For many companies outside of Vietnam, doing business in Vietnam is like a gold mine which is loaded with business opportunities. Many companies aspire to tap on this raising Asian market to increase the returns of their business. Vietnam is a favourable destination for business because of the large size of the Vietnamese market itself, increasing purchasing power of the Vietnamese and its ideal geographical location. Other reasons include low labour costs and established political stability. As with all international dealings, companies doing business with Vietnam may find some challenges. One such clear challenge is the language barrier.
No doubt English is the official working language in Vietnam, it is but true that only very few Vietnamese actually speak it. Almost 90% of the Vietnamese populations speaks Vietnamese while the rest speak either Chinese or both Chinese and Vietnamese. English sufficient enough to conduct business is largely only spoken by foreign-educated Vietnamese professionals who may have obtained even higher degrees from other English-speaking nations. While it may not be difficult to go about with daily routine speaking English, this poses as a problem when engaging clients and businesses in Vietnam in Business English. Much of the understanding of the Vietnamese society comes about by understanding what lies between the lines. These lines can only be understood with a basic knowledge of the local language.
As such, the language barrier between English, Chinese and Vietnamese needs to be minimized. This is where multilingual B2B websites come into play. Multilingual websites have been introduced primarily for reducing the language barriers between local Vietnam suppliers and manufacturers and global companies wanting to trade with them. One such multilingual B2B website which helps to minimize the language barrier is Vigogo. The large trading platform allows users to instantly switch into English, Chinese and Vietnamese. This allows Vietnam suppliers to reach out to a large consumer than suppliers on a monolingual English only B2B site would be able to.