I studied the different tactics of vendors in Chợ Tân Định market and Chợ Thị Nghè market. I want to see if the tactics were different depending on what goods the vendor was selling. I thought that vendors that were selling non-necessary goods would push their goods harder since often their sales may reflect impulse buys instead of necessaries like food.
Methodology
I weaved down each aisle of the market where similar goods were being sold. I walked slowly and gave a glance at each stall as a walked by. I noticed that I needed to at least glance at the stalls or else the vendors would not respond at all. As I walked I counted the number of stalls I passed, what they were selling and how or if the vendors responded to my presence in any way. If the aisle were not homogenous in the goods they were selling, I either just looked at the one homogenous side or skipped it.
Data
I decided to combine the data from both markets since they were very similar and I was looking at general patterns and not comparing the two. By far, most vendors did nothing to acknowledge me. If they addressed me, most did so in Vietnamese. The accessories vendors gestured the most, 13% of their actions were gestures. Fresh food, shoes, and fabric vendors all gestured more than they talked. The shelf stable food stalls did the least to get me to buy their food, 96% of them did nothing as I walked by. A tie follows this between household goods and fresh food with 89% of vendors doing nothing.
Tactic | Housegoods | Fabric | Food | Fresh food | Shoes | Clothes | Accessories |
Nothing | 89% | 78% | 96% | 89% | 78% | 88% | 75% |
Vietnamese | 11% | 6% | 0 | 0 | 9% | 8% | 13% |
English | 0 | 6% | 4% | 0 | 4% | 4% | 0 |
Gesture | 0 | 9% | 0 | 11% | 9% | 0 | 13% |
Discussion
This was a very informal study so I will not make any concrete conclusions. I didn’t see any immediate patterns in the tactics, but a few appeared once I had changed the raw data into percentages and looked at the graph. While not conclusive, the fresh food and shelf stable food vendors ignored me much more than the accessories, fabric, and clothing vendors. This is more or less what I thought might happen, although I had hoped to have more significant results. I think there will always be a market for fresh food vendors and staple food vendors because of the cultural preference for fresh foods, ability to choose, and the efficiency. I got more attention at accessories, shoes, and clothing stalls because they may get more business from foreigners and tourists than locals. This could possibly be hinting at the longevity of certain vendors at the markets. It seems like with the gaining popularity of supermarkets, markets may need to downsize and not all vendors will be able to stay in business. It seems likely that vendors that sell fresh and staple foods will stick around and other vendors, like accessories vendors, will feel the effects more strongly.
There were a lot of extraneous factors that may have affected the data that I collected including the distance away from the vendors. Usually clothing and fabric vendors are closer to the customers than the fresh food vendors because the aisles are much smaller in the middle where fabric and clothing stores are concentrated. Another problem was that I had trouble telling stores apart because they all sell the same thing and this may have affected my counting.
The data I collected would be completely different if we had gone at a different time of day. Most of the vendors were asleep, resting, or eating and were not concerned with customers. It would be interesting to study how the tactics changed depending on the time of day. Another interesting follow up question would be how much their language changes for foreigners. Not as many vendors addressed me in English as in Vietnamese, but I assume that is because the markets we visited are mostly for locals and so venders don’t need to know as much English.
The biggest lesson I learned was about observational studies. I wasn’t prepared for the chaotic nature of the market or the extraneous factors that probably skewed the data I collected. I also realized the importance of my behavior and the affect it has on the subjects. I my eyes lingered slightly longer on a stall or I smiled; it elicited more of a response from vendors.
I think this experiment worked for the most part, but in such an informal setting, I couldn’t really draw any conclusions. In the future, I would like to try something that I could connect to larger issues like urban development and social change. However, I think designing a study that I can actually draw substantial conclusions from is going to be very difficult.