WHAT MAKES OPPO SUCCEED IN THE VIETNAM MARKET? Background of the study Vietnam has become an emerging country and attractive retail market in the globe (Deloitte, 2014). Modern retail platform was introduced and have been blooming in Vietnam such as convenience stores, special stores and shopping centers (Trinh & Tran, 2014). The country is in the progress of transforming into digital economy, evidenced through high growth in electronic commerce and customer interaction through social network, etc. (Cameron et al., 2019). According to the Statista (2020), number of smartphone users in Vietnam was nearly 36 million in the end of 2019 and it is expected at 43 million by 2022. The growth in smartphone market was captured at 84% in 2017 and 95% of people in the cities have owned smartphone while the percentage of people with smartphone usage in rural area is reached up 68% (Nielsen, 2019). One of the attractive points in smartphone market is high population based with more than 94 million people (General Statistics Office, 2020). Vietnamese people spent more time reading news, playing games and conducting social interactions through social media network (Appota, 2018). These factors promote the entry of giant smartphone and electronic manufacturers such as Samsung and LG. Samsung has penetrated Vietnam for a long time and the Korean manufacturers established some factories in the country to enjoy lower tax rate and attractive labor cost (Sturgeon & Zylberberg, 2016).

Abstract

Rationales Currently, Vietnamese people have variety of product choice in smartphone market. The survey conducted by Q&Me (2018) revealed top smartphone brands in Vietnam, including Apple, Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi and Nokia, in which the first three smartphone brands have gained high brand recognition from the respondents. Key competitive advantage of Apple is luxurious and strong proud-to-have image while Samsung is positioned as a band of quality and design and Oppo is more famous in term of its camera features (Q&Me, 2018). However, Apple has not been setup its official store in Vietnam while Samsung and Oppo have been integrated this modern sales services in big cities and provinces and both of them gained reasonably high market share of more than 63% (Vietnam Insider, 2019). When comparing between Samsung and Oppo, the researcher identifies that Korean manufacturer made its entry to Vietnam since 2009 while Oppo, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer, have been entered the market since 2013. The gap is four year with advantage belonged to Samsung since it has established factories in the country. However, the market share between Samsung and Oppo is not so large. While Samsung consumed 38.44% of the market, Oppo was ranked in second place with 25.2% of the market share that turned Oppo to be second largest smartphone brand in Vietnam (Vietnam Insider, 2019). The question is how Oppo succeed in Vietnam has been raised after examining these figures or what the business model that is being adopted by Oppo to gain success in Vietnamese market. In addition, the researcher identifies that most of empirical evidences developed for Vietnam’s smartphone market focused on either consumer behavior in general (Wollenberg & Thuong, 2014) or consumer purchase and repurchase intention (Tran, 2018) or the role of mobile devices in retail industry (Dinh, 2017). There were no empirical evidences to explore the success of a smartphone manufacturer through their business model in the country. Thus, this study is developed under the urgent need of verifying business model of Oppo in order to identify its competitive advantages in comparison with other smartphone manufacturers. Research objective and research questions The study is developed with main objective of exploring the success of Oppo in Vietnam’s smartphone market. This research objective is supported following research questions: • What are the opportunities and challenges in Vietnam’s smartphone market? • How to address the success of Oppo in Vietnam’s smartphone market in comparison with other smartphone manufacturers through the analyses of components in Business Model Canvas? • Which part of the smartphone manufacturers should take account to gain advantages in the Vietnam market?