HCM City (VNS/VNA) – With peopleafraid to visit public places like supermarkets because of COVID-19, e-commercefloors have become a convenient and safe shopping place for Tet items.

With Vietnam boasting a large internet communityand a young, digital-savvy population, the e-commerce market is buzzing withactivity ahead of the Lunar New Year (Tet) festival, which falls on February 12.

Many consumers say that the hectic year-endschedule keeps them busy and they cannot go shopping, but the dizzying growthin e-commerce and e-payment is lending a hand. Now, without leaving office orhome, they can place orders online and wait for the goods to be delivered home.

Many large e-supermarkets and social networkingsites claim to have carefully prepared to ship a large volume of goods to servea huge, growing demand, and launched a number of promotions.

Big C supermarket has worked with suppliers toensure there is enough food to meet the Tet demand, and said it would stock 20 percent morepork and 25 percent more poultry meat than last year.

A spokesperson said the pandemic would preventmany people from travelling home, but the demand for Tet would remain huge.

The supermarket offers online shopping and freedelivery within a 10km radius within two hours, he said.

Nguyen Anh Duc, general director of SaigonCo.opmart, said the supermarkets would increase delivery staff by 25 percentand deliver anywhere in the country wherever one orders from.

Tran Ngoc Tran, who works in HCM City’s District5, said she had a lot of year-end work to finish and little time to shop evenfor the most traditional, must-have food items for Tet, which is by farthe most important festival of the year.

Online shopping is a solution for her: She hasordered some traditional central region dishes like pickled scallion, saltedfigs and papaya shrimp sauce and asked the supermarket to ship them to her homein Binh Dinh province.

A spokesperson for an e-commerce business saidwith much lower overheads than brick and mortar stores, online shopping centresare able to offer promotions and discounts.

Some popular sites like sendo, lazada, chodientu, hotdeal, tiki, and zalora areoffering discounts of up to 50 percent on all types of products, especiallyfashion and beauty like shoes, handbags, watches, and sunglasses.
Foodstuffs are most in demand for the festival,and are advertised widely on the internet with many discount programmes.

Though the discounts are not as high as on otherconsumer goods, people can still buy confectionary, soft drinks, noodles, andother items at discounts of up to 39 percent./.