Changes needed for new retail playground

Strong impact

Industry 4.0 is obviously changing consumer shopping habits, offering alternatives to the traditional stores and stalls with online retail and e-commerce channels.

Deputy Director of the Domestic Market Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade Le Viet Nga noted recently that Industry 4.0 has vastly improved methods of goods distribution, making them more time and cost efficient.

She emphasized that apart from simplifying shopping activities and making them more convenient, Industry 4.0 has had a major impact on goods supply, providing Vietnamese consumers with more types of goods with higher quality and more transparent sources of origin.

Customer behavior

The application of technologies has helped retail businesses diversify distribution methods, providing customers with greater convenience. However, according to experts, retail businesses need to make positive changes to take advantage of this opportunity.

Given that consumers are the focus in strategies to control the retail market, Director of the Northern Region Nielsen Vietnam Dang Thuy Ha said that retailers need to carry out in-depth studies to observe and get to know customer behavior before making decisions to set up goods distribution stores. They also have to discover customer needs and psychology by running management software and data to serve each group of potential customers.

Vu Vinh Phu, a retail market expert, proposed that in order to develop a fast and sustainable retail sector, the domestic distribution system needs planning for the retail network and infrastructure development. The State needs policies to develop the distribution system, giving priority to building large domestic retail corporations capable of leading the market.

As for retail businesses, the secret to improve competitiveness today is to reduce intermediaries and unreasonable costs, and promote the processing industry to provide consumers with high quality products. They also need to form commodity production zones to grow agricultural products and foodstuffs, which can be provided to consumers regularly and efficiently. Setting up farm produce and foodstuffs purchasing centers in different regions is also an important solution to manage the quality of input commodities, reduce transportation costs, and create output products at competitive prices.