Main Online Sales Ecommerce Promotional Festivals in Vietnam

Deploying marketing campaigns for major promotional festivals is an important means of localization of e-commerce in Vietnam. Promotional events and occasions are extremely significant for online shopping or gift delivery sites in Vietnam as well as international online sales portals that deliver parcels globally, and in Vietnam.

Promotional Events and Occasions for Online Gift Sales Sites:

In this article, we introduce Vietnam’s promotional festivals, and overseas brands can use this as a reference to develop e-commerce marketing calendars. Among them, the Vietnamese New Year, 99 promotion, Double 11 and Double 12 deserve the brand's focus.

Vietnamese New Year

Tết Nguyên Đán is the Lunar New Year in Vietnam. From January to February of the Gregorian calendar, the New Year holiday lasts for a week. Like its neighbors, this is the most important festival of the year.

Vietnamese from all over the world return to their hometowns to reunite with their families.

In addition to traditional Spring Festival items, various festive foods, buying new clothes and items for yourself, and giving gifts to family and friends is a common phenomenon, so "gifts" are more popular than usual.

E-commerce sales surge in the weeks before the Spring Festival every year.

Picture: Vietnamese New Year, family members give each other gifts and New Year greetings

According to data from e-commerce marketing company Criteo, during the Vietnamese New Year in 2018, fashion accounted for 86% of online sales. In addition, according to data from Iprice, sales of 3C electronic products such as smartphones and tablets will also increase significantly during the Spring Festival.

National Day and Labor Day

There will be a decline in e-commerce visits to Vietnam during the International Labor Day (4.30-5.1 per year) and Vietnam’s National Independence Day (September 2 each year), because Vietnamese people like to travel during these festivals, so they can proceed in advance for these days Promotion.

Autumn Online Festival

In 2015, the Vietnam Electronic Commerce and Information Agency (VECITA) and many partner companies launched the Autumn Online Festival (from the end of August to the end of September each year).

Many major product categories have promotions, including holiday packaging products and fashion products, some of which are particularly popular for back-to-school products.

99 big promotion / double 11 / double 12

China's biggest sales promotion day "Double 11/Double 12" has spread to Vietnam. From 2017 to 2018, Vietnam's retail sales surged by about 240% during the 11.11 period.

From the perspective of Southeast Asia as a whole, Lazada's double 12 in 2018 also broke the record of a sales surge of more than 30 times. Companies operating in Vietnam should make good use of "Vietnam Double 11/Double 12" to build momentum.

Picture: A double 11 promotion poster from Shopee

In addition, the 99 promotion (September 9) has become more and more important in Vietnam's e-commerce promotion.

Both Lazada and Shopee will launch products with a price of 99 at this time in order to promote sales.

Black Friday

According to data from iPrice, during Black Friday (the fourth Friday of November), traffic on e-commerce websites in Vietnam increased by about 40% on average.

In addition, major online and offline stores even offer discounts of up to 90%.

Another survey showed that during Black Friday 2018, about 27% of Vietnamese consumers would choose to shop online, and 36% said they would shop online and offline at the same time.

Although Black Friday is not as popular as Double 11, it is still worth noting.

Other Promotional Events for Ecommerce Industry

Some other notable Vietnam marketing festivals, such as:

Valentine's Day

Around mid-February, there may be a slight overlap with the Vietnamese New Year. Like other parts of Asia, Valentine's Day has become a popular commercial holiday in Vietnam. By then, the sales of greeting cards, flowers and candy will increase.

Women's Day on March 8th

Sales of flowers, women's party cakes, cosmetics, and clothing jewelry increase during this time.

Christmas

Whether in Vietnam or globally, it is a good time to promote e-commerce sales. Mostly Xmas cakes for Christmas are promoted this festival along with toys for kids as Xmas gifts.

Online Friday

Vietnam’s own e-commerce promotion festival, held on the first Friday of December, initiated by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce in 2014.

An idea can be to offer birthday gifts on extra huge discount making Online Friday always memorable for birthday people and their relatives. Or sellers may offer wedding gifts or wedding anniversary cakes to people who have or wedding or its anniversary on that day.

This covers B2C and B2B sales.

What is the logistics pattern and strategy of Vietnam's e-commerce?

Vietnam ranks 39 in the world in the 2018 World Bank Logistics Performance Index. The overall industry is developing rapidly and competition is fierce.

From the perspective of e-commerce logistics in Vietnam, e-commerce platforms such as Lazada, Shopee, Tiki, etc. provide Chinese merchants with relatively complete warehousing and logistics solutions, as detailed below.

Overview of Vietnam's logistics landscape

Despite the fierce competition in the industry (there are about 3,000 logistics companies in Vietnam), logistics costs remain high-about 20% of GDP (40 billion U.S. dollars), far from China (15.4%) and Singapore (8%) far.

Road transportation is the core of Vietnam's freight logistics, but road transportation alone is not enough to meet the country's freight demand, because Vietnam's infrastructure is still relatively weak and overloaded.

As far as consumers’ attitudes toward logistics and distribution are concerned, people are slightly worried about express delivery services and product ordering:

1. 36% of consumers will consider canceling an order after placing an order;
2. 78% of consumers are more concerned about the return policy.

Other challenges for Vietnam’s logistics industry include:

• Manual customs procedures and cargo inspections are inefficient
• The highway connecting the port and the industrial center is very congested;
• Logistics centers and storage units are too far away from ports and industrial centers.

Vietnam e-commerce warehousing logistics advice

Below, we provide you with an overview of Vietnam's most popular e-commerce platforms Lazada, Shopee, and Tiki on their support for warehousing logistics.

Local e-commerce delivery

Shopee, Tiki, and Lazada all provide self-operated warehousing and logistics services on platforms in Vietnam. Up to now:

Lazada supports picking up goods from the merchant’s warehouse or directly storing the goods in the Lazada warehouse, and is responsible for subsequent delivery.

Shopee supports merchants to store goods in Shopee warehouses, and Shopee partners complete subsequent delivery services.

Tiki is similar to Shopee. You can choose to store the goods in the Tiki warehouse, and Tiki will complete the follow-up delivery service.

Below, TMO has made statistics on freight and timeliness related to the logistics of Vietnam's e-commerce platform:

Cross-border e-commerce distribution

Currently, Lazada provides cross-border transportation services, companies can ship goods to Hong Kong, and then Lazada in Vietnam will be responsible for subsequent transportation services.

But so far, Shopee in Vietnam does not support cross-border transportation support, and companies need to solve the transportation by themselves.

Note: Shopee has signed a cooperation agreement with DHL to support the cross-border transportation of Chinese products to the Southeast Asian market. Currently, only Thailand is supported, and logistics support for other countries is planned to be opened.

Vietnam cross-border e-commerce logistics

Tiki, a local e-commerce company in Vietnam, provides comprehensive logistics support to cross-border e-commerce merchants from China.

At present, a more economical approach is that merchants can transport products to Tiki's logistics partners in Shenzhen, who will be responsible for subsequent cross-border transportation and customs clearance services, and transport them to Tiki's Vietnam warehouse.

For large-scale merchants, you can choose to directly transport the goods to the Tiki Vietnam warehouse (find a logistics provider for transportation and customs clearance).

When the products arrive at Tiki Vietnam warehouse, Tiki will complete the follow-up delivery service.

Conclusion

Vietnamese online shopping or gift delivery has a lot of scope for local and international sellers. In the coming time more sellers will join and services will increase along with price competition giving a lot of benefit to the customers.