VietNamNet Bridge – Unlike previous years, promotion sales programmes this season, aiming to stimulate demand, all have narrower scale. Some retailers even say that they don’t put high hopes on the promotion programmes.

In previous years, discounts were always offered on food and consumer products, the items which had the highest purchasing power. However, the situation is quite different this year.

The promotion programme, offered by Fivimart’s 10-supermart chain in Hanoi, held from April 20-May 31, is designed for cosmetics buyers only. Lucky vouchers and gifts for clients are provided by cosmetics trademarks including Lever, LumiLux, Unza and Double Rich.

A representative of the Intimex chain also said that the scale of the promotion programme this year is smaller than previous years. The programme offers gifts to clients who have purchases of VND200,000 and higher, and win in the lucky draws.

Retailers say that organising promotion programmes in the context of the price escalation requires a lot of exertion on their part. They say that what they can do is to help make clients happy with the promotion programmes, while they do not expect that sales during promotion programme days will be higher than ordinary days.

Analysts also say that as prices are skyrocketing, and consumers have to tighten their belts, supermarts can only offer small discounts to retain clients rather than lure more clients.

Nguyen Thai Dung, Deputy General Director of Big C Thang Long, said that promotion programmes aim to maintain contact between clients and suparmarts, which proves to be a good solution for the current price storm.

Dung said that Big C launches 40-50 promotion programmes every year, and it is expected that the supermart, in cooperation with suppliers, will open six programmes more by the end of the year.

Dung said that the summer promotion programme, in which discounts and gifts are offered to the buyers of 300 items (60% of which are fresh food and consumer products), applied from April 9 to May 1, helped turnover increase by 20-25% in the first week of the programme.

However, Dung said that promotion programmes are not decisive in attracting clients to supermarts. The thing that attracts clients to supermarts is the suitable prices of commodities. The items under promotion programmes, in general, only account for 1% of the total items available at supermarts, and the discount rates prove to modest, at 10-30%.

Among a series of measures supermarts apply to lure clients, the most effective measure is to negotiate with suppliers in order to get the most suitable sale price levels.

Nguyen Nga