Shoppers at a supermarket in HCM City.  — VNA/VNS Photo Mỹ Phương

Retailers in Việt Nam have drawn up sales plans and rolled out promotional programmes to better meet year-end purchasing power of local people. 

According to the General Statistics Office (GSO), local purchasing power had strongly rebounded in the past 10 months of 2022. This positive recovery is expected to drive retail market growth in the last quarter of the year.

The nation's total revenue from retail trade and services in October reached an estimated VNĐ486.4 trillion, up 2 per cent month-on-month and 17 per cent year-on-year, GSO said. 

It added the figure also saw a yearly hike of 20.2 per cent to over VNĐ4.63 quadrillion in the 10-month period, compared to a decline of 5.1 per cent seen in the last year's same period due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Chairwoman of Vietnam Retailers Association Vũ Thị Hậu said a hike in the price of essential consumer goods had affected the overall growth of the total retail sales in the reviewed period. 

Other trade experts said after a long time being contained by the pandemic, domestic consumers tended to spend more, which would help purchasing power boom at the end of the year.

Positive consumer sentiment would also facilitate the growth of trade and services in both the medium and long term, they said. 

With the positive signals of the market, retail businesses have drawn up a suitable business plan to stimulate year-end shopping demand. 

In September 2022, Masan Group Corporation launched a chain of 27 WinMart convenience stores in Hà Nội and HCM City. The firm planned to continue to expand its WinMart stores across the country from now until the end of the year. 

With the positive signals of the market, the retail chain was expected to grow by 20 per cent in 2022 compared to the same period last year, kinhtedothi.vn reported. 

Besides expanding the chain of retail stores, WinMart also planned to prepare an abundant source of goods with a focus on stockpiling essential made-in-Việt Nam consumer goods and foodstuffs with affordable prices and quality not less than foreign products.

At the same time, many promotional programmes would be implemented to stimulate shopping demand, the online newspaper cited a representative of WinMart as saying. 

Lê Mạnh Phong, Regional Director at Central Retail in Việt Nam which runs BigC and GO! supermarket chain told kinhtedothi.vn that in order to meet the year-end shopping needs, his firm was negotiating with suppliers to ensure sufficient supply of food and essential foodstuffs. 

Through negotiations, the enterprise would diversify the supply to make up for the shortage, focusing on offering stable and low-priced goods in addition to carrying out more promotional programmes to retain customers and attract new ones.

To facilitate retail trade, acting director of Hà Nội's Department of Industry and Trade Trần Thị Phương Lan said under the city's promotion programme 2022, a range of activities would be held in the city in order to support trade connections, brand promotion and sales for local manufacturers and businesses.

From now until the end of the year, the city would also carry on many promotional campaigns, such as Hà Nội Midnight Sale 2022 and Hà Nội Black Friday 2022, with promotional offers of up to 100 per cent, Lan said. 

The department would continue partnering with related units to intensify the connection between supply and demand with provinces and municipalities to bring safe fruits and agricultural products with clear geographical indications to the city's distribution system.

Earlier, it developed a plan on supplying a number of goods worth about VNĐ39.5 billion from the two upcoming national holidays, up 15 per cent compared to that of last year. 

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), Việt Nam's retail industry has a market size of US$142 billion. Its size is forecast to increase to $350 billion by 2025, contributing 59 per cent of the country's GDP.

A report from a global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company Vietnam showed that most retail businesses considered the end of the year as a good opportunity to stimulate consumption demand because this period could contribute 30-40 per cent of their whole year sale revenue. 

Therefore, they would often make large investments to make a difference in product quality and design in the race with competitors in the same industry, as per the report. 

The MoIT has forecast that the total retail sales of consumer goods and services in 2022 would likely increase by over 18 per cent, more than two times higher than the plan set previously for the year. That would lay a good foundation for retail market growth for next year. 

As for the market for the Lunar New Year 2023, enterprises were aggressively increasing production and stockpiling many items for the end-of-year consumption season, it said.