Follow us on:   

Online retail in Russia triples in the past four years
February 19, 2013, 1:33 pm

[Getty Images]

11 million internet users in Russia are active online-buyers. [Getty Images]

A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) recent report says online retail in Russia went up from $3.5 billion to 10.4 billion despite the poor e-commerce logistics and infrastructure across the country and traditional dislike towards online purchases.

The new research figures reveal Moscow and Saint Petersburg account for over half of all online purchases in Russia.

Muscovites and residents of the Moscow region account for 45 per cent of all purchases, while residents in Saint Petersburg and its region account for 11 per cent.

The volume of trade, however, is far from those in US and China, but nearly level with Brazil and India.

E-commerce has been on the rise over the past years in all of the BRICS countries.

The number of internet users in Russia approached 60 million by the end of last year – almost half of the country’s population.

Eleven million of those are active online-buyers.

Analysing the behavioral modes of online Russian shoppers, the PwC report says Russian buyers are among those who first compare the goods online, and then buy them in the shops.

Russia’s online advertising market grew 35 per cent year-on-year to a market value of 56.3 billion rubles ($1.9 billion) in 2012.

Daria Chernyshova