Analysts said competing by cuttingprices by up to 50 percent is an old story, and with customers’ demand for goodservice increasing, delivery times have become a key factor.
Alexandre Dardy, CEO of thecountry’s largest online shopping platform, Lazada, said besides increasing thenumber of merchants and products, his company would soon reduce delivery times.
Currently the average delivery timethat Lazada offers customers is more than two days, with urban areas servedfaster than rural for obvious reasons.
At the end of last year the companytied up with AhaMove, a motorbike-based delivery service, and began a newdelivery schedule that enables customers to get their product within just 60minutes in certain cases.
Another online shopping website,tiki.vn, is also taking measures to improve its delivery process. Currently itsaverage delivery time is two to three days.
Tran Ngoc Thai Son, director oftiki.vn, said product quality and delivery time are the most important factorsfor customers.
His company has begun to deliverwithin 24 hours, he said.
In case of late delivery, customerswill receive a Tiki coin worth 30,000 VND (1.3 USD) for use next time whileshopping.
The speedier delivery does costmore, the company said.
Express delivery costs two or threetimes higher than standard delivery.
For instance, while standarddelivery costs only around 15,000 VND for a package weighing less than threekilogrammes, express delivery costs 30,000 VND.
However, 50-75 percent of this iscovered by the online shopping companies.
Dardy said Ahamove gets 30,000 VNDfor express delivery, with Lazada covering 20,000 VND of it and only passing on10,000 VND to the customer.
But despite this, companies have nohesitation in offering express delivery, realising this will encourage customersto return in future.-VNA