Entering Vietnam’s eCommerce market
CONTEXT
The New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) is New Zealand’s economic development and trade promotion agency which is charged with helping New Zealand businesses grow internationally.
Eden was tasked with helping NZTE create a guide to the Vietnam eCommerce market for their customers. Vietnam is a market undergoing dramatic changes, including the rise of an emerging middle class, increased urbanisation, and intensifying digitalisation, presenting enormous potential—and hype—around the eCommerce opportunity. Given NZTE’s local presence and deep knowledge about ground-up realities in Vietnam, NZTE‘s challenge was to give their customers nuanced market insights to help them realise a real market opportunity, yet balance this with a comprehensive view about the practicalities of doing business in this still developing market.
APPROACH
Eden’s initial scope from NZTE was to produce technical guides to support customers to set up on Vietnam’s eCommerce platforms. However, we realised it was essential to move beyond the technicalities of the established eCommerce platforms towards a more strategic focus to create the most value for their customers. After discussions with NZTE, we shifted our scope to also include opportunities presented by emerging eCommerce business models, and added several new strategic elements to the report. For the mission, we:
- Conducted in-depth interviews with industry insiders to understand the current state and future vision, success factors, best practices, go-to-market strategies, and operational requirements for different product categories in eCommerce in Vietnam
- Conducted an extensive literature review of current societal trends in Vietnam that impact the future of eCommerce, including the influence of urbanisation, the emerging middle class, and the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown on buying habits
- Conducted a mystery shopper test on each of the major eCommerce platforms to analyse the buying experience and further evidence our recommendations about the targeting of NZ product categories to different platforms
- Conducted analyses on survey data about Vietnamese consumers’ demographic and purchasing preferences to help NZTE strategically identify the right target markets
IMPACT
The final report and presentation to NZTE and a group of their customers outlined our key insights and recommendations about opportunities for NZ companies in Vietnam eCommerce, as well as detailed technical and strategic guidance on the “how-to” of market entry.
"We approached Eden to help us create an eCommerce market guide for Vietnam. Eden was referred to us from other regional NZTE offices, and we knew them to be collaborative and willing to go the extra mile to create value. Our challenge was creating a practical guide to the fast-moving eCommerce industry which was tailored enough to be operational, but general enough to cater to NZTE’s range of customers across industries with varying levels of experience in Vietnam and eCommerce.
Our initial focus was producing technical guides to support customers to set up on Vietnam’s eCommerce platforms. On the advice of Eden, we shifted our scope beyond just the established eCommerce platforms to also include opportunities presented by emerging eCommerce business models, and added several new strategic elements to the report. Eden’s insights were anchored in extensive data collection, including interviews with industry insiders, and innovative analyses such as mystery eCommerce shopper tests. At each stage, Eden was sincere in listening to feedback and incorporating it into the report. We would gladly recommend Eden as a strategic partner!"
Karlene Davis
Trade Commissioner and Consul-General Vietnam
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise