Lotte Mart, the grocery label under South Korea’s retail conglomerate Lotte Group, is accelerating its penetration into Southeast Asia, opening the 14th store in Vietnam to make most of the favorable business condition there for Korean names.
Lotte Mart said Tuesday it will add a store in Cau Giay, the urban district of Hanoi and home to seven colleges including Vietnam National University, Hanoi. It is Lotte Mart’s 14th opening in Vietnam and 183rd in the world.
The Cau Giay store will focus on serving freshly-cooked foods, easy-to-cook meals and small-packaged items for single households and college students who are the majority of residents living near the new store. About 35 percent of fresh foods will be supplied from neighboring regions for freshness. The Korean retailer also is planning to launch various marketing campaigns using social network services to appeal to the young with promotional perks, including an up to 49 percent discount for new members of Lotte Members card.
Lotte Mart has been actively expanding its overseas stores since it pulled out from China. Its Chinese operations were hit hard by Beijing’s punitive actions and consumer boycott of Korean products after its parent group yielded its golf course site to host the U.S. anti-missile system THAAD in 2017. It had to leave the country after selling all operations in China. It now runs 46 stores in Indonesia, 14 in Vietnam and 123 in Korea.
