The Vietnam FMCG market in 2026: what the trackers show, and how a foreign brand should read them

Ask how the Vietnamese FMCG market is doing and the answer depends on which number you are shown. Retail sales grew 12.9% in the first half of 2026. The economy grew by around 8% in 2025, and Worldpanel puts average monthly income per person at 5.9 million dong, about USD 227, up around 7% a year over five years. Yet the same Worldpanel report found that households bought a smaller volume of fast-moving consumer goods in 2025 than the year before, in the cities and in the countryside.

Both are true, and the gap between them is the most useful thing a foreign brand can learn about the market before it writes a business case. Growth in everyday goods now comes from price, from a handful of categories and from share moving between brands, not from households simply buying more.

This piece sets out what the published figures say, what each tracker actually counts, where FMCG is bought, which categories are moving, and how to read one category before committing money to it.

What the published figures say for 2025 and 2026

Two things stand out. The official retail figure covers everything from rice to restaurant meals and motorbike repairs, so it says little about packaged goods in particular. And none of the rows is a market size in dollars. The two trackers quoted here publish growth rates and shares in their public releases, not a total. A dollar figure for “the Vietnam FMCG market” that circulates without a named method is not one to build a plan on, and even totals with a named method rarely agree, for the reasons set out in the guide to Vietnam’s e-commerce market size.

Two trackers, two ways of counting

Most serious FMCG data in Vietnam comes from two kinds of measurement, and they answer different questions.

A household panel. Worldpanel has run a household purchase diary in Vietnam for more than two decades: a sample of households records what it buys for the home, where, and at what price. A panel sees the buyer. It can tell you how many households bought a category, how often, in which channel, whether on promotion, and which brand they switched from. It does not see what people consume away from home: the iced coffee bought at a stall, the snack eaten at school, the beer at a restaurant.

Store measurement. NIQ measures what sells through a sample of stores. That sees the shelf: sales by store type and region, the prices actually charged, how many stores carry a product. It does not see who the buyer is, and its view of the market depends on which store types it covers.

This is why “household FMCG volumes fell in 2025” and “food and beverage revenue grew” can sit in the same report without contradicting each other. Worldpanel’s 2026 outlook projects food and beverage sector revenues up almost 10% in 2025 while in-home volumes fell, as consumers redirected budgets toward experiences, travel and dining. A brand whose product is mostly consumed away from home will find its market under-represented in panel data, and a brand that will sell mainly through neighbourhood grocery stores needs to know how well a store-based figure covers them.

The working rule is simple: before quoting a figure, know whether it comes from buyers or from shelves, and whether your product is bought for the home.

Value up, volume flat: where the growth comes from

A category’s value is the number of units sold times the price paid for them. When value grows and volume does not, the growth is price: list prices rising, buyers moving to bigger or premium packs, shallower discounts, or a mix of the three.

With consumer prices up 4.38% on average in the first half of 2026, a category growing 5% in value is close to flat in units. That changes the arithmetic of an entry plan. A forecast that grows the category “with the economy” and takes a steady share of it assumes unit demand is rising. If it is not, every unit a new brand sells is a unit someone else stopped selling.

Promotions blur the picture further. Kantar Worldpanel found that in 2024, 73% of the categories it tracks had more purchase occasions on promotion than a year earlier, and cautioned that not every promotion brings in more buyers or more purchases, even when it lifts value in the short term. In a category where a growing share of volume moves on promotion, the shelf price is not the price buyers pay, and part of the leaders’ volume is being bought rather than earned.

For an entrant, two questions belong in the business case from the first draft. How much of the category’s growth is price, and how much is units? And how much of its volume moves on promotion, at what depth? The second feeds straight into pricing a consumer goods brand for Vietnam, where discount depth is decided before launch rather than discovered after it.

Where FMCG is bought: the channel map

Most FMCG in Vietnam still moves through traditional trade: neighbourhood grocery stores, wet markets and small independent shops. Its share falls a little every year, in cities and in the countryside, as minimarts, supermarkets and online channels grow, particularly in cities. During Tết 2025, NIQ found that traditional trade remained the first choice for 84% of shoppers, and that modern trade accounted for 14% of the season’s FMCG value.

Online is a small part of FMCG overall, and it grows fast. NIQ recorded e-commerce FMCG sales up 50% during Tết 2025, favoured for its promotions, and Kantar’s 2025 outlook credits online channels with an important part in the growth of personal care. Its weight differs widely between categories, which is one more reason a national online share says little about a particular product.

The map has a consequence that shapes the entry route before any marketing starts. The channel that carries most of the volume is the one a foreign brand cannot reach on its own: grocery stores are served by distributors’ sales teams and wholesalers, store by store, and that reach is what a distributor sells. The channels a brand can open itself, online first and then modern trade, carry a minority of FMCG value, although a larger share in the categories that are growing. Which route to take, and what each does to the brand’s view of its own sales, is the subject of distributor, partner or direct.

Which categories are growing, and why the leaders are losing share

Worldpanel’s 2026 outlook names the categories pulling ahead: lip care, sun protection, foundation, deodorants, multipurpose cleaners and convenient meal solutions, all tied to convenience, beauty, health and self-care. The sharpest volume declines were in dairy, packaged foods and beverages, which the report links to changing consumption occasions, food-safety concerns and shifting preferences.

The more striking finding is about who is winning. In nearly two-thirds of FMCG categories, the three largest manufacturers recorded notable share declines, with smaller brands gaining by serving narrower needs and moving faster. The report connects this to change inside households: families of three people or fewer now make up nearly half of all Vietnamese households, and they spend differently from larger families, with more weight on convenience, premium products and self-care.

Two cautions come with that encouraging picture. First, share moving away from the leaders is not the same as share available to a newcomer. It often goes to local brands that already have distribution, or to brands selling online in a higher price band. Second, the same report notes heightened public concern after investigations into counterfeit and substandard goods in 2025, which makes buyers more careful about names they do not know. A new brand has to earn trust on a surface the buyer already trusts, which usually means an official store on a marketplace or a recognised retail chain before the neighbourhood shop.

Tết: a fifth of the year in a few weeks

NIQ estimates that the Lunar New Year season contributes around 20% of annual FMCG value. Gifting and worship drive much of it, hampers have grown in relevance, especially among younger buyers and in the north, and premium versions sell in categories such as beer, impulse foods and milk-based drinks when they feel worth the spend.

For an entrant the season matters for timing more than for headline sales. Retailers buy ahead: NIQ found that 66% of Hanoi retailers stocked up one to two months before Tết, while 54% of retailers in Ho Chi Minh City did so within a shorter window. A brand whose first stock reaches its distributor in mid-January has missed the northern stocking window for that year, whatever its marketing plan says.

The date also moves. Tết fell on 17 February in 2026 and falls on 6 February in 2027, eleven days earlier. Any plan or report that compares calendar months across years will show a January surge or slump that is only the calendar. Comparisons should be aligned to the weeks before and after Tết, not to the month.

Before buying category data: six questions for the tracker

Sooner or later a brand that is serious about Vietnam buys a category cut from a tracker. What it gets depends on what it asks for. Six questions are worth putting to the provider before signing:

• Value and volume, separately. Ask for both, and for the average price paid, so that price growth can be separated from unit growth.
• Channel coverage. Which store types are measured or recorded, and how traditional trade is represented. A figure that covers modern trade well and grocery stores thinly describes a minority of the market.
• Promotion share. The share of volume sold on promotion, and how it has moved over two years.
• Share movement. Not only the current top brands, but who gained and lost share over two years, by channel and by price band.
• Seasonality. Monthly or four-weekly data with the Tết weeks marked, so the season can be read on its own.
• In-home or away from home. For a panel, whether the category is mostly consumed at home. If not, ask what the data misses.

The answers turn a market figure into an entry decision. They also make the purchase cheaper: a precise brief for one category and two channels costs far less than a national report nobody opens after the first meeting.

A worked example: one category, read three ways

The figures below are invented for the example. An imported personal-care brand looks at a category reported to be growing 6% a year, and plans to enter through online marketplaces and modern trade.

Read once, from the headline. The category grows 6%, so a plan that holds a steady share grows 6% a year as well.

Read again, for units. With the average price up 5%, units grew about 1%. The category is barely adding buyers or occasions, and more of its volume now moves on promotion. Any volume the brand sells will come from other brands, at a price that includes discounting.

Read a third time, for share in motion. The three largest brands lost 5 points of share, about USD 6 million of this year’s sales. Suppose the tracker shows that 60% of that moved within online and modern trade, mostly to brands priced above the leaders. That is about USD 3.6 million of sales changing hands in a year, in the brand’s own channels and in its price direction. That number, not the USD 120 million, is the pool a newcomer competes for.

Against it, a year-two target of USD 2 million would mean taking more than half of all the share that moved in those channels last year, against local challengers that are already winning it. A target of USD 0.8 million, a little over a fifth, is one a board can reasonably be asked to believe. At an average shelf price of USD 4, that is 200,000 units a year, or about 16,700 a month across both channels, a figure that can then be checked against what the leading listings in that price band sell today.

The example uses no data a brand cannot obtain. It reads the same category three times, and the plan is built on the third reading.

Where the figures in this article come from

National Statistics Office of Vietnam, report on socio-economic performance in the second quarter and first half of 2026, published in July 2026. Worldpanel by Numerator, Vietnam FMCG Outlook 2026, as reported by VnEconomy on 12 July 2026. Kantar Worldpanel, press release on the Vietnam FMCG Outlook 2025, 27 February 2025. NIQ, “Winning Vietnam’s Tet holiday: Optimizing FMCG growth for the next season”, 30 June 2025, covering Tết 2025. Tết dates from the Vietnamese lunar calendar.

The descriptions of household panels and store measurement are general; each provider’s coverage of particular store types should be confirmed with the provider. The worked example uses invented numbers.

Where this work stops

MWY does not sell or resell tracker data, run consumer fieldwork or distribute products, and takes no commission from research firms, data providers or distributors. What we do is read a category toward the decision it has to support.

Vietnam Market Research is six weeks on one product line: the category read for value, volume, channel and share in motion, the price band that holds, the channels a brand can open itself and the ones that need a partner, and a written answer on whether Vietnam deserves a budget, with what could not be established marked as such. Brands already selling consumer goods here will find how MWY works with them on the consumer goods and retail page.