Retailers join technology race to snag more customers

Analysts say that investing in technology is the only choice for retailers who want to attract more customers in a market with 95 million people, with half of them at a young age and fond of technology.

Lotte Mart, the leading retailer from the Republic of Korea, recently launched Speed Lotte, an online shopping app. 

The app is available in Google Play for Android mobile services and iTunes Store for iPhone and iPad. Customers now can access http://speedlotte.vn to shop online.

With Speed Lotte, customers can order nearly all essential food products from canned food to instant noodles, drinks and milk. 

From December, the list of food products to offer will comprise box lunches for customers near Lotte Mart in district 7 in Ho Chi Minh City.

In August 2016, Saigon Co-op, the largest retail chain in Vietnam, launched two technological apps, including Co.opmart on mobile device, and improved its online website.

General director of Saigon Co-op Nguyen Thanh Nhan said the retail chain cannot ignore technological solutions as it wants to expand business. 

Saigon Co-op is trying tech-based items such as automatic payment in the high-end market segment and multi-channel services.

Home appliance and tech product distribution chains, including The Gioi Di Dong, FPT, Nguyen Kim and Thien Hoa, have also made heavy investment in online sale channels. 

Nguyen Duc Tai of The Gioi Di Dong said the online market has great potential and it will develop strongly in five years. Online sales now account for 5% of the retail market and the figure is expected to increase to 20% in the time to come.

In 2015, online sales at the No 1 mobile phone retail chain reached VND1.65 trillion, while the figure soared to VND3.372 trillion in 2016. Encouraged by the achievements, The Gioi Di Dong in early 2017 launched vuivui.com, a B2C trading floor.

It hopes that online sales will bring turnover of VND6.65 trillion this year out of total VND63.28 trillion, accounting for 10.5% of total turnover.

As for Nguyen Kim, realizing the great potential of online sale channels, it bought Zalora Vietnam in 2016, which allowed Nguyen Kim to develop online sales.

Thien Hoa, another distribution chain, has decided to invest in an online sale division with hundreds of workers. The conglomerate hopes the online sale channel will gain 400% growth rate per annum by 2020.

A PwC survey found that the development of IT has changed consumer behavior, with 49% of consumers buying goods via smartphones.