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APAC CONSUMER
SURVEY 2014
VIETNAM
 CONTENTS

4 Introduction
6 How do consumers value the improvements of shopping centre?
7 What makes a shopping centre/high-street attractive?
10 How do shoppers reach their destination?
12 How do consumers see the interaction between ONLINE and IN-STORE?

2 APAC Consumer Survey Vietnam

 THE SHOPPING JOURNEY OF
CONSUMERS IN VIETNAM

PRESENT FUTURE
CONSUMERS CONSUMERS*

78% travel up
to 30 minutes to reach their
preferred shopping centre
73% will visit
physical shopping centres

57% prefer
45% will prefer a large
regional shopping centre
to shop in a large
shopping centre

1/2 will make more use

of their smartphone
for shopping

TOP TIPS
Be online retail-savvy
Be sustainable
Build your brand

*Future consumers: Vietnam consumers in the next two years

Source: CBRE Asia Pacific Consumer Survey, 2014.

CBRE GLOBAL RESEARCH

This report was prepared by CBRE Vietnam Research Team, which forms part of CBRE Global Research—a network of preeminent researchers
who collaborate to provide real estate market research and econometric forecasting to real estate.
© CBRE Ltd. 2015 3
© CBRE Ltd. 2015 Information contained herein, including projections, has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. While we do not doubt its accuracy, we have not
verified it and make no guarantee, warranty or representation about it. It is your responsibility to confirm independently its accuracy and completeness. This information is presented
exclusively for use by CBRE clients and professionals and all rights to the material are reserved and cannot be reproduced without prior written permission of CBRE.
INTRODUCTION
In August 2014, CBRE conducted its first ever consumer
survey, interviewing 11,000 consumers in 11 major cities
across Asia Pacific to discover where and how they shop
for non-food items such as clothing, shoes, accessories,
skin care products and electronics goods – particularly
in relation to their changing behaviour and expectations
of different types of shopping destinations.
Vietnam was included in the survey with a total of 1,000
respondents from 18 to 64 years old, splitting equally
4 APAC Consumer Survey Vietnam
between Hanoi and HCMC. This report presents initial
findings from the survey comparing Vietnam to the region.
Topics covered include:
- How consumers value the improvement of shopping
centres
- What makes a shopping centre/high-street attractive
- How do shoppers reach their destination
- How do consumers see the interaction between ONLINE
and IN-STORE
Southeast Asia consumers, which includes Malaysia,
Singapore and Vietnam, has high expectations of the
overall shopping experience. These respondents report
that significant improvements had been made to
shopping centres in their region over the past three years.
It is of the utmost importance to tailor retail venues to
match consumers’ preferences. Landlords and developers
must ensure this is done at the conceptual stage. Before
selecting a site and planning access routes, developers
© CBRE Ltd. 2015
must understand the modes of transportation that
consumers will utilize as well as the time they are
willing to spend travelling to a desired shopping centre.
Before designing the physical layout of shopping
centre, they must comprehend the important factors
that consumers consider when selecting a destination
for non-food shopping. Last but not least, with the
technological growth and young demographic, they also
need to catch up with the shopping online trend and
implement Online to Offline (O2O) strategies.
5
6 APAC Consumer Survey Vietnam
 Figure 1: Ongoing improvements of
shopping centres noticed by consumers
450%
5%

32%
More/ better catering facilities 9%
Renovation of the centre 400%
Bigger in size with more shops open 28%
47% 9%
Addition of new international brands 21%
More/ better loyalty program
44%
More entertainment facilities 18%
Introduction of free parking 45%
58% 24%
More events
None of these 52%
300% 33%
42%

66%
46%
63%
64%

56%
62%
200%
Many consumers have 55%
52%
seen improvements in their 38%
shopping centre experience
55% 50%
Consumers were asked about the improvements 43%
43%
that they have witnessed in large malls, small malls,
and high-street retail over the last three years.
More than 60% report that the centre that they 100%
visited most frequently have a new design, better 62% 59%
60%
layout and services and improved public places. 51%
More than 50% also observed the addition of more
international brands and entertainment facilities.

Note: Excludes respondents who did not report

any improvements. Percentages are not sum to 60% 54% 54% 57%
100% because respondents report more than one
method. 0%
Large Mall Small Mall High Street Total
© CBRE Ltd. 2015 7
Source: CBRE Asia Pacific Consumer Survey, 2014.
 Figure 2: Important factors in a non-food shopping trip
Overall
Low household income (<VND 4,000,000/month)
Mid household income (VND 4,000,000 - 20,000,000 /month)
High household income (>VND 20,000,000/month)
Price of
Parking facilities products
Cleanliness

$ Convenience

$
Offer of free parking
4.0 Security

Hosting of events
3.5
VE

Range of
RY

Pressence of
coffee shops 3.0 retailers
IM
PO
RTA
FA

Having an
Entertainment 2.5
NT
IRL

facilities extensive range

YI

of catering facilities
MP

NOT V
2.0
ORT

E
Environmental
RY

Being a good
ANT

business
IMPORTA N

place to meet
practices
1.5 friends/spend time

Presence
i Presence of
T

of foreign information
brand/retailers points / clear signs

Free Being
WiFi covered

Presence of
one or two
large fashion shops Presence of
hypermarket/
supermarket

Presence of Size of shops

independent shops
Presence of Presence of
specific Presence of Range of good quality
retailers a department services restaurants
store available

Source: CBRE Asia Pacific Consumer Survey, 2014.

8 APAC Consumer Survey Vietnam

Price of products, security and cleanliness top the list of
factors that consumers expect to have within their shopping
destination. For shopping centre managers, these are
essential, qualifying criteria that must be in place to meet
consumers’ basic needs. This is true for all countries in all
kinds of shopping centres.
However, unlike the other Asia Pacific countries where price
was the most important factor, Vietnamese consumers
put more priorities on security and cleanliness than
price. Although Vietnamese appreciate a wide range of
retailers within the shopping destination, the presence
of specific retailers, department stores or foreign brands
are less important. Entertainment facilities turned out to
be less important versus the “basic” ingredients of price,
cleanliness and security. Given that the contemporary
shopping centres increasingly focus on food services,
entertainment services and events which are designed to
create compelling experiences for shoppers, this outcome
might seem disappointing. Nevertheless, when we take a
© CBRE Ltd. 2015
closer look, we find that more than 50% of customers aged
from 18 to 34 years old feel that such facilities are fairly or
very important in their decision. The rapid growth of young
Vietnamese consumers highlights that a strong experiential
offering consisting of leisure (including food and beverage)
and entertainment will be a powerful tool for shopping centres
to ensure long term competitiveness and thus the increased
value of retail real estate.
Consumers with high income (with monthly average income
above VND20 million) are more demanding, appreciating the
overall shopping experience while the remaining consumers
focus more on practical factors i.e. the “basics”. High income
respondents pay additional attention to the presence of good
quality restaurants, provision of parking facilities, presence
of information points, whether the destination is covered
or not, presence of hypermarket/supermarket, range of
services available and hosting of events. There was not much
difference between the preferences and behavior of mid and
low-income customers.
9
 In general, nearly 90% of Vietnamese travels
by private transportation to their shopping
destination, therefore, convenient access remains
a critical factor for consumers when choosing
where to shop. 78% of surveyed respondents are
willing to travel up to 30 minutes to get to their
preferred shopping centres. 45% of Vietnamese
are willing to travel for more than 16 minutes to
get to their most often visited non-food shopping
centres. These results are similar to those of
South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan,
India, Hong Kong and China. However, with the
completions of Metro lines in the next few years,
they will certainly shorten the travelling time that
customers are willing to spend.
As expected, young customers are more inclined
to travel for a longer period of time. Nonetheless,
there is surprisingly not much difference of
travelling time between income groups.

Figure 3: How do you travel to your Private (Car+Motorcycle)

Public
preferred shopping destination? Walk/Bicycle

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Hong Kong
Japan
Singapore
South Korea
China
Taiwan
Australia
India
Malaysia
New Zealand
Vietnam
Source: CBRE Asia Pacific Consumer Survey, 2014.
10 APAC Consumer Survey Vietnam
 1 to 5 mins
Figure 4: How long does your journey 6 to 15 mins
take on average? 16 to 30 mins
Over 30 mins
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Vietnam
Taiwan
South Korea
Singapore
New Zealand
Malaysia
Japan
India
Hong Kong
China
Australia
Source: CBRE Asia Pacific Consumer Survey, 2014.
© CBRE Ltd. 2015 11
 In order to address the question of how Vietnamese consumers like to shop, CBRE separated the process of
shopping into two phases: pre-purchase and purchase. Pre-purchase prefers to how consumers search for,
obtain information on and compare products. Purchase prefers to how consumers actually pay and obtain the
products.

According to CBRE survey, in the next 2 years, 25% of
respondents expect to shop less often in a store. Store visits
still dominate when buying non-food products, with nearly
71% of consumers reporting visiting a shopping centre.
Although the outlook of the brick-and-mortar format still
remains upbeat, shopping centre operators must be aware
of the challenges posed by online retail. 45% - 50% of
respondents said that they would shop online via desktop/
laptop or smartphone/tablet more often than they do
now. It is surprising that an even greater proportion of
consumers (69%) aged from 55 to 64 actually think that
they would use their smartphone/tablet more frequently to
buy non-food items.
An increasing amount of Vietnamese nowadays use their
high-tech personal devices frequently as around 87% of
respondents claimed that they own at least a smartphone
according to our survey. The use of online shopping
is increasing rapidly across Asia Pacific with 85% of
respondents saying that apart from visiting shop, they
would also do shopping online. Therefore, retail landlords
will have to integrate this platform into their overall
strategy to remain competitive and reach their customers
in order to counter the growth of the online retail market.
This is crucial for shopping centre management and
related areas such as marketing because it is suggested
that retailers and landlords should take advantage of
this trend and do more online selling and advertising
via social media and their well customized Business
to Customer (B2C) websites. In addition, CBRE
recommends landlords to adapt their strategy to boost
both e-commerce and offline business activities by
leveraging big data, which can track levels of consumer
engagement, implement Online to Offline(O2O)
strategies, and create simple and useful applications for
those who want to shop via their smartphone/tablet. This
can be a competitive advantage to shopping centres
which successfully adopt such a strategy as about two
third of APAC survey respondents admit to using mobile
applications designed specifically for shopping centres.

12 APAC Consumer Survey Vietnam

Figure 5: Over the next two years, do you expect to use each Do less often
No change
of these methods more often, less often, or would there be Do more often
no change when buying non-food items?
100%
90%
80%
25% 70%
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64
60% 21% 26% 29% 25% 24%
50%
43% 40%
30% 37% 45% 39% 48% 52%
20%
32% 10%
0% 42% 29% 32% 27% 24%
Brick-and-Mortar
Low Mid High
Income Income Income

100%
90%
8% 80%
70% 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64
60% 5% 11% 8% 9% 6%
45% 50%
32% 42% 51% 51% 54%
40%
30%
47% 20%
10%
Desktop/laptop 0% 63% 47% 41% 40% 40%
Low Mid High
Income Income Income

100%
18% 90%
80%
70% 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64
29% 60% 19% 16% 20% 18% 12%
50%
40% 34% 31% 27% 26% 19%
30%
20%
54% 10%
0% 47% 53% 53% 56% 55%
Smartphone/ Tablet Low Mid High
Income Income Income

100%
33%
90%
80%
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64
70%
38% 38% 37% 31% 30% 19%
60%
50%
40% 36% 37% 36% 38% 51%
29% 30%
20%
Catalogue/ Mail order 10%
26% 25% 32% 32% 34%
0%
© CBRE Ltd. 2015 Low Mid High
Income Income Income Source: CBRE Asia Pacific Consumer Survey, 2014.
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CBRE GLOBAL RESEARCH

This report was prepared by CBRE Vietnam Research Team, which forms part of CBRE Global Research—a network of preeminent researchers who collaborate
to provide real estate market research and econometric forecasting to real estate investors and occupiers around the globe.

All materials presented in this report, unless specifically indicated otherwise, is under copyright and proprietary to CBRE. Information contained herein,
including projections, has been obtained from materials and sources believed to be reliable at the date of publication. While we do not doubt its accuracy, we
have not verified it and make no guarantee, warranty or representation about it. Readers are responsible for independently assessing the relevance, accuracy,
completeness and currency of the information of this publication. This report is presented for information purposes only exclusively for CBRE clients
and professionals, and is not to be used or considered as an offer or the solicitation of an offer to sell or buy or subscribe for securities or other financial
instruments. All rights to the material are reserved and none of the material, nor its content, nor any copy of it, may be altered in any way, transmitted to,
copied or distributed to any other party without prior express written permission of CBRE. Any unauthorized publication or redistribution of CBRE research
reports is prohibited. CBRE will not be liable for any loss, damage, cost or expense incurred or arising by reason of any person using or relying on information
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© CBRE Ltd. 2015