VietNamNet Bridge – While domestic businesses are busy with the plans to tarnish rivals’ reputation in unhealthy competitions, foreign businesses have the opportunities to dominate the market.

A market survey conducted by Nielsen, a market survey firm, showed that in 2011, G7 coffee brand of Trung Nguyen Company held 38 percent of the instant coffee market, while Vinacafe 31 percent and Nescafe 27 percent.

However, the rankings have changed recently. In the first quarter of 2012, G7’s market share increased to 40 percent, while Vinacafe’s market share dropped to 26 percent, thus paving the way for Nescafe to increase its market share to 31 percent.

As such, while G7 could gain only 2 percent of the market share more after heavy investments, Nescafe made a big leap with four percent more of the market share.

Explaining the considerable progress made by Nescafe, Vu said Trung Nguyen understands that the main rival of G7 is Nescafe, and it believes that G7 is completely competitive to Nescafe.

However, Vu said, while Trung Nguyen was spending big money to fulfill its investment plan, it was “stabbed in the back.”

“While domestic businesses were busy playing dirty tricks on each other to obtain bigger market shares, foreign businesses have enough time to launch new products and run advertisement campaigns to conquer the market,” Vu said.

Recently, local newspapers reported that a substance creating bitter taste was found in Trung Nguyen coffee products. Trung Nguyen, after taking investigation, found out that this was a behavior of unhealthy competition conducted by a Vietnamese company.

Analysts have also commented that Vietnamese companies’ internal disputes have put them at disadvantages. Local newspapers in recent years continuously report the cases where domestic businesses conduct unhealthy competition behaviors to “kill” other businesses. Most of the cases occurred in the fields food processing and drinks.

Meanwhile, the analysts noted that the foreign multinational groups which are doing business Vietnam always follow business culture standards. They can speak kindly of them, but they do not speak ill of others, especially the rivals.

Vu of Trung Nguyen has pointed out that Vietnamese businesses always keep pessimistic about their capability, thinking that they are inferior to foreign companies. Therefore, they try to compete directly with other domestic businesses rather than confronting with foreign ones.

Unhealthy competitions have been occurring in many different business fields of the national economy. Local newspapers once reported the “soy sauce fight” and the “instant noodle war.” And now the unhealthy competition is occurring among mobile phone companies.

Vietnamese mobile phone brands once witnessed the golden age in 2007-2009, when they were competitive in prices in competition with foreign expensive products. However, when foreign mobile manufacturers marketed low cost products, the sales of mobile phone products with Vietnamese brands fell dramatically.

In such a circumstance, domestic mobile phone manufacturers had to try every way they could to boost sales and increase the market share. In order to do that, Vietnamese businesses tried to regain the market share from other Vietnamese businesses.

A director of a mobile phone company said that his company once marketed low-cost touch-screen mobile phones, which he believed a good niche market for the company.

However, after the products hit the market, other manufacturers also launched similar models at lower prices.

While domestic mobile phone manufacturers were busy fighting each other, foreign big guys had time to research and develop new products with more advantageous features, thus defeating all Vietnamese brands.

Source: Lao dong