Yandex Examined Online Shopping in Russia

Internet, March 26, 2007. Yandex issued an information bulletin ”Online shopping in Russia”. The data presented in the study cover the period from February 2006 to February 2007. The full bulletin text is available at http://download.yandex.ru/company/yandex_on_ecommerce_spring_2007.pdf.

According to Yandex, during 2006 Russian online shopping market has shown 42% growth*. Western online shopping turnover experienced a smaller growth — approximately by 25%.

Metropolitan residents demonstrate a notably higher degree of interest toward online shopping, than those who live in the regions. Moskovites use online stores more often than other people in Russia. Their share of visits to websites of online stores amounted to 62% among users in all regions of Russia.

In 2006 users expressed most interest toward computers, consumer electronics, photo equipment, telephones, and household appliances. Consumer interest was growing most actively toward the articles in the ”Constructing and Renovation” category (+30% during the year).

The number of stores in the Russian Internet increased approximately by 47% within the year. The fastest growth is experienced by the online businesses that offer equipment (+77%), construction materials (+68%), gifts and flowers (+62%), books (+52%), sporting goods (+51%), and children's accessories (+49%).

The number of stores selling various goods online does not always grow taking into consideration the demand for what they offer. Today, the scope of interest of Intenet shoppers more often than not includes clothes and shoes, household accessories, sporting goods, and construction materials.

The top ten brands most searched by Internet users in 2006 are mostly cell phone producers. The Top 10 Russian Internet vendors has companies that produce home appliances and consumer electronics. Expensive models of tv-sets and photo-cameras dominate the list of top ten most offered goods.

• The growth of the number of visits of Russian users to the websites of Russian online stores. According to Yandex, this figure corresponds to overall growth of Russian retail Internet sales market.

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