VietNamNet Bridge – Investors have poured money into the e-commerce market, a very promising type of business. However, they would have to encounter big difficulties.

When deciding to spend money to develop online distribution channels, enterprises believe that the current conditions have become favorable enough to begin investments.

Ngo Quoc Dung, Director of Jodric, an advertisement firm, which is developing a series of e-commerce projects, including www.diathan.vn, said thanks to the boom of groupon websites, Vietnam’s e-commerce has made a big leap so far, while the habit of shopping online has been created.

However, there are always two sides of a coin. While groupon websites have made people get familiar with online shopping channels, they have made people believe that online distribution channels mostly launch “sale-up” campaigns. People also believe that the products sold on online channels do not have high quality, and people buy products on them because of the only reason that they are cheap.

Experts say the thought would put big difficulties for e-commerce enterprises in doing their business.

A common thing of all the e-commerce websites so far is that they have been run by small or medium enterprises. With the limited capability, the enterprises cannot scale up their investment to create a professional e-commerce environment.

Most of the enterprises still cannot join forces with others to provide relevant services, including forwarding services. Therefore, they still have to deliver goods themselves.

Everything we can see now shows the signs of the booming of e-commerce in the near future. Therefore, big enterprises have poured their money into e-commerce projects as a step to wait in front for the boom.

“It means that investors spend money now to get benefits later. Meanwhile, it is now still not the right time to reap fruits, even though Vietnam sewed the seed 10 years ago already,” Tien said.

The players in the market, who are they?

Experts believe that the in the immediate time, the market would be the playing field of the big names such as Zap.vn, Lazada, Zalora, Cho Dien Tu/eBay and 123.vn.

Zap.vn is still in the starting period, while Lazada and Zalora have cemented their positions in the market.

In February 2012, Gio Giai Lao Company Ltd was established, officially bringing Lazada and Zalora, the well-known online sale brands in South East Asia, into Vietnam.

Founded by the leading online retail group from Germany, Lazada (the domain name in Vietnam is www.lazada.vn), which has its own “formulas” to conquer the international market, has to apply specific methods to get adapted to the Vietnamese market.

Pham Que Anh, Brand Director of Lazada Vietnam, said the online retailer has been following a special way to conquer Vietnamese customers.

A survey by PayPal showed that 43 percent of polled Vietnamese consumers said they would not buy products online for fear of risks.

In general, Vietnamese people would not buy products until they can see with their eyes the products to have assessments about their quality. Meanwhile, the habit of making payment in cash remains an obstacle to e-commerce.

Therefore, Lazada Vietnam decided to go its way: it provides all the information about products, advertise products on Internet environment, but still allows customers to make payment after they receive products.

If customers are not satisfied with the products after they see them, lazada.vn would take back the products and charge no fee to customers.

The policy applied by lazada.vn which allows customers changing products within 14 days has helped persuade customers that they still can check the products with their eyes, like they do when making traditional shopping, while they do not have to spend too much time to go to shops.

DNSG