In a survey of nearly 3,000 active Internet users across the country, ROMIR Monitoring found that 95% of RuNet users prefer making purchases in specialized stores vs. 23% who said they were customers of Internet stores.

On its face, this is not great news for e-tailers. But digging a little deeper into the numbers, there are some bright spots for the future of online sales in Russia.



The highest level of popularity was found among young respondents ages 20 to 24 and those with incomes above RBL25,000. Both groups indicated that 68% had shopped online. Nothing is certain, but the trend would seem to indicate that as the young grow older and the Russian economy improves, there will be increasing numbers of online shoppers.

In the current group of online shoppers, 39% are at the high income level, and 41% are in Moscow. In fact, geography seems to play an important part in determining online shopping preferences — with only 3% of online users in Siberia shopping online.