Vietnam Insider has just announced that Vietnam is in the Top 3 Southeast Asian countries with the highest milk tea consumption, behind only Indonesia & Thailand. In Vietnam, there are more than 100 milk tea brands of various scales, of which over 30 domestic and international brands are the most popular and well-known. Notably, Tocotoco is the leading brand in branch expansion speed with 300 domestic stores, and it also achieves a prominent share of discussion on social media.

Let’s join Kompa in reviewing the highlights of Vietnam’s milk tea market on social media over the past period:

Over the past 7 months, Tocotoco has led the milk tea industry in share of discussion, accounting for 31.5% – equivalent to 78,426 discussions, followed by Gongcha & Bobabop. Throughout these 7 months, the active operations of brands through incentive programs, promotions, and branch expansion helped boost the volume of discussions and customer awareness. In addition, the Ho Chi Minh market has also become more vibrant with the appearance of Phê La – a famous milk tea brand from Da Lat. 

Contributing to the lively discussions in the milk tea market are mainly female “enthusiasts” who enjoy these drinks – students remain the “potential customer” segment, followed by office workers, and more notably, the segment clearly seen in the report is from the banking industry. Brands may consider additional campaigns to drive consumption growth among customers in the banking sector. 

The choices and preferences of milk tea “enthusiasts” are also quite consistent with the volume of discussions they help brands generate – meaning that when customers care about and love a brand, they tend to actively interact, create discussions, and review that brand’s products. It can be seen that Tocotoco still has the highest favorability rate and positive customer feedback index, followed by Gongcha, while in third place for favorability, Bobabop has had to give way to KOI Thé. 

KOI Thé’s community campaign “Go Green with Eco Bag” in July created a highlight for the brand and brought in positive discussions and customer favorability. This is understandable, as a study by the prestigious Reputation Institute (2017) indicates that “up to 91.4% of customers decide to buy products from brands associated with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)”; customers are not only concerned with product quality and brand reputation when making choices, they also pay much more attention to how that brand carries out Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. And they are proud to be part of helping the environment through these activities.

Besides that, strengthening and choosing the right brand ambassador also helps brands win customers’ hearts. With a clear understanding that its target segment is students, Tocotoco made the right choice by collaborating with DJ Mie – launching the new product “Instant Milk Tea,” giving milk tea enthusiasts the chance to show off their own mixing skills and make a cup for themselves anywhere while still enjoying their favorite “drink.” 

In conclusion, Vietnam has become an attractive and dynamic playground for the milk tea industry, not only for foreign brands but also domestic ones, bringing Vietnamese customers countless culinary and cultural exchange experiences, and gradually being adapted into a unique Vietnamese culinary identity. This is an encouraging sign and a very positive future for brands in creating and delivering even more unique products. 

Kompa is a company that applies data technology (AI, machine learning) on a big data platform to provide data analytics solutions and equip customers with valuable “insights” to optimize their business operations across many aspects such as Marketing, Finance, Operations, and other fields.

For more than 20 years, Kompa has accompanied hundreds of small, medium, and large enterprises in Vietnam such as: Vingroup, Masterise Homes, Vinamilk, SSI, MB bank, Tân Hiệp Phát, Shopee, Vietjet Air….