Higher ’net, credit card use spurs e-commerce

20:16' 15/04/2008 (GMT+7)
VietNamNet Bridge - The rising numbers of internet users makes e-commerce providers optimistic about the industry’s future despite high prices and late deliveries.
The Industry and Commerce Ministry’s E-commerce Department reports that the number of domestic consumers shopping on-line has increased rapidly during the past three years.
The increase coincides with growth in the number of internet and credit card users, especially among the young.
The number of internet subscribers totalled more than 18 million or more than 22 per cent of population last year and the figure is growing.
Fifty-two per cent of internet users are aged between 20 and 34.
Market research shows the most popular items for sale on the virtual market are books, films, music, games, plane tickets, clothes, shoes and electronic products.
Viet Nam has more than 100 web sites providing on-line shopping and services. About 150,000 businesses have posted their own web sites for trade promotion.
On-line prudence
To avoid loosing money when using credit cards to buy on-line: carefully check the e-commerce web site; carefully read the terms on offer especially for payment and delivery; and check the web site through Alexa.com and if it’s among the 200,000 most read pages you can feel more confident.
Some suggested on-line addresses are
www.golmart.vn,
muare6.vinahoo.com,
www.chodientu.com,
www.thegioimobi.com.vn,
www.camcanhbuoidien.com,
muasam.caigi.com,
and
www.sachviet.com.
Problems with e-payments
Web site camcanhbuoidien.com manager-sales person Nguyen Thanh Binh says the inconvenience of making payment and slow deliveries is hindering the growth of on-line shopping.
Vinagame Company e commerce overseer Nguyen Hoang Que Nga agrees and says that although on-line shopping has grown, it’s development is slow with many difficulties still to be overcome.
The company’s on-line supermarket site 123mua.com.vn draws from 70 suppliers with more than 10,000 products sold since it was posted in 2006.
But although about 50,000 people had opened virtual accounts and 4,000 had order forms only 2,000 had bought goods on line.
Still this was a vast improvement on 2006 when orders were no more than a trickle.
The e-commerce overseer concedes that the supermarket has not yet escaped the difficulties that were identified when the web site was posted.
These are the impossibility of bargaining or sampling and the inconvenience of payment.
The suppliers also tend to ignore updated information about the different categories of products sold on-line and complain that the range of their wares offered to buyers is too limited.
Worse still, buyers incur a double tax: One from the supplier and the other from the on-line supermarket. It means that electronic products that are available to regular shoppers, who can buy them immediately, are more expensive when bought on-line.
Swindle in the virtual market is also not uncommon.
The most popular scams are to deliver goods of lower quality than those ordered or not deliver goods to customers who have paid in advance.
Lawyer Minh Tam says most on-line shopping is based on trust and in Viet Nam customers do not trust the virtual market.
Sales through on-line supermarkets and other web sites are just 10 per cent of total revenue earned from commodity distribution.
Nevertheless, Nguyen Hoang Que Nga and her fellow on-line providers who attended a Industry and Commerce Ministry-sponsored e-commerce conference and trade fair in Ha Noi are confident of their industry’s growth.
The optimism is based on the increasing number of internet users; improvement in the electronic payment system and the competition that is assured between domestic and international sites after 2010 when the latter will be allowed to provide e-commerce in Viet Nam.