Vietnam improves its online shopping readiness

With an average score of 61.1 points on a scale of 100, Vietnam did better than most of its Southeast Asian peers in terms of its preparedness for e-commerce, according to the B2C (business-to-consumer) E-commerce Index recently released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Singapore ranked third on the global list while Malaysia came in 34th, Thailand (48th),  Indonesia (84th), the Philippines (89th), Laos (113rd), Cambodia (122nd), and Myanmar (126th).

The ranking measured 152 countries and territories around the world based on four indicators with a high correlation to online shopping: Internet server access, postal service reliability, share of the population who use the Internet, and share of population aged above 15 who have an account with a financial institution or mobile-money-service provider.

According to the report, 70 percent of Vietnamese people use the Internet and 31 percent of individuals aged from 15 and above have bank accounts or mobile bank accounts.

Vietnam has proportions of secure Internet servers and postal reliability at 66 and 77 percent respectively.

The report also showed online shoppers in Vietnam account for 31 percent of Internet users and 19 percent of the 94-million population.

The country has targeted that 30 percent of its population shop online between 2016 and 2020, with yearly sales value of approximately $350 per person.

E-commerce revenue reached $2.26 billion last year, up 30 percent over 2017, according to Germany-based data portal Statista.

Vietnam’s e-commerce market is estimated at $5 billion this year and is set to reach $23 billion in 2025, according to a recent report by Google, Singapore-based investment firm Temasek, and U.S.-based consultancy Bain.