The market strategy associated with specific products for businesses must have a change with the socio-economic context also changing. To do this, businesses need efforts to strongly restructure and perfect business strategies to meet market needs.

E-commerce and digital transformation. will help change
the strategy of many businesses. Photo: H. Diu 

Diversification strategy

To overcome difficulties during the pandemic and at the same time capture customers' needs, the business strategy of Mobile World Investment Corporation (MWG) has changed, especially in the model of stores to match better suited to consumer needs.

With two new store models, MWG has actively implemented solutions to increase competitiveness such as testing a model of Dien May XanhSupermini with an area of ​​120-150m2 in the western, eastern and south-central regions. At the same time, promoting new industries such as watches and laptops. Thanks to that, in nine months of 2020, MWG's revenue reached 81,352 billion dong, up 6% over the same period.

For the banking industry, Covid-19 slowed credit growth, but right before that, banks tried to restructure to avoid dependence on credit revenues and to switch to revenue from services.

For example, VietinBank has built a strategy to focus on developing comprehensive financial solutions and modern payments, helping revenue from payment service fees grow significantly. At the same time, control of service costs is also a reason for VietinBank to improve the rate of net interest growth from service activities in the first nine months of 2020, with an increase of 3.2%.

In addition to traditional spot products and services, VietinBank aims to diversify itsportfolio of products and services by promoting the provision of derivative products to provide customers with billions of exchange rate hedging tools, bringing maximum benefit to customers.

The above are just a few examples of the changes of enterprises, because businesses always come up with new business strategies to suit market demand. The leader of a confectionery manufacturing enterprise shared the habits of customers have changed, so the company must also meet the requirements of the market, product packaging must be environmentally friendly, consistent with display location, regardless of any space. Or An PhatXanh Plastic Joint Stock Company (An PhatBioplastics) has invested in the field of completely biodegradable products and materials AnBio.

The good news is there has been a clear change in the commodity industry's strategy in theeconomy. A report on the implementation of the socio-economic development plans for the year 2020 and five years 2016-2020; the proposed plan for 2021 and directions and tasks for the 5 years 2021-2025 of the Government at the National Assembly recently showed the structure between branches and internal sector continued to shift positively.

The proportion of the mining industry decreased, the processing and manufacturing industry increased rapidly and the proportion of processed exports will increase from 65% in 2016 to 85% in 2020. Agricultural fields with high technology application, clean and organic agriculture are developed; many service industries have potentials, advantages, high science and technology content such as information technology, communication, transportation, logistics, finance andbanking to develop rapidly.

Risk of lagging behind

The current context that requires businesses to change and Covid-19 is a necessary "push" for this work.

Talking about market trends, according to Nguyen ThiBich Chung, representative of market research company Kantar, confidence in an economic recovery of enterprises in Vietnam is quite positive.

However, people's thinking and lifestyles have changed significantly such as being more prepared for the future with 18% planning to buy life insurance. Along with that is the trend of living online with 36% of people subscribing to more video channels andTV channels for different purposes.

People are willing to spend money on products that protect health and have less impact on the environment, but they are also more conservative in spending and only addressing urgent needs. Therefore, according to Chung, businesses need to consider product-service solutions that are beneficial to health and the environment, helping customers see value for money when spending is limited.

Experts and businesses both emphasise the help of digital transformation with the development of businesses.Online travel, online media and online car bookingare the trend of technology consumption and a good direction for many businesses. Although digital conversion is not easy, if businesses do not convert, they run the risk of falling behind. This is an opportunity but also a big challenge for businesses.

Experts say that in order for a successful transformation, businesses need to change their thinking and vision and find the right strategy. For example, in e-commerce, Hoang QuocQuyen, representative of Tiki in the north shared, e-commerce is still mainly usedin big cities and cities, accounting for only about 20% of population, but accounts for nearly 90% of revenue of businesses. Therefore, e-commerce firms are focusing on exploiting potential rural markets, not only helping rural people have more access to cheap Vietnamese brand products but also helping branding enterprises are increasingly solid, not subject to much competition pressure.

In all circumstances, especially in the current economic difficult situation, each industry and enterprise must look at themselves to implement strong restructuring. This is the time when businesses need to promote more and more substantially implement the policy of multilateralisation, diversification, restructuring markets, partners to reduce their dependence on just one or a few key products and markets.