In the near future, the difference between online stores and conventional trading formats will disappear for customers

In the first quarter of 2016, Yandex.Market disclosed quarterly revenue for the first time: 1 billion rubles, an increase of 55% compared to last year. It is no secret that a significant part of this growth is associated with the calm that reigned in the market at the beginning of 2015. In the wake of the excitement around the exchange rate, Russians bought everything they could afford in stores and entered 2015 with a fair amount of household appliances, but without free cash. Over the course of the year, the market gradually began to recover, many product categories came to life again, and people began to return to their usual shopping rhythm. However, some things have changed irrevocably - both in the market itself and in consumer behavior. The crisis has taught us to look differently at money, necessary and spontaneous purchases. Changing your smartphone every six months is no longer such a vital necessity as it once seemed.

What's new in online retail in 2015? Since we are talking about electronics, sales in general have fallen as expected. According to Romir, in traditional retail - by 37%, in the e-commerce segment - by 25% (on Yandex.Market, however, by only 3%). However, for a number of product categories, the difficult situation has become the reason for the growth of sales in online trading. Thus, for the first time, the category of goods for home and garden surpassed consumer electronics, which had been the leader for many years, in terms of total revenue on Yandex.Market. Building and repairing something yourself is once again becoming a good tradition for us.

While sports and leisure goods are sagging in traditional retail, the demand for them in online stores is growing - because here buyers have more opportunities to compare products, choose the best price and save. If, according to Romir, in 2015 sales of sports and leisure goods in regular stores fell by 21%, then at Market they increased by 24%.

The categories of beauty and health products, as well as children's products, have greatly revived. Interest in the former (that is, user traffic) has doubled over the year. The demand for children's products on the Market has increased by approximately 1.5 times.

The behavior of online shoppers has also naturally changed. Price has become an even more significant factor in many cases. According to a study by GFK and Yandex.Market, price, the availability of discounts in a particular store, as well as its reputation have become more important to customers than before. At the same time, the convenience of paying for goods or the availability of urgent delivery are no longer so important.

The geography of purchases has also expanded noticeably - both towards China, the USA and other countries, and within Russia, that is, people are no longer afraid to order goods from another city.

The general focus on saving still leaves room for spontaneous purchases. Having a smartphone is especially conducive to quick shopping based on your mood. 18% of those who buy goods using a smartphone note the spontaneity of their decision. And 48% believe that buying from a smartphone is faster than from a computer.

An interesting discovery in buyer behavior was the fact that demand for high-price products remained virtually unchanged. Those who bought expensive goods continue to buy them. The middle price segment suffered the most: buyers from it moved towards cheaper goods (which, given rising prices, are no longer so cheap).

For the online trading market, all these observations are a signal that it’s time to give up old habits and rely not only on proven product categories. The crisis has helped many trends express themselves more clearly. If you compare the structures of product categories in online and offline trade today, they have become much closer to each other than two or three years ago. In a short time, the e-commerce market has matured greatly and is increasingly approaching classic retail, getting rid of biases towards individual products. Quite a bit of time will pass, and it will become a reflection of the structure of classic retail and the general needs of people who are no longer looking on the Internet for 100-inch TVs, but for products for the family and creating comfort in the home.

For customers, in the near future, the boundaries between online and physical stores will disappear. The purchase will be made where it is more convenient, faster and cheaper. Already, 70% of people who chose a product online ended up purchasing it in a brick-and-mortar store, and 80% of those who made a purchase online had previously selected the product in an offline store. Sooner or later this flow of buyers will become uniform.

about the author

Pavel Aleshin General Director of Yandex.Market The point of view of the authors whose articles are published in the “Opinions” section may not coincide with the opinion of the editors.

Online shopping: how the crisis has changed consumer behavior