MySQL concatenation operator

Whats good about using concat is that you can pass different data type columns and concat string representations

 SELECT concat('XXX',  10.99, 'YYY', 3, 'ZZZ', now(3)) as a; 

Output

a
-----
XXX10.99YYY3ZZZ2018-09-21 15:20:25.106

MySQL CONCAT function is used to concatenate two strings to form a single string. Try out following example:

mysql> SELECT CONCAT('FIRST ', 'SECOND');
+----------------------------+
| CONCAT('FIRST ', 'SECOND') |
+----------------------------+
| FIRST SECOND               |
+----------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

To understand CONCAT function in more detail consider an employee_tbl table which is having following records:

mysql> SELECT CONCAT(id, name, work_date)
    -> FROM employee_tbl;
+-----------------------------+
| CONCAT(id, name, work_date) |
+-----------------------------+
| 1John2007-01-24             |
| 2Ram2007-05-27              |
| 3Jack2007-05-06             |
| 3Jack2007-04-06             |
| 4Jill2007-04-06             |
| 5Zara2007-06-06             |
| 5Zara2007-02-06             |
+-----------------------------+

|| is the ANSI standard string concatenation operator, supported by most databases (notably not MS SQL Server). MySQL also supports it, but you have to SET sql_mode='PIPES_AS_CONCAT'; or SET sql_mode='ANSI'; first.

You were using ORACLE type of concatenation. MySQL's Should be

 SELECT CONCAT(vend_name, '(', vend_country, ')')

Call the CONCAT() function and separate your values with commas.