Title:
Regulating Online Marketplace Platforms in Vietnam: A Comparative Doctrinal Analysis and a Control-based Liability Framework

Authors:
TRAN Ngoc Diep, LE DUY Hai, Viet Nam

Abstract:

This article revises and substantially strengthens the original manuscript by narrowing its analytical scope, sharpening the research gap, clarifying the study design, and expanding its legal and theoretical grounding. The article focuses specifically on online marketplace platforms that organize third-party transactions - for example, marketplace-style e-commerce platforms - rather than on social networking services or the digital ecosystem in general. The core argument is that liability should not be allocated by formal platform labels alone, but by the degree of operational control that a platform exercises over market access, information flows, ranking, payment, logistics, and post-transaction remedies. Methodologically, the study employs doctrinal legal analysis of Vietnam's e-commerce and consumer-protection framework, combined with issue-based comparative analysis of the European Union and China. The analysis identifies four structural deficiencies in the current Vietnamese framework: limited differentiation among types of platforms, weak constructive-knowledge standards, overreliance on reactive notice-and-takedown logic, and fragmented enforcement across regulatory domains. In response, the article develops a control-based liability framework structured around four variables - control, knowledge, benefit, and intervention capacity - and translates that framework into a three-tier liability model. The article contributes to the literature on platform governance by connecting intermediary liability doctrine to the institutional realities of marketplace platforms in emerging economies. It also offers a concrete reform agenda for Vietnam that is scalable, innovation-sensitive, and compatible with contemporary consumer-protection and digital-governance trends.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.51505/IJEBMR.2026.10408