Can Amazon succeed in Vietnam?
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While the majority of analysts believe that Amazon would be a threat to local e-commerce firms, others think the giant will not succeed despite its global scale.
Nguyen Tuan Ha, CEO of Vinalink, said that Alibaba would also not be able to easily penetrate the Vietnamese market, because it will have to step over 1 million businesspeople who now sell goods via Facebook. Instead of selling goods on Amazon, retailers would only choose Amazon as a supplier.
Dat Pham, CEO of Miczone, said Alibaba tried to conquer the Vietnamese market through Lazada, a global player. While Lazada did not find it difficult to compete with tiki and sendo, it had to contend with 1 million Vietnamese selling goods on Facebook.
Meanwhile, other analysts commented that Ha and Dat seem to underestimate the US’s biggest B2C (business to customer) online retailer.
“Anyone would admire their professionalism,” an analyst said. “Its operation scale has expanded thanks to its diverse products and good warehouse facilities. Amazon applies professional methods, while offering convenient payment and delivery services.”
No one doubts the power of e-commerce giants like Amazon, but many local analysts believe the company cannot succeed in the Vietnamese market.
Vietnamese retailers are still busy trying to win over customers, who have lost confidence in retailers after a number of trade fraud cases.
On shopping forums, customers complain that a lot of products labeled ‘sale off’ still have prices higher than normal market prices. It is nearly impossible to examine the products’ quality, because nearly all B2C retailers don’t have specialized workshops of their own and their supplies rely on third parties.
A report released by Bizweb, an online sales platform which conducted a survey on the business performance of 20,000 retail shops in 2015, showed that 40 percent of online shops did not obtain growth against the previous year.
Bizweb said the finding was not a surprise, because Vietnamese businesses still don’t know how to take full advantage of e-commerce.
Vietnamese firms, for example, don’t sell goods via multi sale channels. Online shops mostly use two major marketing channels – websites and Facebook, and don’t pay attention to other channels such as Zalo and e-commerce trading floors.
“While Amazon is using unmanned helicopters to deliver goods within 30 minutes, Vietnamese B2C retailers are still using taxi motorbikes to carry goods,” he said.
A report showed that only 48 percent of e-commerce firms use third parties as professional shipping service providers.
