GROUP ASSIGNMENT

Analyze the potentials of Da Nang city to

become a smart place

Lecturer: PERFECTO G.AQUINO JR

HUỲNH THỊ NGỌC HIỀN
Subject: Place Marketing
Class: MKT 359 A
Presented by: Nguyễn Thị Như Thảo
Lương Quốc An
Nguyễn Thị Thảo Nguyên
Đặng Thị Thanh Sự
 Analyze the potentials of Da Nang city to become a smart place

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part I. Introduction page 2
Part II. Analyze the potentials of Danang city to become a smart place page 3
1. SWOT page 3
2. PESTLE page 4
3. Challenges page 5
Part III. Conclusion page 7
Part IV. Recommendation page 8
Part V. Reference page 9

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 Analyze the potentials of Da Nang city to become a smart place

Part I. Introduction

As everyone knows, Da Nang - One of the most beautiful and modern cities in Vietnam is in the
process of renovation. And now Da Nang is on the way to developing into a smart city that
brings a new face to Da Nang city in particular, and Vietnam in general. Up to now, the world
has not yet had a unified definition of Smart City. But basically, it is a city model that applies
information technology and artificial intelligence to manage, improve urban living standards,
improve service quality of the city government and effectively use the results of energy sources,
natural resources. In short, Smart City is a city model applying the latest technology to improve
the quality of the city in all aspects.
According to Chairman of Da Nang City People's Committee Huynh Duc Tho, Da Nang is one
of the four locations across the country chosen to deploy smart city construction. From there it is
possible to develop and replicate this model nationwide. Vietnam is in the process of
industrialization and modernization, the rapid urbanization process often causes social
disturbances, causing the government to face many problems such as resource scarcity,
environmental pollution, Traffic congestion, waste disposal, healthcare, poverty, infrastructure ...
Therefore, in order to overcome these challenges, authorities must find smarter solutions. This is
a strategic solution, utilizing technology to solve these social problems.
Smart City links technical infrastructure, information technology, and social infrastructure to
help the city manage and operate efficiently and consistently in all fields. Technology is applied
to organize, design, plan and implement new solutions, helping to manage the city in a flexible
and sustainable manner, under the supervision of the people. Smart City not only helps to change
in terms of infrastructure, urban form, but also has criteria for evaluating the comprehensive
development of society and especially people in terms of knowledge, understanding, creativity,
and civilization. Smart City is a city that always strives to be "smarter", helps to find solutions
that harmonize social needs in the most reasonable way, and at the same time constantly seeks
for more optimal solutions. Therefore, many cities around the world are excited about this
model, including Da Nang and in general, Da Nang now fully has the basis to become a "Smart
city" with management elements such as Organization, Technology, Residential Communities,
Economy, Information Technology Infrastructure and Natural Environment.
According to most experts, Da Nang is eligible to become a "Smart City" leading the country,
with a caliber in Southeast Asia. In 2012, Da Nang was the first city chosen by IBM Technology
Group as one of 33 cities in the world.  At that time, Da Nang received funding from a smarter
city program with a total funding value of more than 50 million USD, using a smart center
operating solution to ensure the quality of water sources serving the people, providing the best
level of public transport and reducing traffic congestion.

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 Analyze the potentials of Da Nang city to become a smart place

Part II. Analyze the potentials of Da Nang city to become a smart place
1. SWOT
a. Strength:
Da Nang city is developing in the sustainable direction of the world knowledge society. Da Nang
has the advantages of:

Topography and climate: Topography Da Nang has both plain and mountainous areas. Climate
Da Nang is located in the tropical monsoon climate, with high temperature and little change. Da
Nang is famous for many beautiful beaches scattered from to the South.

Economic: The central city of Da Nang has been praised as Vietnam’s new economic dragon for
its steady growth and global integration.

Abundant social and intellectual resources: Da Nang has a large amount of human resources and
is a city that attracts a lot of workforce.

Solid urban political capacity: In recent years, the Government is concentrating resources on
investment in Da Nang city. In addition, there are many policy priorities for Da Nang.

b. Weakness:

The big challenge in making cities smart is how to manage data well so that the Da Nang
government manages, makes decisions, and provides better services to citizens. What we learn
from other countries is that information gathering and cooperation between government
agencies, the private sector and with civil society are really the keys to success in building a
Smart city. Cyber security threats are everywhere and certainly as we move towards the smart
city environment. And when the internet world becomes complicated, there will be threats
affecting many people and countries. Securing the network must be on top.

In addition, technology is still limited, forecasting and planning are still inadequate, the database
is not concentrated ... are difficulties encountered while Implementation of Smart City
Development Scheme.

Training of high-quality human resources remains inadequate and requires more investment.

Da Nang city does not thrive in Marketing. Da Nang has many cultural activities and events that
can attract many visitors from around the world. But with the low level of marketing skills,
promotion for Da Nang is underdeveloped
c. Opportunity:
Da Nang is a city with many headquarters of multinational corporations, international
organizations, banks, law firms, auditing companies, and stock exchanges. Da Nang city also is
the host for many national and international events so it will attract many foreigners,

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international students. This city has many famous cultural facilities and many world heritages; 
having complete and modern infrastructure;  a society with a high standard of living, comfort and
security. As such, the city will soon become a global metropolis, connecting even more with
national cities than with domestic cities.
d. Threats:

Natural disasters are one of many problems that Viet Nam in general and Da Nang city in
particular has to face every year. These storms and rain floods have hampered our city a lot in
developing the service tourism industry. It's really difficult for visitors to travel to Da Nang in
stormy season and also affect the beauty as well as the infrastructure of the city. Whenever the
storm goes by, it will take a lot of time and budget of the local government to fix the streets, trees
and to check up the electrical power or the safety of the resident. Because this happens every
year so the government and people in Da Nang have to get used to this problem and must always
be ready to prevent it whenever it is forecasted.
In recent time, the emergence of a covid-19 pandemic caused heavy losses in the economy of Da
Nang city. With the arrival of Covid-19, the whole city was blocked, Da Nang tourism was
stagnant and seriously damaged, many hotels and restaurants went bankrupt because they did not
earn any revenue. 
Though Da Nang is a tourism and traveling city, synchronization in the infrastructure for
services and natural tourism hasn’t been focused and deployed yet. There are many hotels,
resorts, restaurants, shopping malls and amusement parks to serve kind of modern travel but
many tourists who come here also want to have practical experiences in Da Nang and the
infrastructure for that is still very simple and not interesting enough for them to travel like that. It
is required to be more attractive and more safe for outdoor activities like that.
2. PESTLE
a. Political:
Da Nang has gone through a decade of building an e-government and a smart city. In 2010, the
City People's Committee issued the architecture of Da Nang E-Government. The e-government -
smart city implementation of Da Nang is determined by the government according to three axes:
infrastructure, data and intelligence.
b. Economic:
Da Nang Economy posted a strong average growth rate of 12.7 percent, especially software and
digital content businesses have local and domestic solutions that apply identification
technologies, and data analysis... This helps Da Nang to build a smart economy that is the main
driving force to build Smart City. Furthermore, the development of Da Nang is also based on the
expansion of industrialisation and exploration of its tourism potential. Last year, the city
welcomed over 2,659,000 tourists, including 603,000 foreigners. The port of Da Nang is also
playing a major role in the area’s development. Over the past five years, the cargo flow has
increased by 10 percent a year.
c. Social culture:
Da Nang citizens and enterprises have relatively high skills and application of information

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 Analyze the potentials of Da Nang city to become a smart place

technology (high rate of mobile and Internet users; 98.0% of households use computers, 97.9%
of households use Internet connection; 100% of businesses connect to the Internet). This makes
the deployment of smart city more convenient. City residents also pay for services and other
living expenses through smart phones. And at the same time have the ability to participate in
monitoring, coordinate to support city management.
Moreover, as the first tourist city in the country, the people of Da Nang is ready to change, adapt
to changes in technology as well as a smart lifestyle to develop economic development of
families and cities.
d. Technological:
Da Nang city currently has many strengths for successful application of new solutions and smart
technologies in practice. Da Nang city has for 11 consecutive years leading the Information
Technology Application and Development Readiness index, evaluated and ranked by the
Ministry of Information and Communications and the Vietnam Informatics Association.
Basically completed application of integrated, multi-utility form of App Mobile ( DaNang Smart
City). Specifically, for people when accessing, they can use many services provided by the
government via the internet on their computers and mobile phones such as: Reflections, look up
bus, online public services,  open data mining, look up epidemiological information, parking
application, social security applications... Especially , through this application, people are
immediately provided with information from agencies and authorities. Example: new policies,
information about disasters, floods or emergencies ...
e. Legal:
The city has many incentive and support policies for firms and companies such as: Interest rate
support policy for organizations borrowing capital to invest in important socio-economic
development projects in the city, policies to support enterprises in technological innovation,
policies to support businesses in software export… These might also contribute to the
development of Da Nang in the renovation into Smart City.
f. Environmental
Da Nang is a famous tourist city in Vietnam with many natural and artificial beauty, especially
the marine environment. This makes Da Nang become an attractive tourist destination. To
maintain this beauty, Da Nang accelerates the construction of smart city to reduce concerns
about fuel consumption and energy, causing environmental pollution.
3. CHALLENGES
a. Utilization of human
Every year in Da Nang, there are so many potential human resources that choose the way that
come to other big cities like HCM city, Hanoi capital to find them opportunities to develop their
career. It might be a huge damage to Da Nang when they fail to keep talented people to stay with
the city. The brain drain problems come from the policy that consider the degree holders from
big and famous universities rather than others who has talent and experience but not have a high
academy level. So they leave the city to find where they can use their abilities.
b. Socio-cultural
When a city with a large population like Da Nang starts to execute the project of Smart City, one

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 Analyze the potentials of Da Nang city to become a smart place

of the challenges is the private information or private network security. This has to be considered
because it is very important if the city wants to develop enduring and to get the faith of the
resident in particular and of the government of the country in general.
The rapid change of Da Nang from the original into the Smart city makes the industry of the city
become more complicated. More and more companies, firms or private businesses jump into the
project bidding which will make the market here as well as the human resource hard to be
controlled in this fierce competition environment.
Another challenge of Da Nang on the way to become a Smart city more complete is the
adaptation of the residents. There are still many people who don't know about E-government or
they still feel strange with the definition of Smart city. It is not viral as much that everyone can
know it clearly and specifically about what the government is doing with the Smart city project.
c. Economic and political changes
The first challenge is to update technology, how to promote infrastructure as well as
development and continue to improve infrastructure to update technology that is evolving.  For
example, in this technology age of 4.0, the next day maybe a new technology is born and if we
keep the same infrastructure, we cannot meet the technology needs.
The second challenge is how to manage that infrastructure intelligently. All this in addition to
developing infrastructure, developing services to manage cities in the smartest way.-
The third challenge is about capital.  Currently, although Da Nang has a tendency to introduce
PPP projects, there is still a need to develop more policies to promote businesses to work with
the city on this issue.

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 Analyze the potentials of Da Nang city to become a smart place

Part III. Conclusion

In a nutshell, although Danang is a promising city to turn into a smart city: favorable landscape
and climate, information technology is also evolving, people can update information quickly.

However, Danang still has many challenges. In recent years, storms, floods and epidemics have
greatly affected this city. In addition, the source of knowledge workers is still limited, Da Nang
has not yet attracted talented people like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. To build a smart city, it is
indispensable that it is an investment source from abroad to build infrastructure, invest in
education, transportation, social welfare works, ... communication on Smart Services has not
been effective; The use of online public services has not been widely used, the habits of people
interacting with systems such as scene reflection, online public services ... of the people are not
equal to the foundation to create data.

Building a smart city is a long process, it is an effort from everyone, Da Nang's challenges can
still be improved, it is only a matter of time.

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 Analyze the potentials of Da Nang city to become a smart place

Part IV. RECOMMENDATION

1. The local government of Da Nang city should change the policy to attract more and more
potential talent people so that they will change their mind to stay with the city. It is necessary to
keep them stay and help the city to grow with their abilities, talents and experiences. Recruiters
should look at the ability not at the degree too much. It should be fair and appropriate in using
and recruiting the human resource of the city.

2. The infrastructure needs to be constructed in sync to make it easier to travel to the natural
places of Da Nang like mountains, sea. It should have more outdoor activities for tourism to
make them feel excited and want to come back again rather than the activities with the
infrastructure in just the center of the city, thereby Da Nang will be known as the Smart City in
both natural traveling and modern traveling.

3. Popularize the E-government to more and more people as much as possible so they can use the
tools, the means that are created to serve the community services like websites of E-Government,
website of local hospital... The city should use TV, social media, online newspapers… to interact
with people of all ages from the young to the elder.

4. Holding annual contests of ideas to encourage people to support the Smart City also gets the
idea from that to develop and to consolidate and it can be another great way to marketing for the
Smart City by that way. It’s important that the local government of Da Nang should listen to
people here to understand what they are thinking about the city and how they feel when changes
happen.

5. Because tourism is the most advantage of Da Nang to increase the city’s economy. It is
obvious that the huge source of capital for upgrading the facilities, maintaining the activities of
the government or investing in technology is from tourism. So Da Nang needs to quickly restore
tourism in general and the services economy in particular to gain capital for the city to develop
the project of Smart City.

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Part V. References

(1) Quỳnh Đan (2018), “Chính phủ ban hành cơ chế, chính sách ưu đãi đối với Khu Công nghệ
cao Đà Nẵng”, Cổng thông tin điện tử thành phố Đà Nẵng, https://danang.gov.vn/fr/web/khoa-
hoc-cong-nghe/chi-tiet?id=29829&_c=100000079&fbclid=IwAR3FO4R3-
dhDdvI9u3zlj8m8LxzuhQmg2ECfFS6vrijRZXXHGLn_RYlj3Wk, access on 20/12/2020.

(2) Hiền Trang (2020), “Sử dụng thí điểm ứng dụng DaNang Smart City”. Cổng thông tin điện tử
thành phố Đà Nẵng, https://danang.gov.vn/chi-tiet?
id=41107&_c=100000150%2C3%2C9&fbclid=IwAR26PkXrs2UurfrU6AXZBL2UJxIkUwnRB
5Thr6Yj3UAdtdcA3treIk8loOc, access on 25/12/2020.

(3) Minh Thu (2019), “Đại học Đà Nẵng lo lắng “chảy máu chất xám””, báo Dân Trí,
https://dantri.com.vn/giao-duc-huong-nghiep/dh-da-nang-lo-lang-chay-mau-chat-xam-
20190502083842333.htm, access on 23/12/2020.

(4) Nguyễn Quang Thanh (2020), “Vấn đề dữ liệu trong xây dựng Thành phố thông minh tại Đà
Nẵng”, https://danang.gov.vn/fr/chi-tiet?
id=41371&_c=100000150%2C3%2C9&fbclid=IwAR1BMzj68wOi-
Yf9KJNT8QvtfV8LQHXTCbUcncLPAwY4eDyQA6-T7QFNHC8, access on 19/12/2020.

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