|
Do Vietnamese people really need Vietnamese brands?
A lot of Vietnamese brands have appeared on the domestic market in recent years. However, experts have warned that since the brands have been built up in a too simple way, they would not survive for a long time.
The way a lot of Vietnamese enterprises are following to create new brands proves to be simple. They simply import accessories to assemble in Vietnam, then stick logos to the products which are consumed in easy-to-please markets. It’s clear that the Vietnam-made content ratio is very low in these products.
The owners of the Vietnamese brands argue that outsourcing to foreign companies is now a growing tendency in the world, and it would not be a surprise if Vietnamese enterprises order foreign companies, mostly Chinese ones, to make products under their brand names.
Nevertheless, experts have pointed out that this is not the way the world’s big groups are following when outsourcing their products to foreign companies. Apple’s products have also been assembled in China, but Apple masters the technologies, and the Chinese factories simply do what Apple tells them to do.
While Apple’s orders are always big, tens of millions of units for every order, Vietnamese enterprises only order several thousands or several hundreds of units for every order. The price differences of the orders are very big, which can bring huge profits to Apple. Consumers would be not foolish to pay several hundreds of dollars more just for a logo, though it is very beautiful like the one of Apple.
As the domestic market is small, where there lacks the support from service centers and supporting products, Vietnamese enterprises have to build up their brands based on overseas production.
Since they do not master technologies and do not make products, they lack a firm foundation to develop their brands. The brands would collapse once the State removed its protection over domestic enterprises by removing tariff and non-tariff barriers.
The Vietnamese authentic brands
The 2012 survey on Asian brands conducted by BP Nikkei shows that in Vietnam, some Vietnamese brands are better known than foreign ones in some business fields such as telecommunication, banking and food processing.
For example, Vietnamese Vinamilk, a dairy brand, ranks the fourth, while Viettel the eighth among the strongest brands in Vietnam. Meanwhile, it is understandable why Nokia and Honda topped the list. Mobile phone and motorbikes are the two things that every adult Vietnamese uses everyday.
Experts have pointed out that when the four topping positions belong to Vietnamese brands, the situation is not as pessimistic as people thought. This means that Vietnam still has many strong brands.
However, they have also pointed out that some Vietnamese brands have developed well partially because they can enjoy special preferences for a long time. The owners of the brands can avoid the strong foreign brands thanks to the government policies to protect domestic production.
Vietnamese consumers had to buy products at high prices to serve the policy on domestic production protection which aimed to create best conditions for Vietnamese electronics and computer brands to develop. But will the brands be able to survive when the tariff and non-tariff barriers are removed.
Experts have pointed out that Vietnam should try to build up strong brands in all business fields, which proves to be an impossible mission. A company, which only makes several thousands of computers, will not be able to compete with a big group with the turnover of hundreds of billions of dollars from hundreds of millions of products every year.
Vietnamese enterprises once drew up ambitious plans to churn out mobile phones, computers, motorbikes, cars and visual equipments. However, experts cannot see any success opportunities in the plans.
Tu Giang
vietnamnet
|
