French Group Casino caters to OVs niche market

However, niche markets don’t refer to the size of the market but rather they refer to a clearly-defined sales market that is easier to understand and thus, it makes targeting advertising and other marketing efforts much simpler.

Take the example of Overseas Vietnamese (OVs) residing in France.  Expatriates regardless of how long they have lived in their new country are always nostalgic for their homeland during the holidays.

OVs, a niche market in France, are no different and they took great joy in celebrating the TET Lunar New Year Holiday in early February this year with traditional foods from the homeland said Valentin Tran, sales director of the French Group Casino.

During a recent interview with a VOV reporter he said, “Each year Casino stocks up its inventories with plenty of Vietnamese traditional dried foods, candies, cashew nuts, fish sauce, sushi vinegar, dried vermicelli and instant noodles” for TET.

France has one of the largest immigrant populations in Europe, which contributes to a wide variety of diverse consumer buying habits, so it very important for Casino to take great care in clearly identifying its retail markets.

Around 14.2% of France’s immigrants come from Asian countries of origin including Turkey, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, according to the latest census figures and represent a very large consumer market. However, Tran said because Asians have widely differing tastes, Casino specifically identifies OVs as a target niche market when making purchasing decisions, making it much easier to identify the goods needed on the store shelves.

That’s why, in the fish and seafood department Casino has plenty of extra shrimp and basa catfish fish on hand, much higher than the usual amounts normally in inventory throughout the remainder of the year.

“We take great pride in specifically catering to the needs of the OVs community residing in France and view them as an extremely valued customer,” said Tran. Our imports of Vietnamese food items for the TET holiday season this year, was still relatively modest, but we hope to double our sales volume by next year, by specifically marketing to the OVs community in France.

One of the major marketing campaigns we have on the calendar for 2016 is a Vietnamese food fair, featuring all of the nation’s specialty foods in Lyon in the Rhone-Alpes region this June, which should be quite an extravaganza.

For Vietnamese small and medium sized business owners, growing their sales and overseas exports doesn't always mean coming up with massive amounts of money for a lavish marketing campaign and conquering some far off global market such as the US or EU.

It may simply mean (following the lead of Casino) coming up with a viable strategy to spend a little bit of money, effort and cater to a specific clearly defined ‘niche market’ as a way of boosting profitable sales and getting their foot in the door of the global market.