Russian shoppers seeking bargains

34% of country's online trades are conducted by Chinese firms, led by AliExpress and JD

Chinese e-commerce sites are attracting a growing numbers of Russian online customers, according to figures from Yandex. Money, Russia's biggest online payment service provider.

After the rouble's plunge in value in recent times, Russian online shoppers are shifting away from European and United States retailers and turning to Chinese e-commerce retailers for more affordable products, said Anna Kuzmina, Yandex.Money's international development officer.

Improved logistics have also made deliveries from China faster and easier.

"Price is the key reason Russian shoppers are buying from Chinese retailers," she said.

"When we looked closely at the growing numbers, we realized they were being led by Russia's small villages and cities.

"In recent years, along with our currency, our purchasing power has weakened, but Chinese retailers in most cases offered lower prices than Russian outlets."

Trade volume of Russian consumers on Chinese sites reached $2 billion in 2015, Russian research agency Data Insight estimated, while transactions through Yandex.Money increased by 38-fold last year.

Clothes, shoes and mobile phones were the Russians' favorite buys.

The company's figures chime strongly with those quoted by Xinhua News Agency last year, when it reported more than 1 million packages were delivered to Russia during China's Singles Day (Nov 11) and Black Friday shopping sprees last year.

Crucial to the steady growth of goods heading west has also been rapid improvements to logistics.

Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com Inc, for instance, already has a partnership in place with Russia's biggest postal operator Russian Post, for faster delivery to the country.

The trend to buy cheaper goods is very much in line with the overall economic conditions in Russia. There have been huge falls in the value of its currency, the result of both economic sanctions against the country and the falling prices of oil.

Russian GDP dropped 4 percent in 2015, and the rouble lost a further 20 percent of its value against the dollar after losing half of its value in 2014.

Despite the overall negative outlook, however, analysts remain upbeat over the prospects of Russia's e-commerce market.

Malcolm Pinkerton, research director for e-commerce at London-based market researcher Planet Retail, predicts the sector will be worth $68.8 billion by 2019, which would represent a 169 percent surge on last year.

Jack Ma, the founder of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, told the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, in December that he thinks Russia could duplicate China's e-commerce success for their similar e-commerce infrastructure.

"There's great trade potential between China and Russia. This means we can do a lot of things together," he was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Ma's own e-commerce platform AliExpress is currently the market leader for Chinese retailers selling there, said Yandex's Kuzmina.

Kuzmina also said that JD, which expanded its operation to Russia a year ago, is catching up at a tremendous rate.

"Thirty-four percent of online trades in Russia are made by Chinese giants, and most of that is AliExpress and JD," she said.

iris@chinadailyhk.com