Vietnamese consumers among most demanding on e-commerce

Nielsen has forecast that the Vietnamese e-commerce market will grow 22 per cent this year and 13.2 per cent by 2020.

According to the Vietnam E-commerce Association (VECOM), the local e-commerce sector will become a 10-billion-dollar business in the next five years.

However, local consumers are also demanding, with many complaints about price, product information and authorisation, which should be addressed by merchants to improve customers’ trust.

A research conducted by iPrice and Trusted Company based on more than 30,000 reviews on 5,000 websites in Viet Nam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines found that Vietnamese customers have the lowest trust on e-commerce and spend less money on shopping online.

Vietnamese customers complain the most about “fake products”, 15 per cent higher than Thailand, the country with the second maximum complaints, given that fact that Thailand ranked 4th worldwide in the fake goods trade.

The second maximum complaints on e-commerce sites by Vietnamese customers are about the price of products. Despite being an aggressive promotion hunter, the Vietnamese still think products listed by e-commerce merchants are overpriced.

Given that 80 per cent of consumers prefer cash on delivery (COD) payment, the country also has the highest order cancellation rate, with 30 per cent of products not being accepted due to product failure, the research said.

Unlike consumers in other Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore and Indonesia that have shared concerns on buying products, the most common queries of the Vietnamese are on product authorisation (store address) and availability. They are revealed to often use feedback forms to ask about products.

Of all Southeast Asian countries, Viet Nam has an average rating of 3.7 out of five stars, the research has revealed. This is due to the fact that only large merchants have developed a rating scheme for a better shopping experience for consumers.