Trade and services adapt rapidly to overcome challenges

Under the heavy impact of the global economy, retail sales of goods have decreased. Facing the situation, many retail businesses have quickly changed their sales methods to improve sales and strive to achieve the 2023 plan.

The consumption structure of people changes, focusing mainly on essential goods such as food and staple

Diverse solutions

Despite many difficulties in the first 4 months of 2023, the wholesale distribution network was stable; the retail and service systems made significant progress by expanding in scale and diversifying in form and quality. According to Vo Nhat Vu - Director of Go! In Binh Duong, the current consumption structure of people has changed with focus on essential goods such as food and staples. Go! Has also increased the import of products in large quantities to share price difficulties with consumers. Along with that, supermarkets have cooperated with reputable supplying chains to improve product quality that connect supplying and consuming chains.

Overcoming difficulties, distribution channels focus on developing Vietnamese products in their supplying chains to bring about benefits and create greater opportunities for Vietnamese businesses to dominate and maintain the domestic markets. Records from a number of retail systems such as Saigon Co.op, MM Mega Market, Central Retail Vietnam among others show that 90-95% of fresh food, vegetables, and others are of domestic origins. These are really impressive numbers to show the widespread coverage of Vietnamese agricultural products.

Vo Van Let - Director of Aeon Mall Binh Duong, informed of revenue decrease in the first 4 months of the year by about 10% over the same period. Currently, Vietnamese goods account for 80-90% of the store shelves. However, with the desire to revive revenue and achieve the annual plan, Aeon Mall Binh Duong always focuses on improving the quality and facilities to serve consumers as well as actively implements promotional programs on consumer demand for Vietnamese goods, promote e-commerce activities, and develop various forms of digital economy.

Phan Thi Khanh Duyen - Deputy Director of the Department of Industry and Trade, said that the industry and trade sector has strengthened measures to ensure market stability, proactively organized and strictly enforced the provisions of the law on the commercial sector, and coordinated with other industries to control trade fraud, market takeover, limit unfair competition, and violation of the interests of consumers. In recent years, departments, branches and localities in the province have also promoted activities to connect consumers with manufacturers to improve brand value of Vietnamese goods in the province.

Opportunities identified for sustainable development

The highlight of the retail market in recent times has been the development of e-commerce transactions and noncash payments. Trade centers, supermarkets, and food services have implemented a series of promotions to stimulate sales through channels such as phone, ordering via website, apps; at the same time, support delivery policies. The timely change in sales method has contributed to helping businesses improve revenue in the harsh market situation.

Many retail businesses have been quite agile to switch from offline to online sales, which is possibly thanks to the relatively grown-up e-commerce platform in recent years in the waves of investment of start-ups. The freight forwarding activity in the past few years has also been heavily invested on, so the fast delivery systems have brought into great effect. According to experts, although the online retail market is growing rapidly in the past few years, its average growth of 39% in 5 years is higher than the growth rate of the traditional retail market, and accounting for only a few years less than 10% of total retail sales in Vietnam. Therefore, in hard times, retailers need to change and be more flexible in the situations of rapidly changing consumer habits.

Not only do they act as a bridge between producers and consumers, supermarkets also strive to direct manufacturers to create green products to bring to the market. However, although local agricultural products are quite abundant, in order to reach out and compete in other countries' markets, it is necessary to have a methodical and sustainable direction. Vo Nhat Vu commented that Binh Duong specialty products are competitive enough with other regions, but the biggest limitation is also the ability to promote and catch customers' eyes, especially processed products of intensive variables as the buyers just glance at the store and make their decision in about 3 seconds whether to choose or not.

Reported by Tieu My – Translated by Vi Bao