This country brief is part of an eleven-part series exploring the landscape of B2C e-commerce marketplaces in various East Asian economies. This series offers in-depth insights into the traffic trends for active e-commerce websites, national established and emerging key players, main characteristics of the marketplaces, ease of online selling, the degree of specialization in terms of products as well as the products characteristics.

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Viet Nam shows a moderate internet penetration rate (79%) and a sizeable proportion of its population purchases goods online (59%). Nevertheless, the density of B2C marketplaces is relatively low with a total of 219 B2C marketplaces for a population of 98.2 million (11.2% of the total traffic in the region studied).

Over the period 2019-2022, traffic on the 219 B2C marketplaces has grown significantly from 2.2 to 2.5 billion visits. Among them, classified sites account for the largest proportion of marketplaces (60.6%), but online shopping malls capture most of the traffic (79.4%).

The e-commerce market is largely dominated by domestic companies (63%), followed by the United States (17%). Although of the total 219 B2C marketplaces, there is still a significant geographical diversity considering the 15 other countries with companies holding B2C marketplaces.

The e-commerce market is concentrated, with the Top 10 leading websites capturing 87.1% of the traffic. This Top 10 is led by online shopping malls, 5 in total, of which two Singaporean companies (Shopee and Lazada) account for 63.1% of the total traffic. Followingly, companies are mainly from Viet Nam (6) and the United States (1).

Regarding the ease of selling on these B2C marketplaces, only 32% allow foreign sellers to operate and 64% offer open registration to online sellers. Only 26% of these marketplaces are fully transactional and, as a corollary, only 34% require trading fees to sell online.

Viet Nam has a larger proportion of generic B2C marketplaces (61%) compared to specialized marketplaces (39%). Among the 86 specialized marketplaces, 49% specialize in cars, motorcycles, and motor parts (capturing 44.5% of the traffic). However, the traffic dynamics also show that consumer preferences lean towards purchasing groceries (42%).