Call for consumers to use Vietnamese services

Economists say that the domestic trade promotion program has been focusing on promoting Vietnamese goods and forgetting to promote Vietnamese services. It’s now time to call on consumers to use Vietnamese services as well.

Business experts claim that the “Vietnamese People Use Vietnamese Goods” slogan is incomplete and should state “Vietnamese People Use Vietnamese Goods and Services”. In Vietnam, more than 60 percent of the people work in the service sector, providing education, healthcare, telecommunication and transport.

Nguyen Van Thu lives on Phan Ke Binh street in Hanoi and owns a 16 million dong mobile phone with many features. Thu complains that sometimes the signal is not strong and he cannot receive or make calls. His mobile service provider does not have many kinds of services that fit the phone’s features. Therefore, Thu’s expensive mobile phone can only be used like a normal phone with simple features worth just several hundreds of thousands of dong.

Vu Hong Phi lives in Viet Tri City in Phu Tho province and wants to go to luxury restaurants when he comes to Hanoi. Since he can never find a place to park his car, however, he just has regular meals.

Dr. Vo Tri Thanh, Deputy Head of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) notes that Vietnamese enterprises need to not only to improve the quality of their goods, but also improve the quality of services, especially legal services. Legal services is the most important type of service for the development of the national economy and improvement of quality of life.

Thanh explains that, in international trade, legal services do not bring big income like banking, finance or telecommunications, but the service plays a very important role in ensuring the quality of goods and counterfeiting prevention.

“If legal services can effectively prevent low quality and counterfeit goods, this will help Vietnamese enterprises develop more strongly. Vietnamese people will certainly use Vietnamese goods when producers can bring them products deserving of their money and can protect consumers’ rights,” Thanh speculates.

Currently, counterfeit goods remain a big problem in the domestic market.

According to Thanh, to penetrate a market, producers need three important characteristics: high quality products, good distribution networks and good post-sale services.

Many Vietnamese enterprises have focused on the first and second while not paying appropriate attention to the third. This has caused big losses for domestic retailers, because Vietnamese consumers must seek services from foreign providers.

Tags: Vietnam services