Vietnam Businesses Confident On Growth: Nielsen

Vietnam’s business community gains momentum as many parts of the world continue to deal with their home-grown financial problems. In 2009, businesses spoke of recovery and optimism for the New Year and now halfway through 2010 – business sentiment continues to look positive.

 

Based on the latest wave of Nielsen Vietnam’s Business Barometer Survey (conducted March – May 2010), over the next 12 months, senior business leaders are expecting to see even higher growth, for their own industry, at 13.6 percent versus the previous forecast of 11.3 percent.

 

The optimism in Vietnam continues to outpace many other markets as companies firmly expect growth to be almost double 2010 GDP levels. “Despite the slight dip in consumer confidence, business leaders still expect double-digit growth for their business and industry,” said Mr. Darin Williams, Managing Director, The Nielsen Company Vietnam. “But it doesn’t come without merit – companies plan to hire more staff in 2010 and are looking at new avenues of growth to support these aggressive growth targets.”

 

For the third consecutive time, competitive pressure and growth targets top the list of concerns (at 68%) for business leaders. This was followed by the ability to pass on price increases (59%), inflation (56%), and skilled labor shortage (29%). In contrast, according to the latest Nielsen Vietnam Omnibus study, health is still the top concern for Vietnamese consumers. 

 

Businesses anticipate that consumers will purchase more local Vietnamese brands over the coming 6 to 12 months. Business leaders still believe that consumers will continue their cost-conscious shopping behavior by buying bigger pack sizes to save money (44%), purchase more on promotion (41%), change to different channels to save money (37%) and so on.

 

Rural will continue to receive greater focus as companies look to expand and achieve their growth targets. Seventy-one percent of those surveyed stated they will look to rural for growth this year. 

 

Currently 89% of companies stated that they do some form of Corporate Social Responsibility initiative. According to the survey, companies are currently involved in consumer health benefits (63%), charity (63%), education (53%), energy-saving (45%), environmentally-friendly packaging (39%), and control or reduces carbon-dioxide emissions (29%).

 

The Nielsen Business Barometer is an online survey designed to gauge Vietnam’s business leaders’ sentiment. Topics include advertising spend, growth forecasts and among other current hot topics. The online survey is conducted twice-yearly and covers companies from various industries throughout Vietnam. The third wave was conducted from March – May 2010.