From sweaters to blenders, Ukrainians are fast joining the global trend of online shopping. Some two million Ukrainians bought something online in the first quarter of 2012 – more than twice the number in 2010, according to GfK Ukraine, a market research company.
The number of people buying online increased by 44 percent in the last
two years, according to a survey conducted in February by Nielsen, the world’s
major analytical company operating in more than 100 countries. Ukraine is no
outlier to this trend.
“This type of market is one of the fastest-growing in the world,” says
Oleksandr Feoktystov, head of marketing service of Yandex Market online
shopping service. “In Ukraine and Russia the process (of growth of Internet
retail) has started in the past two years.”
Household appliances and electronic goods are among the most popular
items purchased through the Internet in Ukraine, according to the Nielsen
survey. It also showed that 49 percent of Ukrainian Internet users prefer
buying this type of goods online.
Forbes recently reported that Ukraine’s online retailers made more than
$4 billion in sales last year. The biggest share ($130 million) came from
Rozetka, one of the most popular electronics stores. About 9 percent of
Ukrainian Internet users bought something through Rozetka in 2011, according to
GfK Ukraine.
“Better prices is one of the major reasons for shopping online, with any
kind of goods,” says Tetyana Yablonovska, senior researcher at GfK
Ukraine.
The share of Internet users buying clothes and accessories online is
also high, about 39 percent, according to Nielsen.
Modna Kasta, an online fashion club that offers brand clothes at
discounted prices, is one of the most popular among Ukrainian Internet users,
according to Alexa.com, a web monitoring page that ranks sites by popularity.
Launched in 2010, it has grown rapidly, with turnover expected to reach Hr 100 million ($12 million) in 2012 according to
Andriy Logvin, Modna Kasta’s CEO.
“It (becomes) a daily living need when you don’t have time to go
shopping,” says Yulia Larina, marketing executive at Hudson, an international
recruitment agency. She regularly buys clothes and household appliances online.
“It’s cheaper and (on the web) you can find goods, usually brand clothes, that
are not available in shops,” she says.
About 150,000 Internet users search for clothes on Yandex, a Russian
online search giant, every day, according to Consumer Barometer online service,
which provides data on how
consumers interact with the Internet
as a source of information.
Yandex recently launched a new online shopping service that provides
users with a selection of more 60,000 goods from major Ukrainian and Russian
retailers and allows to chose and compare clothes from all the shops.
“Clothes and shoes are taking the center stage, judging by the number of
purchases,” Feoktystov says. “And it will keep growing,” he says.
Kyiv Post staff writer
Anastasia Forina can be reached at [email protected]
