At Masan Consumer’s (MCH) 2024 Annual General Meeting, Chairman Truong Cong Thang shared the product he is most proud of at Masan Consumer Holdings. It is not any other expensive product, but the Chinsu Tam Thai Tu Nhi Ca soy sauce bottle priced at VND 7,000/bottle.
According to Mr. Thang, MCH has high-end product lines for the wealthy – those who do not have to think about money when going to the supermarket. However, MCH understands that 70% of Vietnamese people still have to wait until the end of the month to receive their salary, and there are still those who earn a living at the corner of the market, on the roadside, working every day to have money to spend tomorrow. With a bottle of soy sauce for VND 7,000, any family in Vietnam can use it for about 2 weeks and ensure the flavor, deliciousness, and safety for their health, ensuring the taste of vegetables, meat, and fish.
The Chairman of Masan Consumer shared that MCH always listens to consumers’ opinions, always bearing in mind that MCH is a company of 100 million Vietnamese people.
“For the past 7 years, I have accompanied the workers at the factory, at the construction site, to listen to the feelings of Vietnamese consumers – those whose money is soaked in sweat. We are a company that wants to improve the daily material and spiritual life of 100 million Vietnamese people”
Mr. Thang also told a story about a time when he went to the Northwest region and visited a family. There, he witnessed a father and son sharing a small packet of shampoo. From that, he realized that even though the economy is not abundant, Vietnamese people still prefer branded products rather than cheap, unbranded products.
From that, he concluded that “strong brand” is the keyword. MCH has built strong brands, with brands with annual revenue of over VND 2,000 billion such as Chin-su, Omachi, Wake-up 247, and in the longer term, Vinacafe, Chante, Tea365.
Mr. Thang said that MCH’s path is to serve the large unmet needs of consumers, from products in the kitchen corner to products in the refrigerator, in the living room, bathroom, and soon will be Out-of-Home products such as tea, coffee, filtered water, self-boiling hotpot, snacks…
According to Mr. Thang, over the past 20 years, MCH has built very strong brands with a presence in families, but with new consumption trends, Out-of-home is the market that MCH is aiming for. However, a strong brand does not mean that it is born strong but must be built from the consumer side.
Mr. Thang also mentioned that the Tam Thai Tu soy sauce bottle is a basic product but there must be products in different segments. There is a bottle of fish sauce priced at VND 20,000/liter but there is also a bottle of hundreds of thousands/liter. A strong brand requires diversification, multi-demand, multi-location, multi-channel distribution, and multiple payment methods.
Mr. Truong Cong Thang revealed: “We spend 80% of the budget to focus on brand building, to introduce strong brands to consumers. The growth rate of 14%/year over the past 7 years is thanks to the fact that MCH has implemented the above path.”
