General Overview of Promotions Aimed at Unfair Competition

State management agencies on trade accept. However, when implementing promotional forms, businesses need to limit fraud, deception or exploitation to compete unfairly to eliminate their competitors. Healthy competition will be the best driving force for development, a clean and dynamic environment for businesses to affirm their role in the modern economy.

1.1.4. The role and significance of promotional activities

As one of the fields of activity in the economy, promotion plays a very important role in the business activities of traders. Especially in an open and competitive market.

For traders, promotions are used to promote the purchase and sale of goods and services in the market. Along with advertising, promotions always play a role as one of the most effective and efficient tools for developing trade. If a trader cannot effectively convey information about goods and services to customers and cannot attract their attention in a diverse market of similar goods and services, that trader will not be able to exploit and dominate the market in the current information explosion era. In fact, promotions are always a priority in the business strategy of traders. That is also the current popular trend in the business community regardless of the specificity of different industries and business fields.

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The operating trend of small and medium-sized traders who do not have a market share or a small and unstable market share is to orient promotions according to specific markets and potential customer groups to focus on capturing the foundation for long-term business activities. Along with launching new products and services into the market, there are always promotional programs.

Traders design according to their financial capacity and business goals. It is difficult to find a new product or service that is launched on the market without a corresponding promotional campaign. As for traders who have a stable market share, in addition to maintaining promotional activities to maintain market share and encourage loyal customers, they must continue to consider using promotional tools to develop new markets by stimulating consumer demand of the majority. Large traders always maintain promotional activities at medium and high levels depending on the time of the business year. There are traders who also organize promotions all year round, non-stop for their products, with continuous promotional programs for customers.

For customers, corresponding to the promotional activities of traders, they approach promotions to seek added values through the purchase and sale of goods and services to satisfy their individual consumption needs. Through the positive activities of promotions for related entities including traders who actively carry out promotions, other traders and customers in the economy, we can summarize the role of promotions as follows:

Through promotional activities, traders have good information about customers and promotional activities are the bridge between customers and traders."

Traders who actively conduct promotions will obtain the first source of information from customers who are directly involved in the promotional activities, including their opinions, attitudes, and reactions to the products, business services, and to the name and reputation of the trader. Through promotions, traders also have information from potential customers, who are likely to consume goods and use services. Although they are not directly involved in the promotional activities, they indirectly

receive information about promotional activities including their opinions and attitudes towards promotional activities and the business itself. Understanding and researching customers through promotional activities does not only stop at consuming the business's products, but more importantly, it must ensure that current customers are retained and potential customers are attracted.

As a result of collecting information from customers through promotions, traders will have the opportunity to see the advantages, disadvantages, position of goods and services of the trader, customer behavior in particular and in the market in general. This is the basis for businesses to make appropriate and timely decisions, closely following the requirements and demands of the market.

Promotional activities help traders obtain information from competitors.”

In the market, competition between participants in commercial activities, especially traders operating in the same business field, is an objective necessity. Therefore, each trader's promotional activities can affect the business strategy and actual commercial activities of other traders. Therefore, promotional activities partly reflect information about competitors from both perspectives: the trader's competitors actively conduct promotions or the trader itself as a competitor of other traders.

Every trader needs to collect the latest important data on the business of competitors, in which the promotional capacity and the actual implementation of promotional activities are extremely important components. With this valuable source of information, the trader can decide which competitors to challenge in the market. Along with the source of information

With good feedback from customers, traders will have the direction to invest in modern technology, innovate business or continue to maintain and promote their existing business strengths.

Promotional activities promote the sale of goods and the provision of services to become more convenient and dynamic; bring goods and services into the distribution channel in a reasonable way and stimulate the effectiveness of the sales force."

Convenience here is demonstrated through the fact that customers have direct access to goods and services (for example: being invited to try products, enjoying free services) or are facilitated through other goods and services to know the name of the merchant with the same product or service that the merchant is trading in (for example: consumers going shopping at a supermarket are given a wall calendar with the name and address of the business and the goods and services that the business sells or provides printed on it). In addition, through information channels such as newspapers, the Internet, radio and television or word of mouth between customers also contributes to spreading the image of the merchant and the merchant's goods and services. Thus, convenience is demonstrated in the construction of a foundation to recognize the merchant along with the goods and services. As a result of collecting information from customers through promotions, traders will have the opportunity to see the advantages, disadvantages, position of goods and services of the trader, customer behavior in particular and in the market in general. This is the basis for businesses to make appropriate and timely decisions, closely following the requirements and demands of the market.

 Promotional activities help traders obtain information from competitors .”

In the market, competition between participants in commercial activities, especially traders operating in the same

The business sector is an objective necessity. Therefore, each trader's promotional activities can affect the business strategy and actual commercial activities of other traders. Therefore, promotional activities partly reflect information about competitors from both perspectives: the trader's competitors actively conduct promotions or the trader itself as a competitor of other traders.

Every trader needs to collect the latest important data on the business of competitors, in which the ability to conduct promotions and the implementation of promotional activities in practice are extremely important components. Grasping this valuable source of information, traders can decide which competitors to challenge in the market. Along with good information from customers, traders will have a direction to invest in modern technology, innovate business or continue to maintain and promote their existing business strengths.

The convenience here is demonstrated through the fact that customers have direct access to goods and services (for example: being invited to try products, enjoying free services) or are facilitated through other goods and services that know the name of the merchant of the same product, the goods and services that the merchant is trading (for example: consumers going shopping at the supermarket are given a wall calendar with the name and address of the business and the goods and services that the business sells or supplies printed on it). In addition, through information channels such as newspapers, the Internet, radio and television or word of mouth between customers also contributes to spreading the image of the merchant.

and goods and services of traders. Thus, convenience is shown in the construction of a foundation to recognize traders along with goods and business services and the process of building trust and customer satisfaction through practical testing.

The dynamism of the process of consuming goods and services is partly created by the factor of proactively seizing the opportunity to decide when to conduct promotional activities and with what specific form and content, and partly created by the factor of proactively approaching customers one step ahead, not simply letting customers have to learn and decide to choose the necessary goods and services. The proactive thinking and behavior of considering customers as the center, the nucleus around which all activities of the trader revolve has demonstrated the dynamism in approaching and learning about the market of the trader. Thereby, goods and services are put into distribution channels in a reasonable manner, in parallel with promoting the strength and role of the sales force actively participating in the process of providing goods and services, contributing to increasing sales opportunities and revenue of the trader.

Promotion is an effective tool in the work of dominating trade and increasing competitiveness for goods and services of traders in the market.

Through promotional activities, traders reach out to existing and potential markets of the trader, providing existing and potential customers with necessary information, certain advantages and incentives to continue to retain existing customers or conquer more new customers or even attract customers of competitors. The good image of the business along with full and effective information about goods and business services makes the competitive advantage of the trader constantly increase, which increases the opportunity to buy and sell goods, provide services and increase the trader's ability to dominate the trade.

Through promotional activities, traders contribute to changing consumption structure and guiding customer tastes."

Merchants bring customers more choices and opportunities to access goods and services. This contributes to creating a path for customers to move towards goods and services with the active participation of merchants, expressed from the strategy to the actual implementation. Customer tastes and consumption structure partly affect the promotional activities of merchants as an inevitable result. Thus, promotional activities can lead to changes in the consumption structure, adjust customer tastes in a direction that is beneficial to merchants (marketing their image, selling and supplying more goods and services) and satisfy customer needs (consuming goods and services that meet quality requirements and prices suitable for their budget).

Commercial activities are promotional activities that bring high efficiency especially to the business activities of traders in certain cases.”

Promotional activities are usually used for newly launched goods and services with high competitive pressure, especially products with low unit prices but with the ability to generate high revenue. Another advantage of promotional activities is that they can be applied to both consumers and customers who are distribution intermediaries. Using promotional activities will achieve the goal of high consumption in a short time because through promotional techniques, more new consumers are attracted and stimulate loyal buyers or those who only buy occasionally. However, the rapid increase in consumption is only temporary and will gradually decrease after that promotional period. Therefore, traders must know how to balance, manage and adjust the investment level in promotional activities to suit the needs of the market.

actual conditions of traders, comply with the law and achieve the greatest efficiency.

1.2. General overview of promotions aimed at unfair competition

1.2.1. Concept of promotion for unfair competition

The concept of promotion for unfair competition is not defined as specifically as the concept of promotion. Article 46 of the Competition Law lists prohibited promotional activities. These are typical and common promotional activities that the Law prohibits businesses from carrying out, including:

“1. Organizing promotions that are fraudulent about prizes;

2. Dishonest or misleading promotions of goods and services to deceive customers;

3. Discriminating against the same customers in different promotional locations within the same promotional program;

4. Giving away goods to customers for trial use but requiring customers to exchange the same type of goods produced by another business that the customer is using for their own goods;

5. Other promotional activities prohibited by law.”

However, from the definition of promotion in the 2005 Commercial Law and the concept of unfair competition in the 2004 Competition Law, we can understand promotional activities aimed at unfair competition as follows:

Promotion for unfair competition is a commercial promotion activity of traders to promote the purchase and sale of goods and provision of services by giving customers certain benefits, but these acts are contrary to common ethical standards and cause damage.

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