According to the findings of the new report by Hamburg-based secondary market research company yStats.com, titled “Vietnam B2C E-Commerce Market 2015”, online retail in this country is catching on. The CEO and founder of yStats.com, Yücel Yelken, highlights that “B2C E-Commerce in Vietnam is driven by increasing Internet and online shopper penetration, but delivery and payment infrastructure are in need of improvement”.
Although Vietnam was ranked as the smallest B2C E-Commerce market in Southeast Asia in terms of sales two years ago, online retail is gaining momentum there. Growing Internet and online shopper penetration, as well as increasing online spending per shopper, are driving up online retail sales in Vietnam. In the next five years, the Vietnamese B2C E-Commerce market is expected to experience strong double-digit growth rates. Improvement in the two important infrastructure factors, payment and delivery, could give a further boost to B2C E-Commerce in Vietnam. Last year, close to two thirds of E-Commerce websites in Vietnam received complaints from online shoppers regarding delivery times. Furthermore, nearly half of Internet users who do not yet shop online admitted to not having a credit card to pay in online stores, while cash on delivery was by far the leading payment method among current online shoppers.
Social commerce is one of the most important trends in the online shopping market in Vietnam. Close to 90% of online buyers of fashion products made at least one online purchase from this category via Facebook. The shopping orders of items displayed via this social network are accepted via Facebook messages and phone calls, and paid for mostly by cash on delivery. With smartphone ownership increasing, M-Commerce is also becoming a trend. In 2014, a popular online shopping portal in Vietnam, Sendo.vn, received funding from Japanese investors in order to launch a smartphone shopping website.
Other leading players on the emerging online shopping market in Vietnam include online retailer and marketplace Lazada.vn, Vatgia.com’s marketplace, online classifieds websites such as 5giay.vn and Chotot.vn, and electronics merchant Mobile World JSC with its online store Thegioididong.com. As B2C E-Commerce in Vietnam grows, more companies, including local and foreign players, are entering the market and rivalry is intensifying.
