QR-mode sales: Kazan citizens rank fifth in online shopping discounts
Kazan is fifth in AliExpress sales
Black Friday that traditionally takes place last Friday in November annually creates buzz in buying goods with discounts. The warm-up before it takes place via the large-scale scales 11.11, or World Shopping Day. This year, residents of the Tatarstan capital have shown great interest in goods on online platforms. However, this can be explained — not all Kazan citizens can go to shopping malls because of the absence of QR codes, without which offline shopping is restricted. Demand for online shopping from Kazan citizens before Black Friday is so intensive this year that the Tatarstan capital is fifth in a rating of the most active citizens on AliExpress Russia (Realnoe Vremya has the study at its disposal).
Moscow turned out to be a leader in the desire to buy goods with a discount. Krasnodar and Saint Petersburg are in the top 3 most active cities in online shopping on AliExpress during the season of November discounts. Samara is fourth. Thanks to the interest in online shopping, the top 10 most active cities on AliExpress also include Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don, Novosibirsk and Nizhny Novgorod. Voronezh is 10th.
Kazan citizens and other townsfolk decided to add goods to their virtual baskets before the big sale. 10,500 million Russian placed commodities from 28 October to 7 November alone.
Shoppers are mostly interested in foreign goods. As a rule, Russians’ baskets have about three Russian and 10 foreign products. By the way, New Year products can be found there too, though there are nearly two months to go.
Russian products for home and garden as well as household appliances became the most popular category for shopping nowadays. Car fans buy products during sales too — this category is also in the top 3.
Online shoppers also showed a big interest in beauty products and electronics. By the way, portable chargers and pulse oximetres are popular. As for women’s clothes, mobile phones and accessories, here, Russian prefer foreign manufacturers.
11.11
Alibaba Group online giant’s founders Jack Ma and Daniel Zhang launched the global 11.11 campaign, which became annual, in 2009. Online stores and marketplaces around the world borrowed the idea — they started to organise big sales every November.
The Kazan marketplace doesn’t think the rise in the amount of orders has something to do with the restrictions introduced in Tatarstan during the pandemic. Such a tendency is a consequence of the development of the platform, KazanExpress assures us.
“11.11 is the main sales of the year when consumers are very active. We expect the second and third surge on Black Friday (last Friday in November) and by New Year,” Lukicheva added.
White T-shirts on Black Friday
In Russia, November sales, which at times last for a month, take place at all marketplaces. So before they kicked off, Ozon users added more than 4 million goods sellers offered discounts for to their baskets. Moreover, most Russians wait for a generous offer from online sellers for everyday products — products for dishwashers and dish soaps, capsule coffee, food for cats, toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc. and beauty products.
This year, women have been greatly interested in T-shirts that can be bought for a 75% discount. They prefer white T-shirts — 9 in 10 cases choose this colour.
During the sales, Russians prefer buying new gadgets — 87,000 smartphones with a discount were added to the basket. Self-isolation and a transition to remote working because of which citizens started to spend much time at home increased the interest in the clean-up — Russians started to actively buy robot vacuum cleaners. TVs were also popular.
Restrictions benefit e-commerce
Last year, Black Friday was amid the pandemic too, but the restrictions weren’t so strict. The possibility of contracting COVID-19, the requirement for keeping a social distance, the coronavirus didn’t impede Russians, including Kazan citizens, from going shopping in malls.
Some experts think that the coronacrisis and the fall in citizens’ incomes it caused, in contrast, were to spur activity during sales. Chairman of the National Remote Commerce Association Alexander Ivanov expressed such an opinion in a talk with Realnoe Vremya last year.
However, the growth sales during November discounts were mostly online. As founder of KazanExpress Linar Khusnullin told Realnoe Vremya, e-commerce doesn’t have a crisis because of the pandemic. Its effect is, on the contrary, positive, this segment grows. Due to self-isolation last year, the e-commerce market rose by 60-70% at once, though usually, these numbers are twice lower, from 35 to 40%. The popularity of Black Friday, according to Khusnullin, stays almost at the same level year after year.
Russia’s consumer rights protection watchdog asks Tatarstan citizens to go shopping carefully during sales
The Tatarstan office of Russia’s consumer rights protection watchdog reminded Tatarstan residents that one could come across swindlers during sales. This is why one should be careful when buying goods on Black Friday and during the period of such sales.
Firstly, in online shopping, it is necessary to make sure that it is an official website of an online store, then examine the information about a seller, check out the company or sole trader’s details on the website of the Federal Tax Service.
Not to be trapped by sales, it is also necessary to know the price for a good before a discount on it is announced. The Tatarstan office of the watchdog warned that there might be no fall in the price.
“It is necessary to take into account that even if a purchase was made during the sales, all the rights stay. A consumer has the right to demand his money for a bad-quality good back or exchange it for two weeks if the good’s size, colour or other parameters don’t suit,” vice head of the Tatarstan office of Russia’s consumer rights protection watchdog Marina Trofimova said.