HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

ATTITUDES OF CONSUMERS TOWARD KOREAN COSMETICS IN HO CHI MINH CITY

Student Student ID Class

: Phm Th Bch Trm : 09DH40363 : KQ0906

Instructor: Mr. Chu Quc K (MA)

HO CHI MINH CITY MAY 11th 2012

Introduction
In a modern life, the beauty care has become one of the most essential needs of Vietnamese. Most female teenagers and women spend at least one or two hour per day for makeup in the morning and skin care before going to bed. Catching this situation, there are more and more external cosmetic companies that have invested and expanded market into Vietnam, especially Korean cosmetics. There were some researches on the advantages for investing and developing the industry of beauty products in Vietnam. V.P report (Dan Tri Magazine, 2005) presented that according to the investigation of the market, Vietnamese s average spending for new cosmetic is only 4 USD/ person/year, four or five times less than the other countries in the same area. However, with over 80 million people, Vietnam is a potential market. The time from late 2004 to now is the most developing period of this field in Vietnam with growth rate of 30% - 40% per year. A research made by Nguyen Sa (Viet Bao Online News) in 2005 showed that DeBon cosmetics company which started operating in Vietnam since 1997 was the detonator for the cosmetics industry with sales increased continuously from 30-40% per year. Recently, in October 2011, a report by Ngoc Linh (tiin.vn) presented that Hallyu wave from Korean movies and music has caused great impact on young Vietnamese. They want to imitate their idols, especially in the makeup so Korean beauty products are also extremely popular. It can be seen easily that today Korean cosmetics has a leading position in the cosmetics industry in Vietnam. However, there has not been a detailed survey on attitudes of customers toward Korean cosmetics today. The purpose of this study was to examine the satisfactions of consumers on Korean products for makeup and skin care in Ho Chi Minh City. It is hoped that information from this study may be useful in identifying customers needs and tastes for developing marketing strategies for any cosmetic companies in the future.

Method
The investigation was carried out mainly in three central districts 1, 10 and 11, HCMC. Instruments of this investigation were observations, questionnaires, and interviews. The majority of subjects were dynamic teenage girl and women around the ages of 18 to 30. Observations were made at local Korean cosmetic shops _ Etude House and The Face shop, Maximark supermarket in Dist.10, HCMC, and Parkson Department in Dist.11, HCMC. Sellers of four cosmetic stores were interviewed. A total of 200 questionnaires were delivered randomly to students of The Culture and Arts College and Academy of Music in Dist.1, HCMC, where gathering many youth and dynamic customers of cosmetic for work and performance; an online version of this questionnaire was made under the help of Google Spreadsheet (spreadsheets.google.com) and was posted on popular Vietnam online forum Lam Cha Me (www.lamchame.com) and was shared on the social network Facebook (www.facebook.com). All collected data was digitalized and statistics were made using Microsoft Excel and IBM SPSS Statistics software.

Material
Observations were performed at Korean cosmetics displays on supermarket, department and local cosmetic shops to find out the volume of Korean cosmetics and the ease of recognition. Consumers behaviors at supermarket and department were also observed to identify their attention on cosmetics and the final buying decisions. As for interview questions for sellers at cosmetic shops, there were two parts: the first two questions (question 1 and 2) were about determination of the best selling cosmetics; and the purpose of the other question (question 3) was to find out the rate of Korean cosmetic companies those shops often placed orders. As for the questionnaires, beside the first part that was used to collect personal information for classification purposes, the second part (survey questions) were consisted of 9 questions divided into four groups: The first group (question 1 and 2) was designed to identify the frequency of cosmetics using per day; The second group (question 3, 4, and 5) aimed at finding the tendencies and reason of buying habit; The third group (question 6 and 7) was about figuring out the cosmetic brand loyalty. The last group (question 8 and 9) was to find out the satisfaction of consumers toward the products.

Reference List
Books: Eric Mooi and Marko Stastedt (2011) A Concise Guide to Market Research: The Process, Data, and Methods Using IBM SPSS Statistics (1st ed.) Mark Tungate (2011) Branded Beauty: How Marketing Changed the Way We Look Internet: Lam Ngoc (2012) Tu lan song van hoa den lan song my pham, URL: http://www.qdnd.vn/qdndsite/vi-VN/91/68/77/77/77/177083/Default.aspx Ngoc Linh (2011) Khi nhung nguoi Viet tre len con sot Han, URL: http://tiin.vn/chuyen-muc/song/gioi-tre-viet-len-con-sot-hallyu.html Tung Nguyen (2012) Shieseido, URL: Chieu doc de thon tinh thi truong Viet Nam cua

http://dantri.com.vn/c76/s76-562032/chieu-doc-de-thon-tinh-thi-

truong-viet-nam-cua-shiseido.htm V.P (2005) Thi Truong My Pham: Bung no, URL: http://vietbao.vn/Kinhte/Thi-truong-my-pham-bung-no/30055869/88/