Nearly half of Vietnamese shoppers buy premium products online

VnExpress/VOV

Forty-eight percent of Vietnamese consumers buy premium products online from local retailers, with cosmetics in the top category, a report says.

Nielsen’s Changing Consumer Prosperity study also found over a quarter of Vietnamese respondents, 27%, were inclined to buy online from overseas e-retailers, and 23% even travel overseas for these premium goods.

Although the majority of survey respondents, 69%, said that they still purchase their premium products at local physical stores, the online ratio was higher than the global rate of 45%, says a global report by market research firm Nielsen.

Cosmetics are the top premium products that Vietnamese consumers spend their money on, according to 46% of respondents, following by clothing/shoes (44%), electronics (43%), body care (41%) and meat or seafood (38%).

What Vietnamese people care most about a premium product is its high quality, according to 65% of respondents, and superior performance, 58%.

Over half the respondents also seek premium products that contain environmentally friendly materials or natural/organic ingredients.

When it comes to trying new premium products, Vietnamese rated peer recommendations as the most influential factor.

Half of the respondents said that recommendations and encouragement by friends and family influenced their decision, followed by product research (46%), online advertising (42%), television advertising (39%) and in-store advertising (39%).

In another survey released recently, Nielsen said that Vietnamese people remain among the most optimistic consumers even as global confidence fell in Q4 2018.

Despite the considerable increase in savings, Vietnamese consumers are still willing to fork out just as much or possibly even more money on big-ticket items such as new clothes, holidays or out-of-home entertainment, it said.

Vietnam’s e-commerce sector has been booming in recent years. E-commerce revenue reached USD2.26 billion last year, a growth of 30% over 2017, according to Germany-based data portal Statista. It estimated that this figure will reach USD2.7 billion this year.