Vietnamese people changing their consumption habits: research

16:59' 13/07/2007 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge – There will be big changes in the shopping and consumption habits of Vietnamese people, according to research conducted by the Trade Research Institute. The institute has forecast that the final consumption fund (referring to the amount of money consumers put aside for consumption) in comparison with Vietnam’s GDP may reach VND840-860bil ($50bil) in three years. In the last few years, Vietnam has ranked third in the world in terms of consumption ratio. Vietnamese people have been spending more money to satisfy their demands, while middle-class consumers have appeared. Nguyen Van Nam, Head of the Trade Research Institute, talks more about that. What will the big changes in the consumption habits of Vietnamese people be like in the next three years? There will be big changes in the consumption habits of Vietnamese people. They will require not only good food and fine clothing, but also choose the kinds of food that are good for health. A recent survey announced by TNS Market Research showed that 62% of Vietnamese people do not eat at home every day. The consumption style will also be different: more spending and less saving in young families. Will traditional Vietnamese products like fish sauce, seasoning powder, instant noodles, vegetable oil, green tea and coffee be affected by the new consumption habits? All Vietnamese people use these products everyday as a long-standing habit, no matter if they eat at home or restaurants. All the tastes and habits of Vietnamese consumers will stay the same. However, the requirements of new consumers will be stricter as they will demand safer and cleaner products. This will bring more opportunities to Vietnamese enterprises, while also be a big challenge for them. Let me take the case of the soy sauce with the high level of 3-MPCD as an example. Since the information about the toxic substance was released consumers have ‘boycotted’ the unsafe product, a move that shows that consumers now have behaviour different from what they did before. What should you do to control the quality of goods? Someone may fear that the opening of the distribution market to foreigners will kill the domestic distribution network. However, they should realise that many bad-quality products, including China-sourced ones, can be seen everywhere on the domestic market due to many reasons. One of the reasons is the bad domestic distribution network. Vietnamese producers should understand that only good-quality products can be sold, while distributors should distribute good-quality products only. Why do you say that the bad distribution network is the reason behind the bad-quality imports? Local distributors now sell everything they can, both the good and bad products. Meanwhile, if foreign distributors can operate on the market, they will standardise sale items: i.e. only good and safe products will be put on sale. Bad-quality products will have no room in their distribution chains. I also have to say that the backward distribution network will not help encourage production, and cannot meet the demand of modern consumers. Thailand once had the same fear as Vietnam when it opened its retail market. However, the result of the market opening was very good: the quality of its products has become better and its export turnover is 10-fold higher than Vietnam’s. (Source: Viet Nam Net)