Combating unfair competition in the field of e-commerce advertising under current Vietnamese law

mixed and comparative advertising, advertising is understood as " Making a statement in any form related to commercial, business, craft, professional activities to promote the provision of goods, services; including real estate, rights and obligations ."[23, p.18]. The above definitions show that, as a legal term "advertising" regulated by the laws of countries, advertising activities always contain commercial purposes - introducing information to promote sales, providing services. " Advertising does not include information broadcast by broadcasting agencies related to the agency's programs and direct by-products of these programs; information about public services and calls for free charity work". [12, Article 18]

Commercial advertising:

Commercial advertising is defined based on the general concept of advertising. According to Article 102 of the Commercial Law 2005, the concept of commercial advertising is defined as: " commercial promotion activities of traders to introduce to customers about their business activities of goods and services" .

Thus, commercial advertising has the following characteristics:

Maybe you are interested!

First , commercial advertising is a form of commercial promotion:

Commercial advertising has existed for a long time in the history of human development. However, after a long period of infancy, only when the self-produced and self-consumed economy shifted to a commodity economy, did commercial advertising play a full role as a trade promotion activity. Modern industry allows manufacturers to mass produce, and many different types of goods appear on the market. Only then do business entities really have the need to search and expand the market in a short time to consume all the goods produced, quickly recover capital and maximize profits.

As a commercial promotion act, QCTM is always carried out with the aim of seeking opportunities to enter into contracts to buy and sell goods and provide services for the trader himself or for other traders in order to seek profits.

The commercial promotion is more clearly expressed and recognized by the advertiser because the implementation of commercial promotion activities is to introduce products and services to the advertiser. Commercial promotion does not increase the value of goods, but through advertising activities, the most basic information about goods and services is provided to consumers by the subjects. Thanks to that information, advertisers can easily carry out their intentions in bringing their products to the market and to consumers in a wide area. It can be said that in commercial promotion activities, commercial promotion is the activity that makes their goods reach consumers in the widest and most effective way.

QCTM is a supplementary activity, not carried out for direct consumption of goods and services, but only plays a role in promoting the group of behaviors of buying and selling goods and providing commercial services to be carried out regularly and continuously. Therefore, advertising TM often does not bring direct profits to advertisers, but it can be seen that the important role of this supplementary activity in promoting the buying and selling, exchanging goods and services in the market takes place much faster and more conveniently. Thanks to that, traders will sell more goods, provide more services, thereby increasing profits.

As a trade promotion activity, the target audience for QCTM is the customer, the customer can be a potential customer or not. Depending on the business strategy in each period, the advertising subject will determine the target audience. From there, the business will decide to choose the appropriate advertising messages. In terms of behavior, QCTM is the activity of purposefully using means to convey information about goods, services, and business activities of the subjects to intermediaries or to final customers in a certain period of time and space.

Advertising activities in a market economy are always carried out with two purposes: To highlight the advertised product compared to other products, to attract

attention of more potential customers and increase the opportunity to conclude contracts of the subjects. These are the two bases for considering the competitive nature of QCTM, an inevitable attribute of this activity in the market economy.

Second , the content of commercial advertising as well as advertising in general since its formation and development until now has always been associated with the concept of "communication" because advertising is informative in nature, providing information as well as certain content and understanding to a certain audience or group of audiences. The content of advertising is very diverse, it is necessary information about the products and services that the advertisement wants to inform or information about an individual, an organization, a political campaign program and maybe a social activity program, etc. This information meets the information needs of departments and groups that form a system of communication in society.

Third, regarding the subject: The subject of commercial advertising activities is a trader (including legally established economic organizations, individuals conducting commercial activities independently, regularly and with business registration) [20, Article 6]. As a business entity, a trader exercises the right to commercial advertising to support his/her business activities or performs advertising services for other traders under contract to seek profits [20, Article 103].

Fourth, in terms of form, commercial advertising as well as advertising in general is a special type of information provision that is different from other types of social information, specifically as follows:

In terms of information communication, commercial advertising is a form of selective information with the purpose of conveying information about the advantages of products, goods and services to the recipient according to the advertiser's will, so the information on the advertisement is information that is oriented to benefit the business whose goods and services need to be advertised.

Advertisers use many methods and solutions to form ideas that express advertising goals. When deciding on advertising content, advertisers have filtered information to make it impressive, attractive, appealing, creating uniqueness and worth.

information to the recipient to carry out issues such as: increasing the quantity of goods consumed in traditional markets; opening new markets; introducing new products; consolidating and building the reputation of product brands as well as business brands.

Forms of commercial advertising include:

Advertising displayed through advertising media attracts public attention within a certain space around the location of the media. This type of advertising includes outdoor advertising displayed on banners, boards, billboards, large-format streamers, etc.; transport advertising is carried out on light-emitting media, means of transport such as airplanes, cars, trains, trams, etc.

The Commercial Law 2005 distinguishes commercial advertising and the display and introduction of goods and services as two different forms of commercial promotion. Meanwhile, the Advertising Ordinance 2002 recognizes exhibitions and fairs as a form of advertising. In terms of nature, implementation method and impact, direct product display is also an advertising act. The form of placing products in public places so that the public can recognize them is similar to printing the image of the product on a billboard or poster placed in the same location.

This type of advertising on publications includes forms such as leaflets, book covers, catalogues, audio tapes, video tapes, and films. This is distinguished from press advertising in that the publications posting the advertisement do not have the legal status of the mass media recognized by law and society, so the effectiveness of the impact on the public as well as the legal regulation measures for the two types are different.

Direct advertising is advertising that uses information networks to reach individual customers through forms such as sales calls, SMS messages on mobile networks, and advertising emails. The characteristic of this type of advertising is to reach individual potential customers through the media.

modern communication such as telephone, fax, mobile phone, internet. To carry out this type of advertising, advertisers need to have personal information such as phone numbers, email addresses of a large number of potential customers. In this type, customers play a very passive role in receiving advertising.

Event advertising is carried out under cultural and sports events sponsored by businesses and traders with the aim of promoting their names. The sponsor's name will be used in advertising forms such as logo placement, posters, banners, product displays, and even naming the event.

Product advertising is a form of advertising that appears on the packaging, labels, and outer surface of a product, accompanying or attached to the product when sold. In this case, the law governing advertising is likely to overlap with the law on labeling. However, the regulations on labeling require mandatory information on the product to ensure consumer safety.

The above issues are the goals of the advertiser to achieve and the intention of the advertiser to persuade or remind. Persuasive advertising is the stage where the merchant wants to increase customers in a highly competitive market, the reminder advertising stage is an important stage because this stage maintains customers.

Concept of e-commerce advertising:

Concept of e-commerce:

The United Nations Commission on International Trade (UNCITRAL) Model Law on Electronic Commerce defines: “ E-commerce is the exchange of commercial information through electronic means, without the need to print out any stage of the entire transaction process .” [14]

Although there are many different definitions, the term e-commerce should be understood in a broad sense to cover all commercial relationships that arise with or without a contract. Any e-commerce relationship (E-commerce) deals with the supply or exchange of goods or services.

services; distribution agreements; commercial representation or agency, factoring, leasing; construction of works; consulting, engineering; exploitation and investment agreements; financing, banking; insurance; joint ventures and other forms of industrial or business cooperation; freight and passenger transport services, advertising, public services such as online tax declaration, online business registration, etc. Accordingly, the scope of e-commerce activities is very broad, cross-border, covering most areas of socio-economic activities, in which the buying and selling of goods and services is only a very small scope in e-commerce.

Therefore, the general unified concept can be as follows: "E-commerce is the implementation of part or all of the processes of commercial activities by electronic means connected to the Internet, mobile telecommunications networks or other open networks [25, p. 27].

Thus, with the above concept, it can be seen that e-commerce covers most commercial activities in general, including specific trade promotion activities such as e-commerce advertising.

 Concept of e-commerce advertising :

Based on the concept of e-commerce and commercial advertising with the characteristics, nature and legality of commercial advertising and e-commerce, the author would like to define as follows: " E-commerce advertising is the act of commercial promotion activities of traders to introduce to customers about their business activities of goods and services by electronic means connected to the Internet, mobile telecommunications networks or other open networks"

However, this concept and the cross-border nature of e-commerce also lead to requirements for improving the law in general and for e-commerce advertising in particular. Many experts believe that with the power of technology, this market will continue to grow and develop strongly in the future. [23, p. 116]. Therefore, market demand is increasingly growing and requires a legal corridor in the market to ensure the healthy development of e-commerce advertising in a fair competitive environment.

Characteristics of e-commerce advertising

Firstly, it helps businesses introduce products and services to a large number of customers at low cost and high efficiency, and this is the development trend in the 21st century.

Second, e-commerce advertising is carried out on the Internet and other open telecommunications networks, so it is no longer limited by geographical space or advertising duration. In addition, e-commerce advertising helps reduce the distance between suppliers and consumers, making commercial transactions easily successful between individuals and businesses without taking much time.

E-commerce advertising helps business owners save more costs, time, and effort than marketing activities in the market. E-commerce advertising uses information networks to reach individuals, organizations, and customers, including forms such as sales calls, SMS messages on mobile networks, and electronic advertising letters. The characteristic of this type of advertising is that it does not stop at a large number of unspecified customers like other types of advertising, but reaches individuals and potential customers through modern means of information such as telephone, fax, mobile phone, internet, social network Facebook... To do this, advertisers need to have some personal information such as phone numbers and email addresses of a large number of potential customers. In the above e-commerce advertising, customers play a very passive role in receiving advertising.

With the cross-border feature through the internet, social network Facebook... e-commerce advertising is also a bridge between business partners globally through the internet, two or more partners can contact to sign contracts or recruit and employ workers between different countries, for example, a US software company through social network advertising to recruit IT (Information Technology) workers, through the internet the parties sign and execute labor contracts, workers in Vietnam can use the computer through the teamviewer application to control and perform cursor operations on the computer working in the United States...

Also from the above characteristics of e-commerce advertising, "for direct advertising, the law pays special attention to the issue of protecting personal information of advertising recipients, preventing forms of harassment and annoyance caused by advertising abuse " [23 , p. 33]

Forms of advertising in e-commerce advertising

The Internet is a developed media environment, in which internet users are mostly educated people with high incomes... The Internet is an environment that businesses are interested in, e-commerce advertising develops strongly and has great potential in the internet environment because online advertising reduces many costs because the price of online advertising is very cheap, in terms of form, images, sounds, texts, movies can be used...

 Display advertising :

Display advertising is the oldest form of commercial advertising in any commercial industry. Typical display advertising uses text, images, graphics and icons to promote products or services.

There are 02 types of display ads:

Online display advertising is considered to be less expensive, it also offers a wider reach than forums. You can advertise on the web by purchasing web space either for a month or a year depending on your advertising needs. It also offers different display approaches such as text only, images, animations, graphics and any other multimedia services.

Online display advertising is currently the hottest trend in promoting your product or service. This is due to the fact that there is a noticeable increase in internet users every day. More and more people are relying on the internet for their basic needs including shopping [11].

 Search advertising :

Search advertising is a form of advertising on popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing... but mainly on Google.