Baby Food in Vietnam

2020 IMPACT

Baby food continues to be influenced by review period trends but response to pandemic in terms of time spent at home and increasing price sensitivity reduces demand for some products

Overall demand for baby food in Vietnam slowed during 2020, with the emergence of COVID-19 and subsequent lockdown measures including social isolation introduced in April which encouraged consumers to stay at home as much as possible apart from essential grocery shopping. This allowed parents to dedicate greater time to preparing food at home for their infants, reducing demand for prepared, dried, and other baby food in Q2 especially amongst more price-sensitive consumers who may have been struggling with decreased disposable incomes.

Consolidated competitive landscape, with major players of milk formula attempting to differentiate portfolios with FF or organic offers

Baby food remained a fairly consolidated competitive landscape in 2020 led by major players, Vietnam Dairy Products JSC (Vinamilk), Nestlé Vietnam Co Ltd, Abbott Vietnam Co Ltd, and FrieslandCampina Vietnam Co Ltd, while Hipp GmbH & Co Vertrieb KG retained its convincing leadership of smaller categories prepared baby food and other baby food. Vinamilk retained its overall leadership of baby food due to its strength across milk formula, particularly benefiting from the trust placed in its growing-up milk formula brand Dielac, and Optimum Gold, with the latter holding lower value share but continuing to record a dynamic performance at the end of the review period, due to increasing interest amongst parents in fortified/functional products that claim to enhance and support a child’s digestive and brain development due to high levels of DHA, ARA and various essential fatty acids such as omega 3.

Modern distribution channels continue to gain share from traditional grocery retailers in 2020, offering wider selection of brands and prices

The distribution of baby food was not disrupted by social isolation measures imposed during April in Vietnam in response to the emergence of COVID-19, with all essential grocery retailers and chemists/pharmacies permitted to remain open. While traditional grocery retailers remained the main distribution channel for baby food in 2020, it lost some share to modern formats including hypermarkets and supermarkets, which offer an expanding range of products to parents.

Files are delivered directly into your account within a few minutes of purchase.