DANANG UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS

24 March 2021

THE COMPARISON OF
CUSTOMERS' BEHAVIOUR AT
LOTTE MART AND VINMART+
IN DANANG CITY

Group 1:

Bach Phuong Thao

Hoang Van Nam

Nguyen Vu Uyen Thanh




Table of Contents

I. An Overview of LOTTE mart and Vinmart+

LOTTE Mart
LOTTE Mart, which is a subsidiary of South Korea’s LOTTE Group, presented in Ho Chi Minh
City’s District 7 since 2008. So far, the South Korean retailer has now developed 14
supermarkets covering major cities and provinces in the country, such as Ha Noi, Dong Nai,
Binh Duong, Can Tho, Vung Tau, etc. Therefore, LOTTE is considered one of the irst
successful foreign retailers in Vietnam.

Source: Google Image, CBM.

LOTTE Mart strictly control to ensure that Vietnamese consumers always receive fresh and
safe products. More than 50,000 diverse range of items was sold on its shelves, from food to
home appliances, stationery, electronics, etc. with high quality, reasonable prices and
professional services. Entertainment services and cuisine stores are found at LOTTE Mart
supermarkets nationwide, contributing to an interesting shopping experience.

Vietnamese goods are priority and account for 90 95 percent of the goods in LOTTE Mart
around the country. It also actively works in a cooperative e ort to bring high-quality
Vietnamese products to the LOTTE Choice L brand. With a global supermarket network,
LOTTE Mart is also an e ective export channel for domestic businesses. Moreover, LOTTE

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 Mart strives to develop all services to provide a greater shopping experience every day, from
providing free WIFI, currency exchange service to free delivery, online shopping via SPEED L
application.

After 13 years in Vietnam, LOTTE Mart has increasingly received the support and trust of
customers as a quality shopping destination. With the unceasing e orts of its board of
directors and sta , prestigious awards include Top 100 Vietnam Golden Dragon Award for
four consecutive years, from 2015 to 2018, Top 5 most popular retailer in Vietnam 2020, Top
100 Best Workplaces in Vietnam and many other awards, according to Vietnam Report.

Vinmart+
Vinmart+ is a convenience-store system belonging to VinGroup and o icially entered the
retail market in Vietnam since 2014. Receiving huge of positive feedbacks from customers,
VinGroup continues to expand the number of convenience stores and up to now, that igure
has reached 2,290 Vinmart+ in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, and many other cities, according to
VinGroup corporate pro ile. Vinmart+ has become the largest convenience store chain in
Vietnam.

Source: Google Image, TimViec365.

Vinmart+ system operates with the goal of becoming a reliable shopping destination in terms
of origin, quality of products and superior utility services. Vinmart+ products include fresh
food, semi-processed food, household appliances, cosmetics, etc. Besides o ering diverse
items, Vinmart+ also provide many convenient services meeting the shopping needs from

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 a ordable to high customer grade, such as collecting money for households, going to
households’ market.

Not only focusing on scale, Vinmart+ also focus on product quality, providing clean food
as well as good service quality. VinEco products, which was launched in 2015 to provide
consumers with a trusted source of clean and safe agricultural products, are distributed to
VinMart+ nationwide. After 7 years, VinMart+ chosen as the top most popular retailer in
Vietnam 2020, according to Vietnam Report.
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 II. A Preliminary Analysis of Buyers' Behaviour at LOTTE Mart
From the introduction above, we could see that these two retailers brand are quite successful
in their domain. Thus, in this part, we are going to igure out the reasons behind this through
(1) the 4Ps of marketing - place, product, price and promotion - combined with (2) the model
of buyer behaviour in order to identify the characteristics of customers buying laundry water
at LOTTE Mart.

However, to do this, our group decided to observe the customers with the sample size of 20
subjects (a subject could be a single person or a group of family members), and the layout of
LOTTE at two periods of time, which are from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday, and from 9 a.m. to
11 a.m. on Sunday. The reason why we choose this timeframe is because they are the most
ideal periods for shopping, relaxing, and entertaining; hence, there would be more people to
do the observation, which results in the higher level of accuracy.

The 4Ps of Marketing

Place

The irst element of this analysis is 'Place', which is about all the activities made by LOTTE
Mart to make the laundry water available to its target customers (Kotler, 2017, p. 78). First and
foremost, it is located at Hai Chau province, which is the most densely populated province of
Danang city. According to Danang Government, the population of this province is
approximately 205,000 people; in addition, LOTTE is nearby two biggest entertainment
complex of the city, Asia Park and Helio Centre, this helps LOTTE attract many customers due
to its unique location.

FIGURE 2.1

The Location of LOTTE

Mart on Google Map
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 Second, the mart layout is illustrated by maps attached on the walls, as depicted below
(Figure 2.2); thus, customers could know speci ic loor to buy things that they need. Looking
at the details, it is interesting that there is a spot called 'Special O ers', where customers
could buy products with a special price even before entering the supermarket. In e ect, this
place is mostly illed with laundry water and other private-brand household goods with the
purpose to boost sales of these products by increasing the level of accessibility.

FIGURE 2.2

The Layout of Floor 1 of LOTTE Mart

Floor 2

Special O ers
P
P
Entrance

P
P

e
Exchange

c
an
Money

tr
En
Entrance

Third, LOTTE uses its strategy again to put the 'Special O ers' spot at the entrance of the
Floor 3 (Figure 2.3); obviously, this kind of spot is used for delivering promotion to customers
repeatedly. Nonetheless, surprisingly, the most important point here is that this location does
not play the role to lure consumers entering the market by the parking zone, but the main
entrance. Thus, the supermarket makes sure that everyone could ind the laundry water they
need with a discount price.
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 FIGURE 2.3

The Layout of Floor 3 of LOTTE Mart Toy

Stationery Bookstore Souvenir Kid Toy
Shop

Handmade

Home
Decoration

Men Fashion

Kitchenware
Detergent
Women Fashion Health & Beauty Floor 4

Electrical Appliance

Kid Fashion
Special Offers

Entrance
My Life Bag Handmade Ze Ze Lighting

Floor 3 Floor 2 Smile

Last but not least, through observation of 20 subjects, we realise that 100 percent of people
go up after visiting all the stu of the third loor; in essence, the location of detergent is
where most people move to because it is put beside the escalator. This position does
increase the probability of making purchase decision from consumers.

Product

'Product', which means the goods combination the company o ers to the target market
(Kotler, 2017, p. 77), is the second element the 4Ps of marketing; to some extent, we could say
that this is the soul of the marketing mix. Most values that customers receive are from the
products itself, thus, irms always try to understand and bring satisfaction to them through
their products.

The main point of this section is that there is a big deal of laundry water from many brands
put on shelves at the detergent zone. The diversity of brands makes sure that customers
could purchase either the brand they have already used or new brand that they could try.
However, choosing the new one would be di icult sometimes because the di erences
between the new and the old emerge. Thus, a creative solution applied at the washing-liquid
zone that LOTTE Mart provides laundry-water samples for customers. By smelling these

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 samples (Figure 2.4), the buying process would be stimulated and then shortened so the
company could gain more revenue.

FIGURE 2.4

OMO Matic's Samples

Provided to Customers

Price

Now, the 'Price' component is taken into account; from the de inition, 'Price' is the amount of
money customers must pay to obtain the product (Kotler, 2017, p. 78). To make a comparison
among brands, we have created a table of product portfolio (Figure 2.5) to illustrate the
variety of price.

From the table, we could see that price varies from brand to brands, which means that LOTTE
Mart tries to put all the products that it both average spenders and frugalists. For frugalists,
they could choose brands such as Viking or So y. These brands would be considerably a
good choice for most Vietnamese consumers; meanwhile, for average spenders, they could
pick the brands that is worth being loyal to such as Comfort, OMO Matic, or Downy Matic,
which are the upper-class products in the table.

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 FIGURE 2.5

Laundry Detergent Portfolio at LOTTE Mart

Comfort Price

Elegant Perfume LW (2.2KG - 3.1KG) 150.000 - 201.000 ₫

Trendy Perfume Anti-ageing LW (2.2KG - 3.1KG) 150.000 - 201.000 ₫

OMO Matic Price

Deodorant OMO LW (2KG - 3.7KG) 119.000 - 149.900 ₫

Comfort Perfume LW (1.2KG - 2KG - 2.9KG - 3.7KG) 91.000 - 127.000 - 165.000 -

149.900 ₫

Durable LW (2KG - 2.9KG - 3.7KG) 119.000 - 149.900 ₫

Mild LW for Babies (2KG) 119.000 ₫

Downy Matic Price

Deodorant LW (2.4KG Bottle) 175.000 ₫

Deodorant LW (2.15KG) 148.000 ₫

Cool Beach LW (2.15KG - 3.2KG) 148.000 - 217.000 ₫

Flower Garden LW (2.15KG - 3.2KG) 148.000 - 217.000 ₫

Surf Price

Perfume LW (1.6KG - 3.1KG) 71.000 - 130.000 ₫

Flowergrass Perfume LW (1.7KG - 3.5KG - 3.8KG) 67.000 - 86.900 - 138.000 ₫

Downy Perfume LW (1.7KG - 3.5KG - 3.8KG) 67.000 - 86.900 - 138.000 ₫

MaxKleen Price

Flower Perfume LW (2.4KG) 159.900 ₫

Attack Price

Deodorant Extra Sport LW (1.2KG) 89.000 ₫

Deodorant Con ident Sport LW (1.2KG) 89.000 ₫

Cherry Perfume LW (1.4KG) 89.000 ₫

Net Matic Price

Concentrated LW (2.4KG - 2.7KG) 75.900 - 104.500 ₫

Viking Price

Colour-keeping LW (2.2KG Bottle) 85.000 ₫

So y Price

Tulip perfume LW (2.6KG - 4KG - 10KG) 85.500 - 108.500 - 256.500 ₫

Earth Choice Price

Eucalyptus Perfume LW for high-quality fabric (1KG) 73.000 ₫

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 Promotion

From the economic perspective, it is true that the cheaper a product is, the more likely
consumers are willing and able to pay for it. Thus, 'Promotion' is a signi icant factor in this
observation, which emphasises on the merits of products and persuade the users to buy it
(Kotler, 2017, p. 78). When we were doing our observation, we realised that products having a
large amount of special o ers usually are unpopular. For example, So y, Net Matic, and
Attack have many discounts and gifts for customers. This ensures that these products would
not be stored for too long; however, the exciting fact is that 50% (10 out of 20) of buyers just
consider and evaluate laundry detergent of the top-three brands in the table without paying
attention to the promotion from those bottom-of-the-table laundry liquid. (Figure 2.5).

Not stop at this, LOTTE Mart has another out-of-the-box idea to put all the promotion along
the escalator (Figure 2.6) so that customers could make their references and decide whether
or not to buy when they are going to the next loor.

FIGURE 2.6

Promotion Posters
Attached Along the
Escalator

Characteristics of LOTTE Mart's Customers Under the Buyer Behaviour

Model
As learned from the textbook, there are 3 stages of the buyer behaviour model (Figure 2.7);
with this, four components of the marketing stimuli have been discussed. However, in this
paper, we just focus on the environment of LOTTE and buyer's 'black box'. Now, we will move
to the 'black box' to igure out the buyers' characteristics and buying process.

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 FIGURE 2.7

The Model of Buyer Behaviour

The environment of LOTTE Mart Buyer's Black Box Buyer Responses

Buying attitudes and

preferences
Marketing Stimuli
Place Buyer's characteristics
Purchase behavior: what,
Product
when, where, and how much
Price Buyer's decision process
Promotion
Brand engagements and
relationships

Source: Kotler, P. (2017), Principles of Marketing. Pearson, London.

Buyer's characteristics

FIGURE 2.8

Demographic Statisitcs of 20 Subjects on Gender and Nationality

Male Female
20%
Single Person Family Group

25%
Gender

20
Subjects
80%

75%
Locals Foreigners
15%

Nationality

85%



As shown on the pie graph, most subjects (75%) are family group and only 25 percent are
single person. In fact, this is true due to the timeframe chosen for observation. Vietnamese
people usually hang out with their relatives at the weekend to relax and go shopping, which
causes the ratio of family group bigger than that of subjects - single person. Another
considerable point is that locals occupy 85 percent, while foreigners merely account for the
remaining 15 percent.

Moreover, as indicated on Figure 2.9, people that have the variety-seeking buying behaviour
actively use the samples for determining which product to buy (60%). Meanwhile, there are
also people, following the habitual buying behaviour, just come to the detergent zone and
pick the brand that they frequently consume without considering about trying out the
samples (40%).

FIGURE 2.9 Variety-seeking buying behaviour

Habitual buying behaviour
Statistics of 20
Subjects' Buying
Behaviour

40%

60%

Buyer's decision process

For customers, they experience exactly 5 stages of the buyer decision process, especially the
variety-seeking buyers. First, they go to the supermarket because they need laundry liquid to
put into their washers. Then, they go to the shelves and watch all the products available to
them. Third, they start evaluating the di erences among brands by reading the products'
label and their prices; importantly, they all take the sample to make the inal purchase
decision. Ultimately, after using the products at home, they will assess and compare the new
product with the old one. We assume that if the former is good and they feel unnecessary to
switch brand, they would change their buying pattern to habitual buying behaviour to some
extent. However, if the latter is better, they would keep their purchasing pattern as variety-

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 seeking buying behaviour due to the fact that they have yet to ind out the more optimal
option than the product they have been using for a long time.

To summarise, we have drawn up the logical process of making purchase decision for
consumers at LOTTE Mart (Figure 2.10):

Go to LOTTE Go to Detergent
Need laundry water
for washing clothes Mart Zone on the Floor 3

Read the products'

View the loor layout
label, prices, to determine
detergent zone
promotion and the
like

Make comparison
among products Try out the samples
based on features, provided
prices, and
promotions offered

Purchase the product

that suits best

The new product is

Use at home and
better, keep buying it
at the next time for a assess the product
period of time

Switch to habitual buying behaviour

The new product is

NOT better, keep
seeking for the more
optimal option at the
next time

Remain variety-seeking buying behaviour

FIGURE 2.10

The Buyer's Process for Variety-seeking Buying Behaviour

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III. A Preliminary Analysis of Buyers' Behaviour at Vinmart+



IV. Conclusion