Historically, when comparing Vietnamese goods with Chinese, most people believed that Vietnamese goods could not compete with Chinese in price.

However, at the seminar "Cross-Border E-Commerce – Era of Breakthrough" held November 26 in Hanoi, Wu Quanxin, a representative of a cross-border e-commerce ecosystem in China, revealed surprising information.

"Last year, many Vietnamese enterprises came to Ningbo to showcase and promote e-commerce products. I found out that the Vietnamese products had high quality and low cost, which many Chinese goods don’t have," he said.

While appreciating Vietnamese goods, Wu Quanxin noted that when doing business on e-commerce platforms, businesses need to innovate continuously. Vietnamese need to consistently invest in R&D for new products and need to improve their branding in the international market.

Currently, there are very few Vietnamese goods in the Chinese market. The products available are mostly from Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Bernard Wong, Chair of ACBC Global, the cross-border e-commerce alliance, commented that while Vietnam has many good products, such as its tropical fruit, it lacks branding strategies to introduce its products to the world. 

Without strong brands, Vietnamese businesses find it difficult to export their products online.

Earlier, at a seminar on cross-border e-commerce held on the same day, Le Hoang Oanh, Director General of the E-Commerce and Digital Economy, mentioned the same problem, saying that many Vietnamese companies have to access foreign markets via foreign brands. 

Building and enhancing brand identification n foreign markets is one of the crucial tasks if Vietnamese businesses want to engage effectively in cross-border e-commerce.

Vietnamese have multitasking skills 

Despite some limitations, Vietnamese businesses have quickly aligned with the trend of cross-border e-commerce.

Loki Tran, the founder and CEO of GIP Fulfillment, specializing in fulfillment services for online businesses, noted that many Vietnamese SMEs (small and medium enterprises) have gained success in bringing Vietnamese products to Southeast Asian markets via cross-border e-commerce.

"E-commerce skills of Vietnamese personnel are quite good. When we provided e-commerce training in the Philippines, each person could focus only on one skill such as design or content creating. Vietnamese could multitask. Many partners in Southeast Asia were very surprised by the e-commerce skills of Vietnamese," Tran said.

An MOIT (Ministry of Industry and Trade)  survey released in 2023 showed that 53 percent of enterprises exported farm produce through e-commerce platforms, and 47 percent used websites or built websites or apps themselves. About 60 percent of businesses said the value of goods traded through cross-border e-commerce accounted for 10-30 percent of their total import-export value.

Most Vietnamese companies recognize e-commerce as an effective channel to boost import-export activities. Metric, which conducted a survey on e-commerce platforms like Shopee, Tiki, Lazada, Sendo and TikTok Shop that operate in Vietnam, reported that in the first nine months of 2024, Vietnam's cross-border e-commerce sales reached VND227 trillion, up 37.66 percent compared to the same period last year; with 2,430 million products sold, which meant a growth rate of 50 percent.

"The figures are incredibly impressive, if noting that these were the results of the first nine months. The figures are likely to increase even more during the year-end mega sale season," commented Thu Vu from Metric.

2 cross-border e-commerce markets for VN’s products

Anna Nguyen, Vice President of ACBC Global, said Southeast Asia, India, and the Middle East are emerging as new centers for cross-border e-commerce with the rise of a digital middle class.

South Korea and China are two highly promising cross-border e-commerce markets for Vietnamese goods.

In South Korea, it is a growing tendency to import products through cross-border e-commerce because of diverse consumer demand, the convenience of online platforms, government policy support, and modern logistics infrastructure.

Chinese consumers tend to increasingly favor imported products. They like products such as cosmetics, health care products, food and beverages, regional specialties, medicine, and vitamins.

Currently, many small businesses want to boost cross-border e-commerce exports by developing their own e-commerce platforms. But experts advise against this, recommending that instead of doing everything themselves, it would be better to participate in reputable e-commerce platforms instead of spending too much money on infrastructure.

Binh Minh