Vietnamese goods promotion carves out niche in foreign markets

Vietnamese goods in Germany’s Dong Xuan Center

Foreign retailers

The Central Group Vietnam (CGVN) is part of a leading Asian retail and property group, Central Group. The CGVN presently operates over 181 stores nationwide. The Central Global Sourcing in Vietnam is one of the business units of the CGVN, in charge of purchasing domestically-produced goods and exporting them to markets such as Thailand, France, Italy, the US and Africa. Sales of Vietnamese goods by the Central Global Sourcing in Vietnam reached US$25.3 million in 2016 and were estimated to be higher in 2017 because many Vietnamese agricultural products have been successfully exported to Thailand through supermarket systems.

Le Thi Mai Linh, executive vice president of the Public Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility Department at the CGVN, said the company promoted cooperation with the Ministry of Industry and Trade to organize Vietnamese goods weeks in Thailand. The events not only helped Vietnamese companies display and promote products to Thai consumers, but also provided opportunities for businesses to conduct direct dialogues with buyers. Thanks to trade promotion programs, the first batch of lychees from Bac Giang Province’s Luc Ngan District were exported to Thailand and sold at Tops Supermarket and the Central Food Hall chain in Bangkok.

Retail giants such as MM Mega Market, Lotte, Aeon, E-mart and Saigon Co.op have also participated in the project to promote direct participation of Vietnamese businesses in foreign distribution systems. To date, the total export value of goods and services through foreign supermarket systems has reached several hundreds of millions of US dollar, focusing on the country’s strengths such as agro-forestry products, processed foods and consumer goods.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade says it has implemented many measures to help Vietnamese goods enter foreign distribution networks. These include asking large retailers such as Metro, Big C, Aeon and Lotte to distribute Vietnamese goods abroad, promoting cooperation with foreign business to strengthen goods distribution in their systems, organizing trade promotion programs to negotiate and sign distribution contracts, and coordinating with Vietnamese trade offices to organize Vietnamese goods weeks in France, Germany, Australia and Thailand.

Nguyen Anh Duc, deputy general director of Saigon Co.op, said that after cooperating with Singapore’s NTUC FairPrice Cooperative to expand its distribution network, Saigon Co.op has promoted the sale of Vietnamese goods through supermarkets. In 2016, Saigon Co.op registered export sales of around VND45 billion, with Vietnamese goods becoming more and more familiar to Singaporean consumers.

Improving quality

Promoting Vietnamese goods abroad through distribution systems is considered one of the most effective export activities because it helps business reduce many intermediary stages, thereby reducing costs and increasing competitiveness. According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, to maintain positive results in promoting Vietnamese goods abroad, it is necessary to improve product quality, diversify designs and promote marketing. In addition, businesses should pay attention to investment in packaging to attract consumers.

Within the framework of the project to promote direct participation of Vietnamese firms in foreign distribution systems through 2020, businesses are urged to develop new export channels to directly take their products to foreign consumers. The goal of the project is to export Vietnamese goods to all major distribution systems in Europe, North America, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and other countries with which Vietnam has free trade agreements.