VietNamNet Bridge – Following a prosperous year 2013, the e-commerce market is believed to make a big leap in its development in the time to come. The turnover of $8 billion by 2017 is within the reach.

Nguyen Thanh Hung, Deputy Chair of the Vietnam E-commerce Association (VECOM), cited a report of comScore--a market survey firm, as saying that the top 5 online retailers in Vietnam are all domestic enterprises. Meanwhile, in the other six South East Asian countries, foreign enterprises such as Amazon, Apple and Alibaba are leading the market.

comScore believes that Amazon and Lazada still cannot dominate the Vietnamese market because of the special characteristics of the market. Vietnamese consumers do not chose Amazon or Lazada partially because they are not really good at English, or they don’t have credit cards, which are necessary when making transactions with international websites.

This explains why domestic sellers such as 5giay, vatgia, enbac still enjoy a stable large market share.

MasterCard, the international payment card issuer, has predicted that the Vietnamese online market may obtain the turnover of $8 billion by 2017. It noted that the strengthened cooperation between payment card issuers and retailers have helped increase the purchasing power.

The report released in 2012 by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) showed that the e-commerce turnover of Vietnam in the year was roughly $700 million. The ministry predicted that the figure would be $1.3 billion by 2015.

The Vietnam Retailers’ Association believes that Vietnam would see the online retail market boom in 2014.

The representative of comScore, during his trip to Vietnam, noted that he believes the e-commerce will grow strongly in Vietnam, once banking online services have, step by step, brought higher convenience to online buyers.

Nguyen Ngoc Dung, Chief Representative of VECOM HCM City Office, says payment method is no longer the obstacle for online transactions. Businesses nowadays apply advanced payment methods convenient to customers, including e-wallet, money transfer via ATM cards and payment portals.

However, VECOM admitted that the number of Vietnamese e-commerce clients remains modest. They hesitate to use online services because of the worry about the products’ quality and information security.

MOIT’s E-commerce and Information Technology Agency has joined forces with VECOM to set up the standards for e-commerce websites to be granted “SafeWeb,” the recognition about their prestige. This would restore consumers’ confidence and help enterprises boost sales.

Bizweb Vietnam has predicted the boom of e-commerce on the platform of mobile devices in 2014.

It has found from a survey on 3,500 customers on www.bizweb.vn that sports equipments, restaurants, fine arts and handicrafts, and stationary are the categories of products witnessing the highest growth rates in 2013, at 78 percent, 71 percent, 86 percent and 83 percent, respectively.

According to comScore, Vietnam is leading South East Asian countries in terms of Internet users – 16.1 million users monthly, an increase of 14 percent in comparison with 2012, which means that Vietnam has 2 million Internet users in the last year.

A report of MOIT showed that 35 million Vietnamese people use Internet, 57 percent of whom, or 20 million, make online shopping.

Kim Chi