Last year the Russian e-commerce market reached reached approximately $16.3 billion in 2016 (physical goods only), including an estimated $4.3 billion for cross-border sales, mainly from China, according to EWDN’s latest industry report.
A survey conducted in September 2016 by Yandex Market, a major online shopping aggregator in Russia, and GfK Ru, a market and consumer information company, highlights Russian online shoppers’ preferences among local and foreign e-commerce sites and reveals the most popular shopping categories.
Russians’ online shopping site preferences
The main reason many Russians shop online is because it saves time and money. There also is the opportunity to buy a product that may not be available in local stores. Russian online shoppers prefer foreign online shopping to domestic online shopping, because there is a greater possibility of saving money. The downside that may turn Russian shoppers off is the longer delivery periods.
The popularity of online foreign stores in Russia has grown significantly. Specifically Chinese online stores have rapidly increased in popularity among Russian online shoppers. In early 2016, Chinese online stores had the same share of customers with stores in the shopper’s own Russian city. Chinese online stores are particularly popular in cities ranging in population from one hundred thousand to five hundred thousand people. This is most likely due to the fact that there are fewer retail store options in smaller cities and towns.
In Moscow the most popular sites to shop are hometown stores. This is also sen in cities with over 800,000 inhabitants. While cities with less than 800,000 inhabitants are equally or even more interested in shopping on sites for out of town stores. Chinese sites are also easy competitors to out of town store sites in smaller cities, probably because they have a larger selection of products at a cheaper price.
Top items Russians purchase online
Russians commonly shop abroad for specific items, mostly clothing and shoes. Other products Russian online shoppers tend to buy from foreign online stores include baby products, cosmetics, and home and garden goods. The most common things purchased on domestic online shops also include clothes and cosmetic, as well as small appliances and health products. While phones and tablets are not being bought from abroad online any more than in recent years, they are being bought less in Russian stores.
In 2016, 64% of Russian online shoppers made at least one unplanned purchase. Women out order men when it comes to spontaneous purchases. Respondents of the survey said that promotions and discounts are what usually made them impulsively buy online.
Yandex published the research as a follow up to other surveys Gfk Rus conducted earlier in the spring of 2016 that revealed that the number of online shoppers in Russia has grown. The survey showed that every fourth resident of Russia from 16 to 55 years old bought at least one item online each year. In spring 2015, it was only one in five residents in Russia.
The biggest reason behind shoppers making unplanned purchases online in both 2015 and 2016 was because of discounts and deals. The second most common reason was free delivery, which is common for most e-retailers in Russia. This past year in 2016 discounts and referrals were the two areas that increased as reasons for purchases, while most other categories slightly dropped aside from social ads and push notifications which remained the same.
