HÀ NỘI — Local firms are demonstrating their strength in winning hearts of Vietnamese consumers in e-commerce, an interactive E-commerce study conducted by iPrice has revealed.

The study, conducted from April to June this year, compared 50 e-commerce websites in Việt Nam in various parameters including traffic (based on Similarweb), application downloads and social media followers.

The survey found that eight of the 10 biggest e-commerce merchants in terms of traffic are local firms who are already familiar with Vietnamese customers such as Thế Giới Di Động (Mobile World), Sendo, Tiki, Vật Giá, FPT Shop, Điện Máy Xanh, A Đây Rồi and Nguyễn Kim.

Lazada and Shopee, who are operating across South East Asian countries, are the only international firms in the top 10.

The three biggest e-commerce websites in Việt Nam are Lazada, Thế Giới Di Động and Sendo which have strong parent companies backing them. While Lazada was bought by Alibaba, Sendo is under the umbrella of FPT Online and Thế Giới Di Động has been a popular retail brand in Việt Nam for more than 10 years.

It has been noticed that many international companies find it challenging to enter the Vietnamese market. With Zalora and Ebay withdrawing from the competition, the marketplace now becomes a playground for strong local e-commerce players.

For shopping apps which are getting more popular among local consumers, Lazada won with total apps download, given the number count of all operating countries. For Việt Nam’s market alone, Thế Giới Di Động outnumbered other competitors with five million apps installed, five times higher than Sendo, Lozi and Shopee.

Meanwhile, Lazada, Thế Giới Di Động and Shopee are the top three with the highest number of followers on social media sites such as Facebook.

International firms dominate Facebook games due to the numbers of followers from other countries. Local firms, which have the highest number of Facebook followers, are Thế Giới Di Động, FPT Shop, Tiki and Sendo.

On the Youtube channel, the top three e-commerce players are CellphoneS, Thế Giới Di Động and Điện Máy Xanh. The top three winners are tech and gadget merchants as Vietnamese consumers prefer to watch product review videos as a reference before buying technology and electronic gadgets.

Việt Nam’s e-commerce market is among the fastest growing in the region with an annual growth of 22 per cent. Vietnam E-commerce Association (VECOM) predicted that the country’s e-commerce market can reach US$10 billion within the next five years.

iPrice is Southeast Asia’s Meta-Search platform with a presence in seven markets -- Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Việt Nam, as well as Thailand, the Philippines and Hong Kong. It operates three business lines -- price comparison, product discovery and coupons. — VNS