Both happy and worried when e-commerce has grown dramatically

View of the conference

Breakthrough in digital conversion

At the seminar "Developing E-commerce: Creating a competitive advantage for Vietnamese enterprises" organized by Vietnam Economic Institute this morning (June 2), Dr. Le Xuan Sang, Deputy Director of the Vietnam Economic Institute, affirmed that e-commerce helps businesses improve their competitiveness, especially small and medium-sized enterprises through saving costs in renting space, labor and advertising as well as sales service.

“Businesses increase access to inputs and outputs, expand the ability to promote and reachcustomers without increasing the corresponding costs. In particular, the time spent on e-commerce transactions is not limited to global customers with the fastest transaction speed, the most efficiency, taking advantage of all resources,” Dr. Le Xuan Sang emphasized.

Citing a recent report by the World Trade Organization (WTO), the leader of the Vietnam Economic Institute stated that the Covid-19 pandemichas helped businesses' sales to individual customers peak, especially increases sales between businesses.

Survey results of Nikkei Magazine (Japan) recently with 4,273 businesses and customers from March 19 to April 19, 2020, for the Asia-Pacific region showed that up to 52% will increase online purchases; 32% of the respondents confirmed that they did not change shopping methods and only about 10% of the respondents did not believe in e-commerce.

Dr. Vo Tri Thanh, Director of the Research Institute for Brand Strategy and Competition, affirmed that emerging in Vietnam's e-commerce and digital economy activities is the "pink color", creeping into all economic sectors. The process of digital transformation during the Covid-19 pandemicin Vietnam has made breakthroughs in the last five months.

Digital economy is the "copy" of the real world

Why in the first months of this year, has Vietnam's e-commerce been developing rapidly? Answering this question, expert Vo Tri Thanh said that the first reason was when Vietnam had to implement the policy of social distancing within the country and border isolation among countries.

“The success of e-commerce in combating the Covid-19 pandemicis due to a policy that no one wants, which is the social gap. Thanks to the pandemic, it has been promoted. The reason is very nice but very sad,”said the expert.

It is forecast that Vietnam's e-commerce market size will reach US$33 billion by 2025. Source: Internet

Regarding the second cause that helps promote e-commerce development, the digital economy in Vietnam in the past five months, according to expert Vo Tri Thanh, is fear. Fear of disease plague of online transactions increases. However, he also immediately emphasized: "E-commerce cannot go forward thanks to fear but to develop by love, solidarity and the shift in consumption trends.”

Phan The Quyet, Institute of Strategic and Policy Research Institute of Industry and Trade (Ministry of Industry and Trade),said, with a low starting point of about US$4 billion in 2015, but thanks to the average growth rate for three consecutive years, the scale of Vietnam's e-commerce market in 2018 reached about US$8 billion and is expected to reach US$13 billion in 2020, reaching US$33 billion in 2025.

This market includes online retail, online travel, online marketing, online entertainment and the purchase and sale of other digital products and services.

"The market size of US$13 billion in 2020 is higher than the target stated in the E-commerce development master plan for the period of 2016-2020. According to this target, the scale of retail e-commerce (B2C) will reach US$10 billion by 2020," said Phan TheQuyet.

No matter how virtual, in the end the nature of the digital economy is still a copy of the real world. If the real world does not work, the digital segment cannot exist and develop, expert Vo Tri Thanh cited: "Uber has just had to cut 600 to 700 employees in India because of heavy losses. Therefore, regardless of the economic model of technology application, it must be associated with the real strategy of each business and that enterprise must know which copy of the real world to join the game.”

There have been many studies, reports and recommendations to put Vietnam on the "ship" of industrial revolution 4.0 and digital transformation, thereby creating breakthroughs in economic growth and development.

Basically, the contents proposed are quite focused, that is the need to create a framework for the new economic system in terms of quality, considering them strategic priorities.

Specifically, on institutional reform, it is necessary to set up regulations on business regulation on a digital basis; create institutional space, can be a test for technology innovation, how to run businesses; improve laws and enforce laws on intellectual property protection; Building E-Government/Government.

In addition, it is necessary to promote innovation through the policy of encouraging/promoting creativity, promoting creative start-ups; creating a National Innovation System (NIS)-centric; building the national innovation center. Along with that, human resource development, infrastructure improvement are also factors mentioned by many experts.