HCM City (VNA) -Vietnamese businesses need to focus on brand building and usage of onlinechannels rather than cheap prices, experts said at a conference in Ho Chi MinhCity on November 22.

Pham Thiet Hoa, Director of the HCMCity Investment and Trade Promotion Centre (ITPC), said that medium tolarge-sized businesses had become more aware of the need to improve brandbuilding and protection in recent years.

However, since most businesses in Vietnamare small, brand building as a whole remains limited, especially compared toglobal competitors. Many Vietnamese businesses lack human resources and fundsfor brand building, Hoa said.

Branding is one of the most importantfactors for customers since one product can have many producers.

While Vietnam has many high-qualityproducts with a high number of exports, lacklustre brand building means theirvalue is still low compared to established foreign brands.

Hung Vo, deputy general director of marketingfor Vietnamese footwear company Biti's, said that criteria for product qualitychanged over time, so businesses would need to keep up with trends and adapttheir promotional strategies to maintain customers' attention.

He gave an example of how thedurability of Biti's footwear had once been a good selling point, but now itwas no longer a top priority for buyers, especially young people, and theirproducts had to keep up with fashion trends and offer more convenience.

For successful brand building,businesses should not focus solely on cheap prices and instead pay moreattention to product values and after-sales services, as well as invest more inproduct research and development, and keep up with, or even create, new trends.

Nguyen Huy Hoang, commercial directorof Kantar Worldpanel, said the number of e-commerce platforms was on the riseand more consumers were shopping online, so businesses should use onlinechannels for brand building.

According to a report from the Ministryof Industry and Trade, in 2020 Vietnam's e-commerce market has the potential toreach 13 billion USD.

The conference was held by ITPC andadvertising company Dentsu Aegis Network Vietnam./.