Supporting Enterprises to Develop Trademark

At the domestic market, Vietnamese firms have partially succeeded in building and developing their trademarks through which raising the competitive capacity against imports in the context the country has opened the market to possibly integrate the regional and international economy. The trademarks like An Phuoc, VNPT, Viettel, Vietnam Airlines, Trung Nguyen, Tan Hiep Phat and BIDV, marked the symbol “Vietnam Value”, has provided qualified products for both domestic and foreign markets.

 

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Department of Trade Promotion, as the National Trademark program for the first time selected product and service trademarks, there had 30 ones meeting the program’s criteria. In the two years of 2009 and 2010, despite influences of the global economic downturn and financial crisis, the enterprises named in the National Trademark list still gained the growth of 15 per cent and above, even some ones with 121 per cent. The total market revenue of all the 30 enterprises was over VND155 trillion. Based on the success, in 2010 up to 43 enterprises had their trademarks chosen to attend the program.

Mr Do Thang Hai, Head of the Department of Trade Promotion cum the program’s general secretary, however, recommended that Vietnamese businesses have not yet paid sufficient attention to the development of trademark. Most Vietnamese enterprises lack experiences as well as capability in developing and using the trademark a real marketing tool. This influenced the image of Vietnamese firms’ products at the domestic market and is attributed to reduce the competitive capacity against imports and those of multinational firms operating in Vietnam.   

Another difficulty in developing the trademark is the increase of repurchasing and M&A merging activities of multinational firms or franchise in lots of the fields in Vietnam. The M&A merging is considered to affect negatively the domestic firms’ development of trademark. Specially, it will encourage the usage of foreign-labeled products and services which is becoming popular in Vietnam, Hai said. 

 

Hai noted that Vietnamese firms have been attending actively the global integration. Amid other countries are in the race of building the national trademark, Vietnam needs to take advantage of available facilities to build and maintain the image of Vietnamese products and services in the global market.

 

From this year, the National Trademark program will annually focus on specific contents, for example raising the competitive capacity; developing and managing the trademark image; increasing the added value of products and services to consumers.

 

Hai added his department will support a number of export associations to build the sector trademark via researching and applying the model of developing the competitive potential of each sector; providing information; giving consultancy and training courses on trade promotion; guiding the way to get access to financial sources, projects and technical cooperative programs with foreign partners.