Amazon takes on Alibaba in Vietnam

March 13, 2018

The global online retailer is soon to roll out its e-commerce services in the South-East Asian nation, with the goal of rivalling China’s Alibaba Group Holding, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.

In order to develop its presence in the country, Amazon has formed a collaboration with the Vietnam E-Commerce Association, marking the “first time VECOM has joined hands with an e-commerce player.”

Working with the Association “will enable Amazon to beef up the products available on its platform and allow local small and medium-sized enterprises to sell and export their goods through the platform.”

VECOM’s Chairman, Nguyen Thanh Hung, explained that the Association had had discussions with an Amazon representative in 2017 about the retailer’s plans for expanding into Vietnam.

Amazon will be appearing at the Vietnam Online Business Forum 2018 in Hanoi on 14 March, where it is expected to “reveal the detail of its plans”. The retailer is in direct competition with Alibaba, which entered Vietnam last year and has amassed “tens of thousands of business members” in comparison to Amazon’s current roster of approximately 200.

Alibaba has “also increased its ownership in Lazada Group”, an e-commerce company doing business in South-East Asia, which is “currently the biggest e-tailer in Vietnam, controlling some 30 percent of the country’s online shopping market.”

Vietnam has one of the fastest-growing e-commerce markets in the world, with its e-commerce revenue rising by 23 percent in 2016, “accounting for 3 percent of total retail revenue in the country.”

Over 90 percent of investment in the nation’s e-commerce comes from “foreign sources”.