Comments (0)

By TaiTran, March 15, 2012 5:37 pm

During Asia Pacific ICT Summit I received a question on development of e-Commerce and @opspecgsmb tweeted that it depends on credit card penetration.

Dependence on credit card never happened in China and it is not happening in Vietnam.

The situation in  Vietnam (which many Singaporeans may find different from that of their own country)

1. Still a cash economy
2. People love buying topup cards
3. Bank card penetration is only 30% of the population
4. It takes an urban Vietnamese 5 minutes to visit their local mom-and-pop shop
5. Every household possesses personal vehicle
6. It costs 50 cents to deliver goods from a warehouse to a location in the city
7. Buyers haven’t trusted online transaction

Here are what e-commerce companies in Vietnam are doing:

• Setup distribution network with local mom-and-pop shops, pavement stalls, internet café. Provide these agents with physical topup cards or web interface or SMS interface. Exploit (4)
• Cash on delivery. Exploit (3)
• Partner with post offices. Customers can pay at post offices.
• Provide cash collection services

So customers don’t even need to have bank accounts to buy and trade online, not to mention credit cards.

Of course, it sounds primitive but that’s what’re happening while we wait for the adoption to hit critical mass.

Where is the role of technology?

We can use PayPal. There are also local PayPal clones with much lower fees. With a local bank debit card (I don’t even need a Visa/Mastercard), I can buy stuffs online and perform interbank transfer for free (at least free for now when companies are educating users).

The obstacle is buyers habit and problem of trust.

Groupon clones have helped buyers become more comfortable buying and paying online.

I’ll write a separate post on solving the problem of trust.

So that pretty much wraps up one point on infrastructure for e-commerce in Vietnam. If you’re interested please CLICK HERE to read more.

Cheers

Comments (1)

By TaiTran, January 22, 2012 6:09 am

Below is the Vietnamese version of my presentation at Open Consultant offline December 2011 on Vietnam e-Commerce Outlook in 2012.

Click here to read my English version. Please note that the English version is more updated.

Comments (1)

By TaiTran, December 19, 2011 10:22 am

I gave a presentation on “Vietnam e-Commerce and e-Payment, 2012 Outlook” at Open Consultant Offline December 2012.

You can view the slide here.

The live feed of the event is here

More information to be updated.

Comments (3)

By TaiTran, December 18, 2011 4:22 pm

BaskinRobbins entered Vietnam in 1993 or 1994 with the brand message “thirty-one favors ice-cream”. I was in love with the ice-cream on Tran Hung Dao street.

The imported ice-cream was a luxury. It cost approximately $2 per coup and GDP per capita (PPP) back then was $170! [Source: WorldBank]

To no-one’s surprise, the chain vanished from the country. The last store I saw was on Pasteur street in late 1996 or 1997.

Baskin Robbins is being brought back to Vietnam. The first store opens on 424 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai on 19.12.2011. I also saw a BaskinRobbins store under construction on Pham Hong Thai – Truong Dinh corner.

Still the pink big board I loved. They registered the domain name baskinrobbins.vn and the website redirects to baskinrobbins.com. It is likely the chain is brought to Vietnam by an RMIT Vietnam student.

Today, BaskinRobbins will have to compete with Bud’s San Francisco ice-cream chain, local Fanny chain, local Godfather chain. Häagen-Dazs also entered Vietnam recently.

Good luck, my favorite ice-cream brand!

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 (0)

By TaiTran, November 5, 2011 9:14 am

• Having secured contracts with Indonesia, Vietnam rice export price now depends on India’s exports
• Domestic price escalation has exceeded international price escalation. Tough for rice exporters
• Developing farming areas like Docimexco (HOSE:FDG) and Vinh Long Food (HOSE:VLF) are doing seems like the right move

Comments (0)

By TaiTran, September 17, 2011 3:43 am

CafeF1 reports Baidu has launched 2 sites in Vietnamese language:

The portal vn.hao123.com and Q&A service zhidao.baidu.com.vn

This is part of the localization of Baidu’s existing services to other international markets. Baidu also recruits PM in Vietnam.

I like the portal.

• It’s neat
• It lists the sites that I benefit from knowing
• Lots of white spaces, few images
• Large and pleasant font (Tahoma?). BTW I hate Times & Arial
• In terms of information, I prefer it to vn.yahoo.com and alltop.com (sorry Guy)
• In terms of customization it is nowhere near netvibes.com and iGoogle.com though
• The concern is if I use VNI Vietnamese typing method, the URL messes up

So in short, nice attempt.

The Q&A service will have to compete with Yahoo! Answers. Also, savy.vn is preparing to launch.

The challenge Baidu has in Vietnam is probably public relations.

Comments (0)

By TaiTran, August 31, 2011 1:16 pm

Click here to view the lists.