13-10-2015

As reported by GfK, Vietnamese sales revenue of smart phones in 2014 reached 6 million units, bringing Vietnam to the third largest market among 7 Southeast Asian countries. Following the rapid spread of smart phones, online activities accordingly have witnessed many changes. According to the survey conducted by the Vietnam E-Commerce and Information Technology Agency (VECITA), in 2014, web traffic from desktop PCs fell from 84% (2010) to 33%, while traffic from mobile devices sharply increased from 27% up to 65%. In addition, 58% of the respondents say they have ever made online purchases, of which 13% purchases are made through mobile applications, doubling when compared to the previous year.

And how about each corporate’s effort? There is 45% of companies in Vietnam having their own website, 15% of which is mobile friendly, while 11% of e-commerce enterprises use mobile applications for the sales purpose. According to the assessment of companies’ representative on the effectiveness of each sales channel, website is rated to have high effectiveness by 23%, moderate effectiveness by 48%, and low effectiveness by 29%, while the effectiveness of mobile apps is respectively rated high by 13%, moderate by 44%, low by 43%. Mobile apps are assessed lower than website, however some corporates have now gained superior results by deploying this channel. For example, Lazada Vietnam, which is the largest e-commerce company, has invested heavily on the mobile application development, resulting in 30% of its sales in March 2015 achieved through mobile access.

Local firms do not put too much expectation on mobile marketing, with less than 1% of usage. However, this method was actively deployed by companies with foreign capital and seem to operate effectively, such as pop-up ads by ANZ Vietnam Bank, reached 1.2 million users during only 2 weeks, with 3.5 million page views and 120,000 clicks, clickthrough rate (CTR) reached 3.5%. On the other hand, the most online advertising methods utilized by local enterprises is creating Facebook fan page and Google SEO measure. But these enterprises will automatically shift their advertising method to mobile marketing as Google and Facebook are on the focus to improve their mobile services. In the near future, they will have to face the necessity of this mobile marketing approach.

Local marketers are starting to focus more on the deployment of mobile marketing, however, their approach seems unable to make use of advantageous features of mobile devices, and still results in some negative effects such as “annoying users by continually pop-up ads on big screen”, or “data cannot be used efficiently”.

It is the high time to expand both supply and demand of mobile marketing because the market is still undeveloped despite its superior conditions which will enable itself to advance significantly. The mobile market will create great business opportunities while both its user and supplier various industries.
Source: VECITA (Vietnam E-commerce and Information Technology Agency)

B&Company Vietnam – Sugiyama Motoharu