Social commerce is one of three main retail trends expected to boom in 2023.

As consumers read and watch more views, particularly from KOLs and influencers, retail businesses develop more avenues for presenting products to reviewers, KOLs, and influencers to make videos and write about these products on their social media channels.

Another trend will be personalizing the customer experience to increase compatibility between product and customer preference. In order to better understand customers, more than 69 per cent of retail businesses surveyed by Vietnam Report plan to increase spending on marketing. Two-thirds of them said they will focus on marketing relating to customer relationship management and the customer experience.

Finally, omni-channel or multichannel approaches will continue to flourish due to advantages in providing customers with a seamless shopping experience. The combination of physical retail stores, retail technology, and e-commerce platforms will become important elements in the omni-channel development strategies of retail enterprises. Businesses will also focus more on building a seamless journey and online orders will be completed and distributed through physical stores.

Experts said retail trends in 2023 and subsequent years will still depend on changes in shopping behavior among customers post-pandemic and the application of digitalization.

Vietnam is witnessing special growth in modern shopping channels, especially convenience stores. As one of the Southeast Asian countries with the fastest-growing digital economy (36 per cent), e-commerce in Vietnam has great potential for development, with average annual growth of 25 per cent, according to the White Book on Vietnamese E-business 2022 published by the Ministry of Industry and Trade.