It is estimated that 31 million Vietnamese, or 34 percent of the total population, use the Internet. These are the great potential clients for the online retailing industry.

In 2003, Saigon Co-op announced it began selling goods at http://www.saigon-coopmart.com and http://www.saigoncoopmart.com.vn.
Together with the launching of the new brand identification, Co-op Mart has also introduced the fanpage at www.facebook.com/hethongcoopmartvn, aiming to create a new communication channel with high interaction with clients.
A senior executive of Saigon Co-op said the fanpage, after eight months of existence, has become the community of 70.000 fans. Especially, the fans organize meetings with the leaders of the retail chain every month to exchange information.
However, online retailing is still not a main retail channel for Saigon Co-op Mart and other supermarket chains. The online customers of Saigon Co-op are those, who access to the supermarket’s website to seek information about the products available at the chain, then make calls to order and make payments in cash after getting deliveries.
Meanwhile, Duong Thi Quynh Trang, Public Relations Director of Big C, said the supermarket’s website now mainly serves the updating of information, so that customers can get sufficient information before they buy goods there. The Big C’s fanpage also mainly serves the information updating. It is like a communication channel, through which Big C can better exchange information with customers.
Big C still does not think of using a fanpage for online selling. Trang said it’s very complicated for a general supermarket which sells 50,000 product items like Big C, to carry out the online sale
A survey showed that online sale just can bring 0.3-0.5 percent of the total retail turnover, about VND500 billion, while it should have brought VND105 trillion.
The latest survey of the Vietnam E-commerce Association, stated that 193 businesses showed that only 42 percent of businesses have their own websites, while only 29 percent of which accept online orders from customers.
The figure is very modest if compared with the great potentials of the market.
According to nganluong.vn, by February 2012, over 10,000 sale websites had had integrated with Ngan Luong e-wallet with the total monthly turnover of VND20-25 billion.
eBay has estimated that the Vietnamese e-commerce market would be worth $6 billion per annum by 2015.
Distributors said they still hesitate to make investments to develop online sale channels because of the low demand of the Vietnamese, caused by the consumption habit. Vietnamese only buy goods when they can see with their eyes the products and learn information about the products’ quality.
Especially, the discovery of some MLM (multi-level marketing) companies which organized their sale under the mode of e-commerce, such as Diamond Holiday and Muaban24, and the problems with groupon websites such as Deal Soc or Nhom Mua, have also eroded the customers’ confidence.
Nevertheless, experts still believe in the strong development of online trade in the future, saying that this is a growing tendency in the world.
Lazada has been cited as a successful online trade model in Vietnam. Lazada Group and the investors have announced the investment deals worth $100 million in Lazada.
To date, Lazada has got more than 1 million orders. About 90 percent of orders are implemented within the days.

DNSG