Omnichannel to Drive Retail Growth

That is the comment of most of the experts at the Seminar of Omnichannel Playbook - Conquering the Future of Unified Commerce co-organized by the Purpose Group and SmartOSC. The seminar is part of the Forum "The Future of Commerce" - an annual activity initiated by the Purpose Group and SmartOSC to provide practical and effective solutions to help brands identify challenges, promote growth as well as access effective solutions in the journey to win customers.

At the seminar, Ms. Nguyen Thanh Giang - CEO of the Purpose Group - said that the e-commerce market in Vietnam was enperecing rapid growth and had a lot of room for development in the coming years, attracting the participation of a large number of businesses, especially in the retail industry. In that context, omnichannel becomes a necessary and effective strategy for many retailers capable of meeting diverse and dynamic shopping behaviors and habits of consumers.

Sharing the same point of view, Mr. Tran Xuan Thuy - Country Head of Amazon Global Selling, said that the trend of online and direct commerce to consumers helped businesses expand their development and growth orientations with a global market perspective as well as digital trade trends. Although Vietnamese businesses are now more interested in investing in e-commerce, the shortcomings are that businesses have not clearly seen the role and importance of a specialized team in this field. To save costs, many businesses use direct sales staff to carry out the online sales channel, leading to unsatisfactory business performance. "Direct and online sales channels are completely different, requiring businesses to have proper investment in e-commerce personnel. That is the secret to help businesses achieve success," Mr. Thuy recommended.

From another perspective, Mr. Nicholas Kontopoulos, APAC E-commerce Marketing Director of Adobe, shared the issue of brand differentiation through experience on digital platforms. He specifically emphasized that brands must boldly invest in designing this experience, from media to commercial perspective, so that at each point and each moment of touching, consumers would be able to feel the attention and caring for their wishes.

Around the power of Omnichannel, Ms. Kaelyn Trinh, Agency Development Manager at Google in Vietnam, said that the current time was a golden period for retailers and brands to explore and conquer Omnichannel. The key trends in Omnichannel in Vietnam deployed by the brand's creativity and inspiration will be the factors that lead consumers to decide to buy goods through Social commerce, D2C (Direct to Customer).

A successful example for Omnichannel application in business is the Coffee House chain. From practical experience, Mr. Vo Duy Phu, Co-founder and Vice President, said that the combination of brand experience, from media to commerce, through business model on Omnichannel platform would help to attract pontential customers from online channels to stores (Online To Offline - O2O) through step by step. "O2O is a business model that is very appropriate for Vietnamese people, making it easy for customers to refer to product information, order products and pay in advance. Thanks to the Coffee House’s harmonious combination between the models of traditional sale channel and online channel,  our business activities are growing strongly, becoming one of the largest coffee chains in Vietnam,"  Mr. Phu emphasized.

Along with the Coffee House, the success in Omnichannel application of brands such as Bibomart, Robinson, VAS  was also shared by the speakers at the seminar. This is also a typical demonstration of the effectiveness of consolidated customer data, helping brands increase sales through the O2O business model.

My Chau (Vietnam Business Forum)