Russia is Europe’s fastest growing online market, but what exactly is the current state of the Runet? Check out the infographic below for some useful insights:
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Immanuel Simonsen
Research Manager at Webcertain
As the Research Manager of multilingual web marketing agency Webcertain, Immanuel heads up the company’s global market research activities and large content marketing projects. He is the author of several reports and guides, including ‘The Essential Guide to Rel-Alternate-Hreflang’ and ‘The Webcertain Global Search and Social Report 2013’. Apart from being a tutor at the International Marketing School -- teaching online marketing professionals on business opportunities around the globe -- Immanuel is a regular speaker at the International Search Summit, a leading event series dedicated to multilingual search and social media marketing.
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@Chrys: Sorry for not replying before now. Good question, and obviously vital to making the correct decisions.
The Russian internet is still in a growth phase, meaning that many users are newcomers. Keep in mind that internet penetration is still below 50% of the total population. In this regard, as internet markets grow mature, consumer trust in ecommerce generally rises. Additionally, as the infographic indicates, the majority of orders currently include an offline process, where goods ordered on the internet are paid upon delivery.
For this reason, it’s an uphill battle for pure online players in Russia, as the far majority expect companies to have an offline presence where they can go in the event of facing a problem.
There may be many other reasons, such as poor online payment infrastructure, but low consumer trust is definitely one of the main reasons. However, the internet is rapidly evolving and will explode in value over the next few years, as Russians become more familiar with internet. Alongside, the ecommerce infrastructure will become more sophisticated, again resulting in increased consumer trust.
Hope this answers your question?
Interesting. Any reasons why Russians don’t buy online?