The wise consumer

Reup. Published on August 8th, 2018

(English version)

Today, I met Ms. Sylvia as usual, not at Urban Station (a coffee shop) but a new opening shop on CMT8 street, belonged to the Coffee House chain (this is also the name of the shop). Both of the brand names are from Vietnamese company.

I came there 10 minutes earlier than she did. I had a brief talk with her while waiting for another person to come and join our chat group. I started with a aimless question: "Have you ever gone to this shop?", but I received her answer which was not aimless at all. This is the first time she came here, but she has visited another brand in a different location, District 1. A reason for her to come here is because of the good quality of coffee (of couse, we all do), but that is not the only one. She doesn't choose the famous ones that Vietnamese usually come to (for example, Starbucks, or generally consider other chains of eating restaurants like KFC, MacDonald) because she wants to support local business. (Wow! I admiringly gaped at her)

Then, she gave more details to support that purpose. When she comes to drink, her money contributes to the profit of the owner, and then the owner uses that money to invest further and expand the business at here, which brings benefits to the economy of the local area, or at least the flow of money remains in the regions of Vietnam. In consideration of Starbucks, this is a multinational company having a huge number of stores around the globe, nation to nation, and its profit goes  out of the boundary of Vietnam, to stockholders of the company. Only a small of it comes back to Vietnam for further investment. Eventually, the fact that a part of Vietnam's money affacts the economy of the country.

Meanwhile, though both of the companies (generally, global and domestic companies) help create jobs and contribute its tax to the government, all of the money the domestic company earns stay in the country, while the money people buy Starbucks' coffee is lost to the foreigners' hands, which leads to the reduction in total amount of money that Vietnam holds. (It happens the same with the case when we sell our natural resources to foreign partners.)

Besides, Vietnamese companies also face more difficulties in managing small funds and the possibility of slowly getting back the paid-in capital. To multinational companies, if they are forced to close all the shops in Vietnam because of bad business, it of couse will effect their revenue, but it also can't simply lead them to bankrupt for a reasone that they may have got their paid-in capital in those years doing business in their country. Thereby, now they are making more profits and having a lot of ways to compensate for unprofitable business in Vietnam, one of the markets they have been investing in.

Well, when looking back to ourselves, we can see how most of the Vietnamese consumers, especially the young, spend their money in a different way. They are likely to follow any trends that are popular and seemingly cool, like trying every new store which is recently opening, choosing well-known shops that everyone has visited but not him/her, or going to big and impressive shops just to show how cool and high-level they are. I never heard that someone wants to buy Vietnamese products (drinking a cup of coffee, in specifically) in order to support the local companies, or goes further with a "?" ideal that helps keep Vietnamese money remaining in this country.

I'm an purely engineer, so I, at least for now, may not know the details on how money is made and put in circulation in our society. However, I know, for sure, the government can't print money as much as it wants, but it has to follow rules and laws which are agreed by nations to ensure the equality and transparency of money circulation between nations are fully enforced (if it's not done well, the inflation is the next step to deal with). Back to the case of Vietnam, the country owns a limited amount of money (not as much as most people think), so if that amount can't be made up for by foreign currency earnings from export operations, the fact that we keep losing our money the hands of multinational companies like Starbucks will lead Vietnam's ecomony to being nearly exhausted, and even in debt.

A good lesson from a foreigner's opinion.