The impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on retailing in Vietnam: current situations and recommendations

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic seriously impacted almost the fields of the Vietnam economy in the shortterm and long-term, including the retail industry. While, retailing is regarded as one of the most strongly-impacted fields, but it also expresses the quick capability of recovery in comparison to other sectors. This study has been carried out to evaluate and analyze holistically the major effects of the pandemic on the Vietnam retail industry with nine critical impacts: the number of shoppers decreases; great volatility in the rental market; closed shops, maximum staff cuts; retail sales decline seriously; the explosion of e-commerce and home delivery services; change the campaign and decrease marketing budget; invest in building new online sales channels; convert consumption from offline to online and increase stockpiles of goods in the epidemic. Based on these analyses, the author recommends several significant suggestions for the Vietnam government including (1) directly support by in cash for the closed-stores during the pandemic for the traditional retailing; (2) quickly implement liquidity support packages and offer credit packages with preferential interest rates for the modern retailers; (3) solving problems of labor shortages in businesses that produce essential products; (4) increasing the essential stockpile source and manage efficiently the market supply. While some suggestions are delivered for retail businesses to overcome the recession and boost growth after the pandemic: (1) understand customers' problems; (2) reshape business strategy; (3) keep in touch with stakeholders and (4) expand new sales channels. The above suggestions are recommended on the basis of the bright outlooks from both macro factors and the internal retailing market.