The Development of Social Media Marketing in Vietnam (2008-2012)

INTRODUCTION
In Vietnam, since the introduction of the first Internet Service Provider in 1997, the growth of Internet usage has been rapidly growing. Coming along with the development of Internet’s growth speed, social media usage has developed and become widespread very quickly. Social networks, blog sites, and other online “beehives” appear to be all around us as millions of people adopt social media sites as their primary source of all kinds of information. It is also important to note that instead of using the more common social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, Vietnam has its own localized version of social media tools which could be a significant threat to its international counterparts. Seeing this growing trend of social media, many Vietnamese companies started to use social media as a tool to advertise their products, which is called “social media marketing”.
What’s the movement in business today? It’s social media of course! What’s the most underrated trend in business today? It’s social media of course! It’s hot, it’s cool, but it’s also an unknown. When tapped into, Social media becomes a valuable marketing resource for business. It becomes part of doing business (Scott, 2010). Traditional marketing focused on push advertisements. The “in-your-face” advertising that continually pushed brands in buyers’ faces. Those days are gone now. The rules have changed and marketing is no longer based on one-way interruption. David Meerman Scott says, “One-way interruption messaging is yesterday’s message”. It is now collaboration. Social media is where buyers are spending their time one and where savvy businesses are engaging with consumers (Scott, 2010). Social media is everywhere. Buyers are talking about brands and products and making buying decisions using social media. Marketing is now collaboration.
So, what exactly is social media marketing? It is an internet-based that allows people to participate actively in the marketing and selling of products and services in online marketplaces and communities. It is used to persuade consumers to buy products and services that are worthwhile to them at low-cost combining technology and social interaction (Lake, 2011). It allows businesses marketing their products at cost effective with the advantage of targeting specific markets. Social media is an online word of mouth communication that creates a cycle of acquisition and retention (Ward, 2011). Social media gives marketers a voice and a way to communicate with peers, customers and potential consumers. It personalizes the “band” and helps to spread the message in a relaxed and conversational way (Lake, 2011). It has provided great benefits to small businesses to access potential customers without investing great amount of money on paid advertising (Stelzner, 2011).
Social media platforms started popping up just over 8 years ago (Corbett, 2010). Social media platforms encourage interaction and communication. Popular forms of social media are social networking sites, blogs, video sharing sites, photo sharing sites, chat boards, message boards, forums, wiki’s, social bookmarking sites and podcasts. Buyers are talking about brands and products and making buying decisions using social media. It brings new interaction with consumers (Hosea, 2010). There are many social media sites that exist today, but some of the most popular sites include Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Tumblr, Foursquare, and YouTube. Although the methods for delivering social media content will likely evolve, it seems that the use of social media is here to stay and will continue to grow.
In just a few short years, the growth of social media has soared. According to Vietnamese Internet Network Center (VINIC, 2010), there are currently over 15 million social media users in Vietnam, account for 18% of Vietnamese population. With this large number of social media usage, we have a good opportunity to develop social media marketing in Vietnam. A survey by the Ministry of Industry and Trade with 1000 Vietnamese marketers in 2009 showed that nearly 93% of marketers used social media to market their businesses. According to the survey, a significant 58% of marketers are using social media for 6 hours or more each week and 34% for 11 or more hours weekly. It’s interesting to note that 15% of marketers spend more than 20 hours each week on social media. Recently, in January 2012, a survey released by Cimigo, an independent team of marketing research specialists, found that Facebook is the most used social media channel in Vietnam, with 71% of marketers using it for business, ahead of LinkedIn (58%) ,Twitter (40%) and Youtube (28%).
Although there are a lot of researches about the current situation of social media marketing In Vietnam, there is very little study about the potential to develop social media marketing in Vietnam in the future. The purpose of this study was to analyze factors that will affect the successful of social network marketing in Vietnam and provide a sight of how it can be in the future. It is hoped that the findings may help marketers come necessary information to exploit this way for marketing their products.

METHOD
From 2008 to 2012 , the development of social media marketing in Vietnam was really explosive. This research was conducted in order to investigate people’s attitude towards social media marketing in Vietnam.
The survey was carried out mainly on the Internet and in two central districts 1 and 10, HCMC. The instruments employed in this investigation were observations and piece of survey form (questionnaires). The majority of subjects were given to teenagers and young adults between the ages of 18 – 25. Observations were made at five major shopping centers in Ho Chi Minh City: Ben Thanh Market , Diamond Plaza , Saigon Center, Tax Department Store, Parkson Plaza. A total of 150 questionnaires were also available with hard copy and soft copy. Hard copy questionnaires were delivered randomly to students of Huflit University, University of Economics HCMC, HCMC Open University. Before starting the survey, these subjects were required to offer some personal information about their age, gender and job. Then, the subjects were required to answers 20 questions related to their attitude towards social media marketing in Vietnam. In addition, there were also some questions designed to investigate the demand of social media marketing in Vietnam in the next few years. The soft copy questionnaires were made electronically under the help of Yellow Survey (www.yellowsurveys.com) and posted on the social network Facebook™ (www.facebook.com). All collected data was digitalized statistically in the format of Microsoft Excel 2010 and TeraView Statistics software.

MATERIALS
The observations were performed at 5 major shopping centers in Ho Chi Minh city to find out how many shops are using social media marketing to market their business and which social media channel are most commonly used?
The questionnaire had two parts: personal information and research information. The personal information part was designed to collect some demographic information of participants including age, gender, job and personal income. The research information part consisted of 20 research questions was classified into 3 main groups as follows:
 Group A (question 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) aimed to learn about the internet accessing situation in Vietnam
 Group B (from question 6 to question 15) was designed to collect information about the demand of social media marketing in Vietnam
 Group C (from question 16 to question 20) centered around the estimation of customers about social media marketing
This sample was also similar to the online version.
REFERENCES
1. Armstrong, G. & Kotler, P. (2001). Principles of marketing ,9th edition. Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Prentice Hall.
2. Corbett, R. (2011) Social media marketing with emerging technologies, URL: http://books.google.com/books/feeds/volumes?q=0-13-282159-1
3. Hosea, M. (2010, July 15). SOCIAL MEDIA: Brands keep their finger on impulsive interaction, URL: http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/knowledge-bank/brands-keep-their-finger/3015794.article
4. Lake, L. (2011) Understanding the role if Social Media in Marketing , URL: http://marketing.about.com/od/strategytutorials/a/socialmediamktg.htm
5. Ray, A (2010, March) Word of Mouth and Social Media: A tale of Two Burger Joints, URL: http/blogs.forrester.com/print/augie_ray/10-03-28-word_mouth_and_social_ media_tale_two_burger_joint
6. Scott, D. M. (2010) The New Rules of Marketing and PR: how to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video, & viral marketing to reach buyers directly ,2nd edition
7. Stelzner, M. (2011) 2011 social media industry report, URL: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingReport2011.pdf
8. Stephen, A. T., & Toubia, O. (2010) ‘Deriving Value from Social Commerce Networks’, Journal of Marketing Research, January, pp.231-242
9. Ward, S (2011) Social Media Marketing, URL: http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/socialmedia/g/socmedmarketing.htm

References: 1. Armstrong, G. & Kotler, P. (2001). Principles of marketing ,9th edition. Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Prentice Hall. 2. Corbett, R. (2011) Social media marketing with emerging technologies, URL: http://books.google.com/books/feeds/volumes?q=0-13-282159-1 3. Hosea, M. (2010, July 15). SOCIAL MEDIA: Brands keep their finger on impulsive interaction, URL: http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/knowledge-bank/brands-keep-their-finger/3015794.article 4. Lake, L. (2011) Understanding the role if Social Media in Marketing , URL: http://marketing.about.com/od/strategytutorials/a/socialmediamktg.htm 5. Ray, A (2010, March) Word of Mouth and Social Media: A tale of Two Burger Joints, URL: http/blogs.forrester.com/print/augie_ray/10-03-28-word_mouth_and_social_ media_tale_two_burger_joint 6. Scott, D. M. (2010) The New Rules of Marketing and PR: how to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video, & viral marketing to reach buyers directly ,2nd edition 7. Stelzner, M. (2011) 2011 social media industry report, URL: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingReport2011.pdf 8. Stephen, A. T., & Toubia, O. (2010) ‘Deriving Value from Social Commerce Networks’, Journal of Marketing Research, January, pp.231-242 9. Ward, S (2011) Social Media Marketing, URL: http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/socialmedia/g/socmedmarketing.htm