results are lower service quality and an inability to reinvest into port development. Therefore, the restructuring of Ho Chi Minh City seaport system has been launched since 2006 whereby the plan not only resolves the limited size, obsolete facilities and traffic issues, but also becomes more efficient as the new port complex is located conveniently among the region’s industrial parks and export processing zones of Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, Dong Nai, and Ba Ria – Vung Tau. In line with this plan, the paper will mainly aim to provide the outstanding constraints which Ho Chi Minh City seaport system faced, including illogical distribution among ports/terminals regardless the scale, capacity and geographic locations; ineffective and insecured mooring and anchorage buoys; undeveloped logistic services centres and lack of connecting infrastructure. As so, the recommendations for single issue will be provided.

This paper investigates factors impacting on sustainable fashion buying intention of consumers by reviewing studies about the topic and conducting a survey with consumers in Ho Chi Minh City. In detail, firstly, an interview with 15 respondents was conducted to check the understanding of concepts and questions and, secondly, the study used the convenient sampling method, with 172 samples collected and analyzed, of which young respondents accounted for the majority of the sample. The respondents tend to go shopping many times in a year, with the number of people buying fashion products from every week to every two months accounting for 65.2% totally. The findings suggest that the firms should prioritize strategies that can improve customer attitude toward sustainable fashion, making them feel good, pleasant, satisfied and favorable when engaging in sustainable fashion consumption. This study concludes that consumers need more information to enable them to make better ethical decisions. This study proposes that the major channels that consumers use to seek sustainable product information include public education, peer influence, and corporate marketing information about the products. This study concludes that public education and corporate marketing information on green consumption education is effective for improving consumer sustainable buying intention.

This study investigates the factors affecting Industry 4.0 adoption in the curriculum of university students in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Universities need to respond to the changing faces of Industry 4.0 and, hence, Education 4.0. A mixed method including both qualitative and quantitative methodologies was utilized. An in-depth interview was carried out for exploring, reviewing, and testing content validity of constructs and measurement items. The pilot study was conducted with 120 respondents. The conceptual model and hypotheses were developed using data collected by a questionnaire survey distributed to 584 respondents by both electronic and paper forms with nonprobability and convenience sampling techniques. The result of structural equation modeling showed that occupation relevance, skills, facility conditions, and social influence impacted on the intermediates variables, namely, relevance advantage, perceived usefulness, behavioral intention-to-use, and actual use. The independent variables are occupation relevance, skills, facility conditions, and social influence. They impact actual use through mediating constructs such as relevance advantage, perceived usefulness, and behavioral intention-to-use. The findings suggest that universities and students’ efforts aimed at increasing the factors’ perceptions of adoption of Industry 4.0 will contribute to implementation success, where success is defined as effectual usage of Industry 4.0.

The quality of hospital services remains a concern of both the manager and the patient. The study aims to identify factors affecting outpatient satisfaction at private general hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City, establishing a scale for measuring them. Some 450 outpatients who were treated in five top private hospitals in Ho Chi Minh city (HCMC) in 2019 – An Sinh General Hospital, Hoan My General Hospital, Columbia Asia International Hospital, FV Hospital, and Vu Anh International General Hospital – were interviewed directly in the last quarter of 2019 to obtain the information. The SERVPERF model, plus the cost, together with the SPSS software, have been used to process information by Cronbach’s alpha analysis, Exploratory Factor analysis, and linear regression analysis. The results show that there are five factors influencing outpatient satisfaction at private general hospitals in HCMC, in which four factors affects positively in the order of decreasing importance: treatment outcome, doctors and nurses’ professional capacity, facilities and environment of the hospital, hospital care, and the treatment time factor affects negatively. The results of the study provide private hospital in HCMC managers with a number of suggestions to increase the level of hospital service quality, so that increase outpatients satisfaction.

The study examines factors affecting apartment prices in the real estate market of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The study uses primary data based on surveys of customers who have traded successfully, and collects transaction data from real estate trading companies that are the top investors in Ho Chi Minh City real estate market. The collected data include 384 observations in a total of 24 districts, detailing that each district surveyed on a minimum of four projects, each project carried out a survey on a minimum of four apartments. The survey collected 339 valid questionnaires for analysis and model testing. This study employs multivariate regression with the data of 339 observations. The research results reveal that five significant factors affect positively the price of apartments in Ho Chi Minh City – apartment area, toilet and bedroom, apartment floor, reference price, and apartment interior. Besides, there are three significant factors affecting negatively the price of apartments – next price trend, distance to city center, and potential building. From the results, the research proposes solutions in the pricing of apartments in the real estate market in Ho Chi Minh City – better information system, a real estate transaction index, and stricter management of small brokerage activities.

The fourth industrial revolution has attracted much academic attention in these past few years. However, research on systematic and extensive factors affecting adoption of Industry 4.0 by SMEs in developing countries, especially in Vietnam, has been unavailable. This study aims to explore the impact of factors that influence the actual adoption of Industry 4.0 by SMEs in Ho Chi Minh City. Mixed-method research was utilized in this study including in-depth interviews of 12 participants and quantitative research of 396 respondents who are representative of SMEs by both online and via paper surveys. The SPSS and SmartPLS 3 software were employed to help analyze the collected data. The results indicate that perceived development of the human resource, perceived on-time, perceived saving cost, perceived improve product quality, perceived saving time, perceived ease-of-use, business resources, and conditions of the business environment, perceived usefulness, perceived enhanced customer relationship, and adoption intention, all have a positive significant effect on actual adoption of Industry 4.0. The results seem to suggest that managerial efforts aimed at increasing the factors’ perceptions of adoption of Industry 4.0 and personal relevance of the technology will contribute to implementation success, where success is defined as effectual usage of the Industry 4.0.

The study aims to provide some plausible explanation for why Vietnamese listed companies only stop at the level of truthful presentation of information related to accounting data through the opinion of independent auditors. The information is only at the level of compliance with the requirements of Circular 155/2015/TT-BTC in form, but in essence is sketchy. What factors affect the level of voluntary disclosure of listed companies in Vietnam? In order to identify the factors affecting voluntary information disclosure on annual reports of listed companies, the study collected data on annual reports of 122 companies listed on the stock market in Ho Chi Minh City in the period 2015-2018 and uses regression analysis methods. The research presents 8 factors affecting the level of voluntary information disclosure including: Firm size, Listed time, Profitability, Solvency, Separation of board of directors and executive director, Board size, Organizational ownership and Foreign ownership. Next, the study conducted descriptive statistical analysis correlation coefficient analysis to examine the correlation and relevance of independent variables measured by the scale ratio, testing multiple linear regression model. The results of the study show that factors listed time, profitability and organizational ownership affecting voluntary information disclosure on annual reports of listed companies in Vietnam.

This study focuses on determining the impacts of organizational culture on the accounting information system and the operational performance of small and medium-sized enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City. The paper is organized in five parts: introduction, literature review, research methodology, research results, and conclusion and policy implications. Based on the samples of 353 respondents working in small and mediumsized enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City, the research employs both qualitative and quantitative methods to find the answers for research questions. Group discussion, which yields final observed variables of the factors of organizational culture is used for qualitative method. Statistics, assessment of the reliability of Cronbach's Alpha scale, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) are used for quantitative procedure. The results show that mission, involvement and inconsistency in organizational culture positively affect the accounting information system of small and medium-sized firms in Vietnam. In addition, mission, involvement, adaptability and consistency in organizational culture are found to have positive impacts on the firm operational performance. Another finding of the study is that the accounting information system has a positive effect on operational performance of small and medium-sized firms in Vietnam.

The paper aims to examine the factors affecting brand and student decision in buying fresh milk. Combining qualitative and quantitative research methods, this study used self-completed questionnaires to investigate 520 students in Ho Chi Minh City. The results of the study show that that there are five key determinants affecting the dairy brand and student decision in buying fresh milk, including: (1) product quality, (2) fair price, (3) product promotion and customer services, (4) product convenience, and (5) reference group’s attitude to the brand. In addition, it is also found that product brand has a direct and positive impact on the student decision. The finding in this study is quite different from other existing literatures in terms of the importance level of the determinants of the student decision in buying fresh milk; specifically, in deciding to buy their fresh milk, students are often interested in the promotion and customer service, the product convenience, and the reference group for the purchase, more than in the quality and price of the product. From these findings, some managerial implications are proposed for policy-makers and relevant enterprises to have appropriate policies and strategies for their business development.

The study aims to investigate the recommendation and revisit intentions of foreign tourists in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam through their satisfaction with local foods. The study proposed the group of five attributes for food image: taste, health concern, price, serving style, vendor/ restaurant staffs. The relationship between these attributes of food image and food satisfaction, as well as the one between food satisfaction and behavioral intentions were investigated. To ensure a high ratio of answers, a face-to-face survey was conducted in famous places at Ho Chi Minh city. Data with 210 foreign tourists. The study uses the methods of descriptive statistics, EFA, Cronbach Alpha and regression. The results showed that Five attributes of food image were chosen for the research, being taste, health concern, price, serving style and vendors/ restaurant staffs. All of these attributes showed a positive relationship with satisfaction. Among five factors, taste had the most impact on food satisfaction. Through the analysis of several attributes of food images, this study provides managerial implications for tourism marketers in researching the positive influence of food image on tourists' satisfaction which leads to their positive word-of-mouth and return to the tourism place.

The paper aims to measure stock price volatility on Ho Chi Minh stock exchange (HSX). We apply symmetric models (GARCH, GARCH-M) and asymmetry (EGARCH and TGARCH) to measure stock price volatility on HSX. We used time series data including the daily closed price of VN-Index during 1/03/2001–1/03/2019 with 4375 observations. The results show that GARCH (1,1) and EGARCH (1,1) models are the most suitable models to measure both symmetry and asymmetry volatility level of VN-Index. The study also provides evidence for the existence of asymmetric effects (leverage) through the parameters of TGARCH model (1,1), showing that positive shocks have a significant effect on the conditional variance (volatility). This result implies that the volatility of stock returns has a big impact on future market movements under the impact of shocks, while asymmetric volatility increase market risk, thus increase the attractiveness of the stock market. The research results are useful reference information to help investors in forecasting the expected profit rate of the HSX, and also the risks along with market fluctuations in order to take appropriate adjust to the portfolios. From this study’s results, we can see risk prediction models such as GARCH can be better used in risk forecasting especially.

The paper aims to investigate the factors of brand equity affecting the purchase intention of car buyers in Ho Chi Minh City. The authors use qualitative method and quantitative research to study the matters, specifically using scales and data collected for Cronbach alpha reliability testing, analysizing the discovery factor of EFA, CFA and verifying the regression models through AMOS software with SEM linear modeling. The study proposes four factors: (1) brand awareness, (2) self-expression value, (3) perceived quality, (4) brand psychology impacting on the brand loyalty and intention to buy cars of customers. The results show that all four factors are statistically significant for positive brand loyalty and purchase willing. The results showed that brand loyalty positively affects consumers' intention to buy cars. Among the factors included in the study, the brand psychology is a new factor which developed by experts in the context of Vietnam. This is the first study in Vietnam to quantify clearly the element of "crowd psychology" affecting the interests and habits of Vietnamese consumers. This explains why Vietnamese consumers prefer brands that are familiar in the market and some new cars with nice models and colors suitable for Vietnamese psychology.

The current higher education in Vietnam demonstrates the intense competition among local universities. Undoubtedly, the issue of enhancing the brand value to attract students is now placed at the top to Vietnamese universities. The research aims to identify the objective and subjective factors affecting the brand value of private universities in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam as mediated by students’ perceptions. This paper employs the mixed research methods and data were then analyzed by measuring Cronbach's Alpha coefficient for reliability, analyzing EFA, and using PATH model to test the experiment on the research model affecting HUTECH’s brand value. Probability sampling used is Stratified sampling and 500 students of 8 faculties of HUTECH surveyed by convenience sampling. Additionally, this paper also proposes some managerial implications on enhancing the brand value of private universities in Ho Chi Minh City. The results indicate that the new factor, namely geographic location is the most influential factor to enhance the brand value of private universities in general and HUTECH in particular. Brand still plays a determinant role in students' trust when choosing a university. Finally, some implications proposed to enhance the brand value of private universities in Ho Chi Minh City in the context of fierce competition in attracting students.

This study aims to explore the relationship between organizational justice and social loafing of organizations in Ho Chi Minh City through quantitative analysis from the survey data for the 228 employees are working at the Organizations in Ho Chi Minh City. The instrument of collecting data was a questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 22 and employing exploratory factor analysis (EFA), Cronbach's alpha, multiple regression analysis. The results showed that only two factors are Distributive justice and Procedural justice is to have the reverse effect on social loafing of employee. From the results of the study showed, Distributive justice and Procedural justice has the opposite effect of social loafing, which demonstrates that when individuals feel that their work is spent on Perform tasks in a clearly divided and they will receive a worthwhile result in the group when performing the task then the individual's collective indifference to the organization will decrease. And motivate the employee to make more efforts to work and contribute for the organization. In addition, the factor of Procedural justice also has the opposite effect of collective redundancy, which demonstrates that employees are more concerned about fairness in official policies and organizational procedures.