The three routes into Vietnam are not different prices for the same service. They are different services.
An importer
The narrowest. An importer brings goods through customs and passes them on. It is the cheapest arrangement available and it is the right one if you already have demand — if doctors are asking for your product and the only missing piece is a legal route in.
If you do not have demand, an importer will not create it, and it is unreasonable to be disappointed that they did not.
Your own office
The most expensive and the most complete. A subsidiary gives you control of pricing, promotion and data, and it makes sense at a certain volume — which is higher than most first entrants estimate, because the cost is not the office, it is the years spent building relationships that a local company already has.
It is also the slowest. A representative office does not have the hospital accounts and the pharmacy relationships that decide whether anything sells; it has to acquire them, one at a time, against companies that already hold them.
A marketing company
The middle route, and the one worth understanding properly because it is the least well defined of the three. What you are appointing is registration, distribution and promotion together — a partner who gets the product approved, gets it into the channel, and then does the work of making people want it.
The judgement to make is whether the partner actually has the relationships in the categories and regions you care about. A distributor with excellent hospital accounts in the South East and nothing in the delta is a good partner for some products and a poor one for others.
The honest version
We are a marketing company, so this piece is not disinterested and you should read it that way. What we would say regardless of who you appoint: ask any prospective partner which of these three things they actually are. Some importers describe themselves as distributors, and some distributors describe themselves as marketing companies, and the difference only becomes clear about eight months in.
