The government struggles to fight escalating food safety issues in Vietnam. However, government measures yielded little evidence of improvement to domestic food safety. For that reason, consumers lower their trust in the government. The current market context, and low trust towards the government left consumers to count on their own judgement for the sake of their own food safety. This study applied choice experiment method based on Lancastrian consumer theory and random utility theory to elicit consumers’ preferences on traceable safe foods and the perception regarding food safety. The impact of food safety related attributes was identified in the order of decreasing magnitude: freshness, label, traceability, certification, and price. Results suggested that Vietnamese consumers adhered food quality to food appearance (i.e. freshness) and made judgement with such perception. This paper also highlighted a noticeable reverse impact of the level of food certification on consumer preferences toward safe choices, which contributed to the current food safety situation in Vietnam. The reason was expected to be trust issues in the government, the impact of food safety context, and consumers’ false perception of food safety. To enhance trust, food traceability appears to be an indispensable and potential instrument. Besides, traceability information should be addressed via food label precisely to augment visual inspection as well as to increase its effectiveness. Additionally, consumers are willing to pay a price premium for traceable products, thus inducing suppliers to participate in food traceability. Nevertheless, the government must play a more proactive role in market supervision and education to facilitate the development of food traceability.

Supplier selection is a significant phase of procurement. However, a little systematic research on supplier selection criteria in the textile and apparel industry has been conducted in Vietnam. The purpose of this study is to identify criteria that constitute to the supplier selection decision of purchasers. An integrated approach involving purposeful sampling and theoretical sampling is used. Qualitative data are collected via expert interviews from 20 companies ranging from spinning to textiles to garments as well as ancillary industries in both southern and northern Vietnam. The data are analyzed using NVIVO 8.0 software. We assume that exploring the extant supplier selection criteria used by Vietnamese textile and apparel companies will contribute to the literature concerning procurement in particular and supply chain management in general.

Floriculture is an important agricultural sector of Lam Dong province and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The favorable climate conditions of Lam Dong province have led to the strong development of the floriculture sector, while high demand due to lifestyle changes in Ho Chi Minh City promises a potential market for the cut orchid industry. The adoption of modern technology is vitally important for small-scale producers, because it not only improves the quality but also increases the yield of flower production. However, very little research has been conducted on the adoption of technology in the floriculture industry at the farm level. A sample of 228 producers was therefore collected in Lam Dong province and Ho Chi Minh City in 2018 to investigate the current status of, and influential factors for, technology adoption by floriculture producers in the South of Vietnam. Conditional mixed-process probit models were applied to examine decisions on the adoption of technologies associated with greenhouse, irrigation and seedlings in floriculture. The results reveal that farmers have strong preferences in terms of modern floriculture technologies and that demographic characteristics such as gender, age, education and income, as well as farm size, learning process, farmers’ perception of technology and market information are the key determinants of technology adoption in floriculture

To maintain the Philippines’ competitive edge in the trading of agricultural products, this study identifies factors that significantly influence the Philippines’ participation in the mango global value chain. The study employs a causal research design with panel regression analysis using pooled regression, a fixed effect model and a random effects model and determines the robustness of the models using the Hausman test. The resulting fixed effect model reveals that gross domestic product, remoteness and global competitiveness have a significant positive effect on gross exports and value-added, while being land-locked and bilateral distance have a significant negative effect. Among the identified variables, remoteness has the greatest influence. The resulting model is limited to the analysis of the Philippine mango global chain’s integration in terms of gross exports and value-added contribution to the economy of the country. The underlying factors not included in the model are not given emphasis. This study identifies the factors that correctly estimate the Philippines’ mango global integration. The policy recommendations, if implemented, can guarantee strong integration of Philippine mangoes in the global chain, which will facilitate the flow of factor payments in the economy, thereby raising the standard of living of Philippine citizens and creating more social protection for the Philippine people. Previous studies have been conducted describing the Philippine global value chain integration, but these studies are limited in that they use descriptive analysis and did not identify the factor/s that will improve the mango global value chain’s integration.