E-commerce is chance and challenge for domestic goods

This year, Online Friday week from November 25 until December 1 will have 60 bustling shopping hours. —Photo baotintuc.vn

HÀ NỘI - Strong development of the e-commerce marketplace is a driving force and also a challenge for domestically produced goods.

According to the latest report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company, Việt Nam represents one of the countries with an average e-commerce growth rate of 25 per cent each year, among the highest penetration levels compared to other countries in Southeast Asia.

The e-commerce retail market reached an estimated US$20.5 billion in 2023, while the number of online shoppers is currently exceeding 61 million, while each is expected to spend roughly $336.

Amid current international economic integration, coupled with the rapid and dynamic development of e-commerce, the country will continue to become a new destination for cross-border e-commerce platforms.

However, according to Trần Quốc Bảo, deputy general director of KIDO Group, Vietnamese enterprises now face a number of difficulties when participating in the e-commerce market, including technology adaptation of enterprises, perseverance in developing e-commerce, and identification of goods on e-commerce platforms.

According to Nguyễn Lâm Thanh, representative of TikTok in Việt Nam, vice chairman of the Việt Nam Digital Communications Association, Vietnamese goods have their own characteristics, but local enterprises have very small scale of manufacturing, so they have not enough resources to keep up with digital transformation trends.

Many enterprises have not yet seen the risks in not integrating into the digital transformation wave and if they ignore digital transformation, they will fall behind and lose customers.

In addition, many businesses do not have stability in output.

Today many consumers are less likely to go to do their shopping at a market and are used to buying goods from their desks with their phones.

Moreover, the trend in shopping is now that consumers also need to be entertained, with sellers convincing customers to buy.

Businesses must grasp this trend to carry out digital transformation, Lâm said.

In terms of the opportunities for Vietnamese goods on e-commerce platforms, Lê Đức Anh said that over the past 20 years, Vietnamese goods had taken advantage of e-commerce development.

Over the past years, high-quality Vietnamese goods were easily recognised as a brand, but now that recognition must also hold for goods on e-commerce channels on international scale.

Thanh said that when deploying the TikTok and TikTok Shop platforms, the company set a goal of supporting the State and businesses in the digital world, to bring Vietnamese goods to domestic and foreign consumers.

Implementing the OCOP market programme with one product one commune had identified Vietnamese agricultural products, erasing the digital gap between rural and urban areas.

This programme also guided shop owners to organise a livestream session every Saturday to introduce goods to five million people.

In June 2024, the programme was expanded to become the programme 'Proud of Vietnamese Goods'. TikTok also coordinated with associations to help manufacturing enterprises enjoy the platform's incentives, such as sales support.

In six months, TikTok Việt Nam supported 10,000 enterprises on its shopping platform.

"As a partner of the Ministry of Industry and Trade in organising those programmes, TikTok Việt Nam is committed to accompanying the e-commerce programme to introduce the most products of Vietnamese manufacturers to consumers," Thanh said.

Through the programmes, TikTok had built an alliance of associations, businesses and State agencies to protect consumers in choosing good goods with reasonable prices.

For the past ten years there has also been the programme 'National E-commerce Week and Vietnam Online Shopping Day - Online Friday' which has contributed to promoting Vietnamese e-commerce.

The goal of the programme is to create a platform to connect businesses, including connections between manufacturing enterprises with infrastructure units and sellers with consumers. In addition, the programme also sets goals to promote Vietnamese product brands.

This year, Online Friday week from November 25 until December 1 will have 60 shopping hours, including a special voucher festival, with many businesses launching separate promotional elements for customers to use as they shop.

As a partner of Online Friday, Thanh said that the company expected to have 500 livestream sessions on TikTok this year, with up to 3,000 participating businesses and about a million orders from the livestream sessions. It also expected one billion people to access this programme.