Online sales boom as Tet approaches

With Vietnam boasting a large internet community and a young, digital-savvy population, the e-commerce market is buzzing with activity ahead of the Lunar New Year (Tet) festival, which falls on February 12.

Many consumers say that the hectic year-end schedule keeps them busy and they cannot go shopping, but the dizzying growth in e-commerce and e-payment is lending a hand. Now, without leaving office or home, they can place orders online and wait for the goods to be delivered home.

Many large e-supermarkets and social networking sites claim to have carefully prepared to ship a large volume of goods to serve a huge, growing demand, and launched a number of promotions.

Big C supermarket has worked with suppliers to ensure there is enough food to meet the Tet demand, and said it would stock 20% more pork and 25% more poultry meat than last year.

A spokesperson said the pandemic would prevent many people from travelling home, but the demand for Tet would remain huge.

The supermarket offers online shopping and free delivery within a 10km radius within two hours, he said.

Nguyen Anh Duc, general director of Saigon Co.opmart, said the supermarkets would increase delivery staff by 25% and deliver anywhere in the country wherever one orders from.

Tran Ngoc Tran, who works in HCM City’s District 5, said she had a lot of year-end work to finish and little time to shop even for the most traditional, must-have food items for Tet, which is by far the most important festival of the year.

Online shopping is a solution for her: She has ordered some traditional central region dishes like pickled scallion, salted figs and papaya shrimp sauce and asked the supermarket to ship them to her home in Binh Dinh province.

A spokesperson for an e-commerce business said with much lower overheads than brick and mortar stores, online shopping centres are able to offer promotions and discounts.

Some popular sites like sendo, lazada, chodientu, hotdeal, tiki, and zalora are offering discounts of up to 50 % on all types of products, especially fashion and beauty like shoes, handbags, watches, and sunglasses.

Foodstuffs are most in demand for the festival, and are advertised widely on the internet with many discount programmes.

Though the discounts are not as high as on other consumer goods, people can still buy confectionary, soft drinks, noodles, and other items at discounts of up to 39%.