Facebook Messenger most popular chat app for online shopping in Vietnam

By Dat Nguyen January 29, 2019 | 05:39 pm PT

Most Vietnamese people use Facebook Messenger for online shopping. Photo by Shutterstock/Charnsitr

Seventy percent of Vietnamese using chat apps for online shopping do so on Facebook Messenger, a survey has found.

The rate of shoppers using it has increased by 23 percentage points since 2016, the survey, released last Friday by HCMC-based market research firm Q&Me, said.

People use Messenger mostly to contact shops (61 percent of respondents) and restaurants (48 percent), it found.

The lowest rates are for banks (21 percent) and workshops (15 percent).

But the top reason for contacting a business on Messenger is to ask for information about a product (57 percent).

It is followed by purchase (55 percent), inquiry about promotions (47 percent) and checking product/service availability (37 percent).

Fifty seven percent of respondents were however not happy with businesses as their messages were not responded.

Facebook Messenger is the most popular messaging app in Vietnam with 94 percent of respondents using it, followed by Zalo (89 percent) and phone text messages (59 percent).

The survey was done in January with 300 people in Hanoi and HCMC responding, but data from previous surveys done last November and in April 2017 was also collated.

Vietnam’s e-commerce market reached revenues of $2.27 billion in 2018, up 29.4 percent from a year earlier. The number of consumers shopping online reached 49.8 million people, growing by 2.6 percent, according to Germany-based market research firm Statista.