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E-commerce in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe: Russia
2007-05-23
Gemius SA, the largest online research agency in Central and Eastern Europe, has published official report concerning e-commerce market in Russia. This is a part of the complex research project on the e-commerce market in countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In total the study was conducted in 8 countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.
Official expert of Russian part of the project was e-commerce consulting portal Oborot.ru, and research partner – news search engine Redtram.ru.
In-depth analysis of attitudes and usage preferences of Russian Internet users towards shopping in e-shops and e-auctions was carried out thanks to the use of online pop-up questionnaires. The sample of 3 153 respondents was gathered throughout the research period and then weighted for the structural offline data provided by the report “The Internet in Russia” published by “FOM: Public Opinion Foundation” (autumn-winter 2006 release) to ensure sample representativeness.
According to study main findings, electronic commerce market in Russia is at an incipient phase of evolution, but it possesses huge potential and grows rapidly. Internet-users are generally well informed about possibility of shopping online (98% awareness of such possibility), but just a little over half of those who’ve heard about online shopping had actually bought something on Internet – 53%. Gemius’ analysts have found out that despite of considering (66 % of respondents) and even attempting to buy (26 % of those, who consider), still very few Internet users think about e-shopping as a worthy alternative to traditional shopping.
However, those who already have experience in Internet shopping, make online purchases few times a year (45%) or even more often (23%).
Research has revealed that 43% of internet users prefer to find out about new mobile phones and accessories from online stores. 45% of e-buyers order travel services online at least once a year, also about 50% of e-shoppers buy cosmetics, computer games and kids’ products few times a year. More than a quarter of e-buyers (27%) consider that lowering the prices would make them buy online more frequently, and at the same time users buying in online-stores (56%) and online-auctions (43%) already perceive “low prices” as a characteristic feature of e-shops comparing to traditional ones.
The main obstacle of e-commerce’ development in Russia is the lack of trust in Internet payment transactions. 43% of e-buyers declared that purchasing online is risky, and the payments are in most cases still are made in cash. Top reasons for resigning from purchasing online are: too complicated procedure of ordering (31%), no opportunity to actually see the product (27%) and a fear that payment through Internet is unsafe (23%).
The special section of the report is dedicated to online-auctions. In spite of the fact that purchases on online-auctions attract only 13 % of the Internet-users, more often younger ones -in the age of 18-24 years, the reasons for the using this shopping channel are essential. These are: presence of the goods that are difficult to be found in some other place (52 %), lower prices than in a traditional shop (43 %) and an opportunity to buy second-hand products (39 %).
It is possible to learn from report about the attitude to purchases on the Internet as a whole, experience of online-shopping and frequency of purchases among various groups of users (including age group of 15-18 years). There are presented detailed ratings of most popular products by categories, most popular online-stores and online-auctions. The special attention is given to comparison of e-shops’ and e-auctions’ advantages and disadvantages. An important part of the report is dedicated to analysis of the potential of Russian e-commerce market, profile of "not-buyers" and their reasoning for “not buying”.
Gemius’ experts consider, that obtained data will allow not only to improve interaction of "sellers" and "buyers" of Russian e-commerce market, but also to open a new stage of development of this business in Russia.
Gemius SA - the largest online research agency in Central and Eastern Europe. The company has been dedicated to Internet market research since its founding in 1999. Resulting from its efforts to maximize trustiness, authenticity and accuracy, Gemius is already present in several countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine. Company’s main business areas - statistical, marketing and media researches in Internet. In Russia Gemius has opened its business offices in July 2006 and now runs not only client dedicated projects but also conducts initiative researches such as e-commerce study or Runet audience measurement.
Download a complete version of the press release in a Word file.
For more information please contact: Marina Solovyeva, marina.solovyeva@gemius.com