VietNamNet Bridge - There are more than 700 supermarkets in the country, but most Vietnamese are indifferent to the modern retail channel.

Pham Nguyen Minh and Hoang Thi Huong Lan from the Trade Research Institute, citing recent surveys, have reported that Vietnamese consumer satisfaction in supermarkets is on the decrease.

The majority of consumers who answered questions in the survey about Big C Supermarket in Hue City said they wanted the supermarket to have more services, and launch sales promotion campaigns and online sale programs.

With the survey about consumers’ satisfaction about Co-op Mart, 7.63 percent of polled consumers said they were not satisfied with the supermarket, 41.48 percent said they were satisfied, 36.03 percent said the service was okay, and only 15.44 percent said they were completely satisfied.

In Hanoi, according to Nguyen Thi Thu Ha from Hanoi National University, who conducted the surveys at general supermarkets, and specialilzed home appliance centers, consumers see no considerable difference in service quality, satisfaction level or loyalty by gender.

There are more than 700 supermarkets in the country, but most Vietnamese are indifferent to the modern retail channel.

Seventy percent of consumers go to supermarkets because they have confidence in the goods available there. The other important reason is food safety & hygiene, followed by the service quality, prices and convenience.

Minh said the that attributes that are important are worsening, including business prestige, respect for customers, responsibility, goods’ quality, reasonable prices and good marketing.

“Many counterfeit products and products with low quality and unclear origin have been discovered recently at some supermarkets, which have made people lose confidence in supermarkets,” he commented.

“In many cases, ads exaggerate the real quality of products, while the quality and the prices of goods are inversely proportional,” he added.

Lan also noted that the quality and prices of Vietnamese goods arevless competitive than Thai and Japanese goods. 

“Vietnamese consumers seem to have lost confidence in Vietnamese goods, while Vietnamese enterprises seem to ‘surrender’ too soon in their home market,” she commented.

Lan also cited other reasons that keep consumers away from supermarkets : the quality of products is unstable, while products are not diverse and the design is monotonous or out of date. 

Meanwhile, the additional value of products is low, the post-sale services are stagnant with low efficiency in handling with complaints, and the environment is not good enough. 

Besides, the weak points in the distribution infrastructure and logistics items have also been cited to explain the inferiority of Vietnamese retailers.

A survey conducted by the Hanoi National Economics University in late 2014 showed that though more consumers, especially urbanites, now like going to supermarkets, the majority of Vietnamese still prefer traditional markets.


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