According to the country's commercial counsellors in Europe, Viet Nam is among the largest exporters of footwear, coffee, and seafood and a leading exporter of many other products like rice, pepper, cashew, but almost no EU consumer knows they are using products from Viet Nam.— Photo thesaigontime

HCM CITY (Biz Hub)— Vietnamese businesses must focus more on developing brands to become competitive both at home and abroad, a seminar heard in HCM City last Friday.

Economist Le Dang Doanh said Vietnamese firms are still very poor at building brands, adding that a recent survey showed that less than a third of the country's agricultural exporters have strategies for building brands.

Though firms have ideas for building their brands in the global market, not many have done so in practice successfully, delegates said.

According to the country's commercial counsellors in Europe, Viet Nam is among the largest exporters of footwear, coffee, and seafood and a leading exporter of many other products like rice, pepper, cashew, but almost no EU consumer knows they are using products from Viet Nam.

That is because the products are exported without brand names on the packaging, he said.

Nguyen Trung Thang, chairman of Masso Group, said many firms map out strategies for building brands but do not pursue them.

They must develop specific strategies for building brands and implement them thoroughly, delegates said.

In their brand development strategies, firms must point out the quality differences in their products that meet customers' expectations, they said.

They called for co-operation among various stake holders involved in the value chain to succeed in building brands.

Government agencies, especially the Viet Nam Trade Promotion Agency (Vietrade), must also support firms in building brands, they added.

The seminar was jointly organsied by the Department of Information Technology and Vietrade. — VNS