Student Name
: Tran Ngoc Bao Khanh
IC / Passport Number
: B5441817
Nationality
: Vietnamese
Index Number
: 001717
Learning Centre
: MBA Institute
Course
: Master of International Education
Term
: July 2020
Module Title
: Research in Educational Leadership & Management
Centre Facilitator Name
: Dr. Franco Gandolfi
Assignment Submission
: August 29th, 2020
Due Date
: August 29th, 2020
Status
: Active
Thesis Title:
Customer Acceptance Level on New Products: the case of
Gamification coaching for Career design in Vietnam by Career
Game Hub.
Table of Contents
1.
2.
Background .............................................................................................................................. 1
1.1.
Gamification in education, coaching, and facilitation...................................................... 1
1.2.
Introduction of My Working Title and Career Superdrive boardgame ............................ 1
1.3.
Introduction of Career Game Hub .................................................................................... 2
Problem identification and Research Purpose ......................................................................... 3
2.1.
Stated problem.................................................................................................................. 3
2.2.
Developing the cause-effect map ..................................................................................... 3
2.3.
Root issue identification ................................................................................................... 5
2.4.
Research Purpose ............................................................................................................. 5
3.
Literature Review .................................................................................................................... 5
4.
Research Methodology ............................................................................................................ 8
4.1.
Qualitative research .......................................................................................................... 8
4.2.
Quantitative research ........................................................................................................ 8
4.3.
Research model ................................................................................................................ 9
5.
Source of Data ....................................................................................................................... 10
6.
Research Schedule ................................................................................................................. 11
7.
Reference ............................................................................................................................... 13
1. Background
1.1. Gamification in education, coaching, and facilitation
Gamification is defined as the transformation of the method for information and knowledge
delivery (Dichev and Dicheva, 2017) came to the mainstream in 2010 and became the trend a
year later (Dichev and Dicheva, 2017). This was implemented mainly in education by creating a
learning experience that is carried by game activities and through which learners can gain
knowledge in the gaming process and reflection at the end of the session. The result of this new
trend is that there have been many new types of services that create a gaming learning
experience. For instance, Lego game has been brought into constructions or creativity courses;
the Virtual Reality glasses were applied for teaching about natural science and astronomy; the
STEAM teaching method used gamification to design an interdependent unit of Science,
Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (Shankaranarayanan and Amaldas, 2016).
These concepts have been widely spread to many educational organizations, including public
schools and private institutions.
However, the idea of gamification has stopped at official teaching for students and
extracurricular classes for the youth. It was not until recent years that this abstract has been
brought to coaching and facilitation (Bahgat, 2016). This concept when applying for the new
context has proven its suitability to be the initial move for improving the beneficiaries
experiences. In recent years, this new concept has been spread around many international
coaching communities to make the coaching process softer and more open.
1.2. Introduction of My Working Title and Career Superdrive boardgame
Established in 2018, My Working Title is a Singaporean start-up that works in career designing
and activating self-design for the career path of each customer. With the long-term purpose of
enhancing the employability skills of people in the community then they could be welldeveloped with their own choices, the start-up’s services focus on gaining the 4S-insight of any
individual joining: their Self, their Strategy, their Story and their Situation. Among all of these
creative services, gamification is strongly implemented as the key concept to create such a new
1
type of facilitating/coaching sessions to drive the content by 4S (Who We Are - My Working
Title, n.d.).
Career Superdrive boardgame is the initial product of My Working Title that is heavily applied
gamification for career orientation and career designs (Career SUPERDRIVE - My Working
Title, n.d.). The game would explore insights of participants through open questions that trigger
their thinkings, values, untold story, and their decision making (Career SUPERDRIVE - My
Working Title, n.d.). Besides that, the game would help players practice critical thinking and
other awareness by providing opinions about other players’ stories. What is more, listening to
different perspectives would enrich their insight and may find their answers to current issues.
This shows that gamification did the great roll of creating a facilitation atmosphere, from which
driving coaching experience in this game. Thereupon, this new approach for career design
facilitation and coaching amazed many customers and clients around the world (Career
SUPERDRIVE - My Working Title, n.d.). After 2 years, this product appeared in nearly 20
countries and territories to achieve the mission of My Working Title.
1.3. Introduction of Career Game Hub
Being inspired by the story, mission, and vision of My Working Title, the co-founders of Career
Game Hub decided to bring this tool to Vietnam for leveraging the career orientation mindset in
this country. They found the similarities between their purpose and the long-run goal of My
Working Title, therefore, a franchising relationship has been built.
Coming back to Vietnam, the co-founders established Career Game Hub in the last months of
2019 to spread this new concept in Vietnam communities. Instantly, they received positive
reactions from customers and communities that the number of boardgame sessions they held
increased significantly. Unfortunately, on the way to growing for Career Game Hub, the
coronavirus pandemic has blocked their trait. However, they can still expand its service to
provide for clients’ training and have already successfully delivered to 2 clients. This could be
considered a good sign but yet to assure the momentum of the development of this institution.
Therefore, the co-founders need to strengthen their products and services to have a massive
expansion right after the Covid-19 economic recovery. To do this, there should be market
research to learn about the current insights and demands of target customers, clients, and then
revise the boardgame sessions and training sessions to be matched with their needs.
2
2. Problem identification and Research Purpose
2.1. Stated problem
As mentioned above, the coronavirus has brought a new context that has more constraints for the
new business of gamification career design in Vietnam. Founded right before the pandemic, the
co-founders have just done some pilot activities to test the products’ and services’ suitability
with Vietnamese customers. However, there has not been deep research to find out the current
demands of target customers and assessment research on the satisfaction of participants with this
initiative of coaching and facilitating career orientation. Furthermore, the human resource of this
new business is considered to be not sustainable and tough to find the matched pool. The reasons
are that they do need people who have a background of certification or experience in career
orientation, coaching, facilitating, and training that are quite unpopular in Vietnam, and the
targeted candidates should have the same values to Career Game Hub’s missions. One more
point to be counted is that the financial unsustainability of the newly founded institution may
cause the loss of opportunities during and after the coronavirus recovery. About the business
result, there has been slow somehow considered as no expansions of the scale for boardgame
conduct both for individuals customers and client training.
These issues may be the key constraints for the future development of this new business as it
affects the concept, process, results of it. As a result, those could be seen as significant ones
which should be solved as soon as possible, however, with limited resources, there should be the
order to solve them. What is more, there are the relationships between the issues so if the cofounders can solve the root problem, the others may be easily faded away or possible to find the
way out. The more important point is the efficiency of this new method towards customers of
Career Game Hub. Shall this concept not significantly create value to Vietnamese customers, the
missions of both Career Game Hub and My Working Title are considered to be meaningless and
the cooperation is broken.
2.2. Developing the cause-effect map
3
The above-mentioned issues could not be the central ones and some of which might only be the
symptoms for the root problem. To clearly identify the relationship between these problems and
find out the implicated ones, the cause-effect map would be used. This is the map demonstrating
the trait of logic for any relationship analysis. The cause-effect map for the current issues of
Career Game Hub would be as below.
Source: author’s design.
Financial
Unsustainability
Insignificant
growth
Freezing
economy
Coronavirus
pandemic
Human planing
Unsustainability
Inadequate
Market
research
Limited
social
interactio
From the map above, it is clear to conclude that all of the mentioned problems came from the
new context of coronavirus pandemic. However, it is not reasonable to blame for the context.
Instead, what should be done is to concentrate on solving the problems created by this pandemic.
As can be seen from the cause-effect map the two main problems from Coronavirus pandemic
are the freeze of the entire economy and social activities. These showed that any further
investment could be a wrong move since there would be no return on investment, combining
with the financial unsustainability of the new business would make it the dawn of corruption.
Therefore, other actions should be taken instead of trying to go against the heavy waves. Instead
of doing real activities, the team of Career Game Hub could focus on learning about the market:
the acceptance level of customers with this new initiative. This move would not create any huge
cost and could be the necessary preparation for disruptive growth during the economic recovery,
which could solve the problem of human resource planning and financial sustainability in the
long-run. However, it turns over a new leaf when the market research required significant effort
4
and human capital to generate, while the facilities could be limited by using online apps for
doing the survey.
2.3. Root issue identification
From the mentioned points, this is clearly to propose the root issue is doing market research
about the acceptable level of customers for Career Game Hub's services. What should be done is
drawing the plan for both the process and the human capital to conduct market research
effectively.
The market research in this context of Career Game Hub would be about the current and pooled
customers’ acceptance level for the gamification concept. This would care about many aspects of
customers’ behaviors in deciding to use new services or not. Therefore, there should be a welldesigned research model with a carefully revised questionnaire, combining with a feasible plan
of data collection and analysis. This would require the person in charge to be strong enough in
multivariate analysis. Fortunately, one of the members and a co-founder have strong skills in
analyzing data and research design. From that point, this proposal is conducted to provoke the
skills and knowledge of them in the next move of Career Game Hub.
2.4. Research Purpose
With the issue above, this research is conducted to analyze the antecedents of customers’
acceptance for Career Game Hub gamification services. The research would be held online by
survey apps and spread through all of the channels of Career Game Hub and of its clients.
3. Literature Review
The type of literature reviewed to build up the research model for this study is theories about
acceptance level of customers toward a new product or service. Particularly, the theories of
intention to use, accepting technology would be the concept for this research. The rationale for
this would be the similarities between the Career Game Hub’’s service with a technology
product. Both of them are from the new concept and are innovated to perform better than older
alternatives. Moreover, the designs of them focused on the ease of use for customers as the
developers based on traditional operation and innovated with some new ideas. What is more, the
usage of these requires more flexibility and senses than other previous relatives.
5
Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), which was one of the bases for many prominent behavioral
research, was used to predict a variety of behaviors. The theory whose core construct is attitude
towards behavior studied the evaluative feelings about performing certain actions. Fishbein and
Ajzen (1975) also accounting for subjective norms in the research: considering users’ belief that
the most important people to users would want them to behave in certain ways. TRA was
extended in the Theory of Planned Behavior, in which included perceived behavioral control.
This factor refers to the ease of taking the actions (Ajzen, 1991).
Technology Acceptance Model developed by Davis (1989) was another prominent research
based on the Theory of Reasoned Action. Fundamentally, the model aims to determine
behavioral intention of technology users through two factors: perceived ease of use and
perceived usefulness. The former refers to the belief of users that they are required to make no
effort to use the technology. Results from (Davis, 1989; Venkatesh & Davis, 1996) and other
research such as one of Sánchez & Hueros (2010) indicate that an easy-to-use system would
make it more useful to users and thus they would have stronger intentions to embrace the
novelty. The latter was defined as the degree to which users believe that technology would be
helpful in that it could improve their performance.
Considering the digitalization era, in conjunction with the coronavirus pandemic, this model
would be helpful in determining the likelihood to adopt technology especially in the form of elearning system (Ngai, Poon, & Chan, 2007; Ong, Lai, 2006; Ong, Lai, & Wang, 2004). The
results of these studies indicated that TAM could efficiently predict and explain users’
acceptance of information technology systems.
Nevertheless, as behavioral study would be complex, the model was stated to be quite general in
evaluating the likelihood of technology adoption (Tarhini, Hone and Liu, 2013). Therefore, it
was elaborated in later research with added factors. For example, the TAM 2 added the
subjective norm factor adapted from TRA. Moreover, Tarhini, Hone and Liu (2013) included
quality of work life, Wu and Gao (2011) perceived enjoyment, Hsu and Chang (2013) perceived
convenience, and Liu et al. (2010) perceived interaction, extending TAM to apply the model in
the education field.
The descendant researches further develop the TAM by specifying the system factors that lead to
perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. Ngai, Poon and Chan (2007) found out that
6
technical support imposed a direct effect on both perceptions. Online course design, and user
interface design were also demonstrated to be the most significant factor to perceived usefulness
and perceived ease of use, respectively (Liu et al., 2010).
Another stand of user acceptance was the UTAUT model, which was established from the
unification of the three mentioned models, TRA, TPB, and TAM, and other five models, namely,
MPCU, IDT, SCT, MM, and C-TAM-TPB. By analyzing all the proposed factors in the eight
models, Venkatesh, Morris, Davis and Davis (2003) constructed the model of direct determinants
of behavior intention. All of them, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence,
and facilitating conditions, are moderated by gender, age, voluntariness, and experience.
Performance expectancy shares similarities in the literature with the perceived usefulness
(TAM/TAM2 and C-TAM-TPB), extrinsic motivation (MM), job-fit (MPCU), relative advantage
(IDT), and outcome expectations (SCT). The relationship between performance expectancy and
intention was pointed out to be moderated by gender and age. Minton and Schneider (1980)
explained that men usually were task-oriented and thus strongly expected the technology to be
helpful. Similar to gender, young people typically are more ambitious in their career, so they
would have higher expectations for technology in terms of performance (Venkatesh, Morris,
Davis and Davis, 2003).
Effort expectancy refers to the ease of use of the system, whose definition is similar to that of
perceived ease of use (TAM/TAM2), complexity (MPCU), and ease of use (IDT). This factor
was proven to be more significant for women than for men, for the older generation than for the
younger, and in the early stages of a new behavior with no or less experience (Venkatesh,
Morris, Davis and Davis, 2003).
Social influence was defined the same as the subjective norm in TRA, TAM2, TPB/DTPB and
C-TAM-TPB, social factors in MPCU, and image in IDT. This determinant was considered to
have all the four moderators, which indicated that the effect was stronger for women, older
workers, under conditions of mandatory use, and with limited experience (Venkatesh, Morris,
Davis and Davis, 2003).
Facilitating conditions are an important factor in terms of removing barriers of adopting new
behaviors, which is also aligned with the model of change proposed by Kotter (1996) in which
he demonstrated how to encourage people to form a new habit. Facilitating factor, which was not
7
included in the Technology Acceptance Model 2 but in the Theory of Planned Behavior, refers to
the belief of users on the availability of organizational and technical infrastructure supporting use
of the system. It was proven to be non-significant to behavioral intention, given the availability
of effort expectancy (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis and Davis, 2003).
4. Research Methodology
4.1. Qualitative research
The author investigated and collected many reports, newspapers, researches from online and
offline sources about the acceptance of new products or technology. Among that knowledge, the
Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of
Technology (UTAUT) demonstrated the suitability with the concept of this acceptance research
for the service of Career Game Hub.
Besides that, the author also asked for permission to access previous reports of My Working
Titles about the acceptance level and time of customers around the world.
From all of them, the author filtered all matching insights and knowledge to revise for building
the research model.
4.2. Quantitative research
According to the Marketing Research book published by Malhotra, the research process would
include some of the steps as issue identification, model and questionnaire design, data collection
and analysis, hypotheses testing, conclusion, and recommendation. This research would follow
the above structure. Particularly, the detailed process would be as below.
8
Source: author’s design.
The three first steps: issue identification, literature review, proposing the research process, and
research model have been done in this proposal so far when other steps will be made during the
actual research project. As can be seen from the process, this research would be based mostly on
data analysis, thereafter, the questionnaire should be designed carefully. This step should be in
sync with the data analysis methodology. This will reduce the waste of resources caused by
wrong directed measurement questions.
4.3. Research model
The model would be based on the questionnaire of the Technology Acceptance Model and
Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology models, then be paraphrased to suit the
concept of Career Game Hub. In particular, all of the factors mentioned in the TAM theory and
UTAUT model would be used for this model. The dependent factor is the Intention to Use for
service of Career Game Hub when the independent factors are Perceived Ease of Use of service,
Perceived Usefulness of service, Attitude toward career design’s importance, Subjective norm of
customers, and Social Influence on customers.
The factors of Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness are inherited from the
Technology Acceptance Model while Attitude toward a career’s importance is taken from the
Theory of Planned Behavior and Theory of Rational Actions. Meanwhile, the Subjective norm
and Social Influence on the customer come from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of
Technology. Furthermore, the dependent factor’s concept would be revised from all mentioned
9
theories. The questionnaire of these factors will not only be built from these theories but also
from the previous researches that have the similar topics in Vietnam and around the world, for
example, the research of Hong-bumm Kim, Taegoo (Terry) Kim and Sung Won Shin about
customers’ acceptance of airline eCommerce websites.
The following demonstration stated the research model of this study.
Perceived Ease of Use
Perceived Usefulness
Intention to use
Attitude toward career
design
Subjective norm
Social Influence
Source: author’s recommendation.
5. Source of Data
The author suggested Malhotra's methodology of exploratory factor analysis that is considered
suitable with the recommended model.
The plan of data analysis would be as below:

Sampling method: According to Bollen in 1989 suitable sample quantity if the minimum
sample size is 5 samples per quantitative. This research has 5 independent variables and 1
dependent variable, each of the variables would have averagely 4 questions. Therefore,
10
the minimum sample quantity is 6x4x5 = 120 samples. To assure the result, this research
will be surveyed with a sample size of around at least 170 (120 + 50). The sample
selection method is a utility of definition, which means anyone who belongs to the
subject’s decimal data and accepts the survey reference can become the sample.

Data analyzing: After the data has been collected from the survey, the statistical software
SPSS 20 will be used to process the data, run the model, and test. The statistic is to
describe collected data and satisfaction level of pooled customers of Career Game Hub.

Exploratory factor analysis method EFA: All the variables would be tested by
exploratory factor analysis EFA. In this method, the coefficients used are Principal
components with Varimax rotation. Some criteria when conducting exploratory factor
analysis EFA are: KMO coefficient, Eigenvalue, factor loading, and total variance
extracted. The scale is accepted when the total variance extracted is ≥ 50% while Factor
loading should be > 0.5 to be significant. Similarly, when extracting factors, the
Eigenvalue should be ≥ 1, and KMO coefficient must be ≥ 0.5 and ≤ 1 (0.5 ≤ KMO ≤ 1).

Cronbach's Alpha's Confidence Coefficient Method: To determine the reliability of the
scale, Cronbach's Alpha coefficients are used to test the reliability of the scale, from
which mismatched variables will be eliminated. The observed variables of the scales
achieve reliability when Cronbach's Alpha ranges from 0.6 to 0.9 and the total item-total
coefficients > 0.3. Thus, any variable that has the item-total coefficients less than 0.3 will
be excluded from the scale because they are considered non-conforming.

Regression analysis: this is the analysis to test the relationships stated in the research
model, from which tests the suitability of the model.
6. Research Schedule
To assure the process of research would be well-conducted, there should be a schedule to define
milestones and timeline for each workload. The plan would stick to the proposed research to
generate everything precisely. The plan would follow the Gantt Chart template Gantt Chart: (The
Ultimate Guide (with Examples) - ProjectManager.com, n.d.). In this plan, the co-founder (A)
would care about issue identification and decision making for the entire research project, while
there would be a member who cares for data analysis and questionnaire design (B).
11
Milestones
Break-down steps
Person
Start date
Deadline
Status
25/8/2020
29/8/2020 Done
30/8/2020
4/9/2020
in
charge
Issue identification
Issue
A
identification
Literature review
A
Proposing
A&B
research process
Model and
Research model
A&B
Questionnaire
B
Questionnaire
design
design
On
progress
Data collection and Data collection
B
5/9/2020
12/9/2020
Reliability test
B
15/9/2020
16/9/2020
Exploratory factor
B
15/9/2020
Regression test
B
15/9/2020
Hypotheses
Hypotheses test
B
17/9/2020
Conclusion and
Result conclusion
A&B
17/9/2020
analysis
analysis
18/9/2020
Recommendations
Recommendations A
19/9/2020
22/9/2020
and next step
Source: author’’s recommendation
From this plan, the team could estimate the workload to calculate compensations for
the human capital and also foresee the risk could happen and plan for the solutions.
12
7. Reference
Ajzen, I., 1991. The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision
Processes, 50(2), pp.179-211.
Alexandre, B., Reynaud, E., Osiurak, F. and Navarro, J., 2018. Acceptance and acceptability
criteria: a literature review. Cognition, Technology & Work, 20(2), pp.165-177.
Bahgat, M., 2016. Gamification & Gaming In Coach Training.
Bollen, K. and Clogg, C., 1991. Structural Equations with Latent Variables. Contemporary
Sociology, 20(1), p.156.
Davis, F., 1989. Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of
Information Technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), p.319.
Dichev, C. and Dicheva, D., 2017. Gamifying education: what is known, what is believed and
what remains uncertain: a critical review. International Journal of Educational Technology in
Higher Education, 14(1).
Fishbein, M. and Ajzen, I., 1975. Belief, Attitude, Intention and Behavior: An Introduction to
Theory and Research. Contemporary Sociology, 6(2), p.244.
Hsu, H. and Chang, Y., 2013. Extended TAM Model: Impacts of Convenience on Acceptance
and Use of Moodle. US-China Education Review, 3(4), pp.211-218.
Kim, H., Kim, T. and Shin, S., 2009. Modeling roles of subjective norms and eTrust in
customers' acceptance of airline B2C eCommerce websites. Tourism Management, 30(2),
pp.266-277.
Kotter, J., 1996. Leading Change. 2nd ed. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press.
Liu, I., Chen, M., Sun, Y., Wible, D. and Kuo, C., 2010. Extending the TAM model to explore
the factors that affect Intention to Use an Online Learning Community. Computers & Education,
54(2), pp.600-610.
Malhotra, N., n.d. Marketing Research.
My Working Title. n.d. Career SUPERDRIVE - My Working Title. [online] Available at:
<https://myworkingtitle.xyz/career-superdrive/> [Accessed 24 August 2020].
My Working Title. n.d. Who We Are - My Working Title. [online] Available at:
<https://myworkingtitle.xyz/who-we-are/> [Accessed 24 August 2020].
Ngai, E., Poon, J. and Chan, Y., 2007. Empirical examination of the adoption of WebCT using
TAM. Computers & Education, 48(2), pp.250-267.
13
ProjectManager.com. n.d. Gantt Chart: The Ultimate Guide (With Examples) Projectmanager.Com. [online] Available at: <https://www.projectmanager.com/gantt-chart>
[Accessed 24 August 2020].
Shankaranarayanan, A. and Amaldas, C., 2016. Innovations in Education using Gamification: A
Case on Vietnamese Tertiary Institutions. International Conference off Frontiers in Education:
CS and CE, [online] Available at: <http://worldcompproceedings.com/proc/p2016/FEC3484.pdf> [Accessed 24 August 2020].
Tarhini, A., Hone, K. and Liu, X., 2013. Extending the TAM model to empirically investigate
the students’ behavioural intention to use e-learning in developing Countries. In: Science and
Information Conference 2013. [online] pp.732-737. Available at:
<https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ali_Tarhini/publication/255989850_Extending_the_TAM
_to_Empirically_Investigate_the_Students%27_Behavioural_Intention_to_Use_ELearning_in_Developing_Countries/links/55f5d7a108ae1d9803974b10.pdf> [Accessed 25
August 2020].
Venkatesh, V., Morris, M., Davis, G. and Davis, F., 2003. User Acceptance of Information
Technology: Toward a Unified View. MIS Quarterly, 27(3), p.425.
Wu, X. and Gao, Y., 2011. Applying The Extended Technology Acceptance Model To The Use
Of Clickers In Student Learning: Some Evidence From Macroeconomics Classes. American
Journal of Business Education (AJBE), 4(7), pp.43-50.
Venkatesh, Morris, Davis and Davis, 2003. User Acceptance of Information Technology:
Toward a Unified View. MIS Quarterly, 27(3), p.425.
14