Value chain research has great significance for the sustainable development of products, especially in the agricultural sector. Value chain analysis has a central role in determining the distribution of benefits of the participants in the chain. This role means analyzing profit and margin/product to determine who benefits from participating in the chain and which participants could benefit from more organization and support. Besides that, policymakers have timely recommendations to distribute benefits among actors fairer, create higher added value, and better support chain development. The article reviews the research on agricultural product value chains in Vietnam and the world. Research focuses on analyzing value chain approaches Commodity Chain Analysis, Porter (1985), Global value chain and GTZ (2007), the number of actors in the value chain, profit distribution among actors participating in the chain, some popular tools in value chain analysis, and solutions to upgrade the chain. The paper also points out the gaps in the current agricultural value chain research: 1) There is no combination of SCP analysis framework with other approaches; 2) Researchers have not analyzed the causes of the mark up through the actors or the market power of the actors; 3) There are few studies combine all three models: Porter's five forces, PEST and SWOT to have a complete basis for proposing solutions to upgrade the value chain. Keywords: Actors, Agriculture, Profit Distribution, Value Chain