At the end of last week, marketing company Nielsen reported that China surpassed the United States in online retail sales. At the end of 2014, the online sales market in the Middle Kingdom reached $ 2 trillion, and the entire Internet economy of the country amounted to 7% of GDP. The Russian e-commerce market looks tiny against the background of the Chinese one. In the best case, by the end of the year, it can reach $ 13 billion.
Now the growth of Russian Internet trade is mainly due to cross-border trade, where China is again in the lead. “The main driver of growth in cross-border e-commerce in Russia in 2014 was China - its share in the number of orders almost doubled - from 45 to 72% in one year,” analysts say.
In theory, amid devaluation, cross-border trade should have almost died, but it has only coughed and is now recovering again, said Ivan Kurguzov, head of the Electronic Commerce cluster of the Russian Electronic Communications Association.
Despite the economic crisis, Russia remains a promising sales market, confirms the commercial director of ZheldorExpedition Evgeny Mozhaev, however, the Chinese are losing their competitive price advantage due to long delivery times. It averages from three weeks to two months.
Mozhaev believes that this situation is forcing Russian online stores to cut prices and merge with each other.
Consolidation awaits Russian participants in the e-commerce market, Andrei Karpov, executive director of the Association of Retail Companies (ACORT), is also confident.
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