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By TaiTran, May 2, 2013 4:40 pm

• The online payment market consolidates (it is) even before penetrating mainstream buyers.
• Online payment through credit card grows at a surprising rate. After all, Vietnamese users tend to learn more about online payment with services from banks. I personally don’t think PayPal’s model can be replicated in Vietnam, not with the power of the banks.
• Many e-commerce sites still resist integrating online payment services because they feel their process will be jeopardized while transaction value through online payment isn’t worth it. Chicken and egg problem and they decide not to take the pain of educating users.
• Many other e-commerce sites (e.g. Zalora & Lazada) drop NganLuong and OnePay with the same reason: transaction value through online payment isn’t worth it. Still, chicken and egg problem. I, an online payment advocate, have become frustrated.
• We are all serious about online payment because that’s the future. But many of us have been acting like it’s a distant one indeed.

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By TaiTran, November 4, 2012 10:51 am

This is a repost from a discussion with my friends on Facebook.

1. Forums still account for 65% online activities in Vietnam. Sources: two internet market research teams and their figures seem to match.
2. Forum allows or even promotes anonymity which many East Asian (Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese) users prefer.
3. Forum is content-focused so posters on forums feel they can blend in the crowd, a behavior collectivistic Vietnamese prefer.
4. Some vertical forums are very deep: WebTreTho.com on mon & baby care, Otofun on vehicles, vOz on IT and gossip… Deep: quality of content, online ad inventory, and engagement of respective communities.

Comments (2)

By TaiTran, December 15, 2011 12:24 pm

Market size?

Fresh market.

Challenges

1. Piracy
2. User habit
3. Underdeveloped e-payment system. Currently, most e-payment is done through SMS. Content providers share 50-55% upfront revenue with telecommunication service providers

The Pioneers

1. Alezaa.com
2. VCCorp
3. VTC Online confirmed the intention
4. Publishers including FirstNews, Alpha Book, Youth Publisher
5. Lac Viet

A few players have expressed their intention to join the market. More update when their intentions have materialized and publicized.

Show me the money

I have just personally brainstormed a few ideas how players would workaround the challenges and elicit money from buyers

1. Target impulse buying demand
2. Provide convenience for mobile device holders
3. Provide a complete hi-end experience for smart phone holders – good content to go with good hardware
4. The long tail where pirates don’t bother pirating
5. Work with academic institutions to educate and/or coerce students into consuming the contents. Alezaa is deploying this

What categories?

1. Manga!
2. English textbooks
3. Chick lit

Show me MORE money

How to earn enough to be profitable?

I’m using Amazon for a case study

1. Selling Kindles at subsidy to create the platform for content consumption
2. Technology-powered automation to control scaling cost, and to serve the long tail
3. Large scale (one million titles as at December 2011) for network effect which leads to market domination which leads to revenue
4. Use bargain power to drive down costs from suppliers
5. Backward integration to cut the costs from suppliers

Image courtesy: Tiendq

Comments (2)

By TaiTran, December 14, 2011 4:34 am

GOOD is the enemy of GREAT.

Jim Collins

1. I hate COD (cash on delivery). My job requires me to travel frequently I’m not in my office for COD. Asking my colleague in the office to collect the items for me is very inconvenient because of the high frequency my purchases.

2. I’m flabbergasted and frustrated that when I expressed my personal desire that e-Commerce sites should support e-Payment to make my life easier, what I received was resistance from many e-Commerce service providers!

A common response was "you’re not in 90% of our customers".

I’m showing why this is a bad response.

3. BaoKim.vn is 100% free for merchants, and it shouldn’t be too difficult and time-consuming to integrate. I can use BaoKim. Instead of resisting (and showing the superiority of strategy to customers), why wouldn’t they just try integrating the service?

4. e-Payment is what (I believe) we aim to. However, since Vietnamese users have not developed the habit of online payment, e-Commerce service providers have learned to adapt with COD. COD, as we know it, is costly, inefficient, and risky (fraud orders) to merchants & service providers.

Do we want COD permanent here? I think no.

Have we learned to live (and suffer) with COD for so long that we take COD for granted, tend to guard COD as if it is the ultimate standard and resist e-Payment? Many e-Commerce practitioners give me the impression Yes.

We may agree that COD is good, at least for now. GOOD is the enemy of BETTER.

5. This is a minor point. Being an e-Commerce advocate, I understand how resistant Vietnamese buyers are, and I empathize with e-Commerce service providers. Please, my e-Commerce friends, don’t resist to even me.

6. Fortunately, I can prepay using e-Payment from my favorite e-Commerce service providers: eBay.vn / ChoDienTu.vn (NganLuong), tiki.vn (BaoKim / OnePay), WebSieuThi.vn (NganLuong), MuaChung.vn (Soha Pay aka MuaChungPay).

7. I am comfortable with OnePay, Soha Pay (running on top of OnePay), NganLuong, BaoKim. Sadly, Payoo, vnMart, vCash don’t directly support my bank.

8. I specifically wish the following merchants would support one of the 4 e-Payment services I’m comfortable with: NhomMua, Hotdeal, Vinabooks, CungMua. Disclosure: I’ve been buying over 3 million worth of vouchers from NhomMua in 2011.