On the brink of the pre-holiday shopping rally there were performed several surveys, which permitted to paint a general portrait of the Russian buyer on the New Year’s Eve.
The most highlighted in the press were the results of the poll carried out by Delloitte&Touche CIS, a subsidiary of Delloitte&Touche, one of the leaders of world consulting.
The company representatives polled 807 people aged between 18 to 65 from the six largest cities of Russia (Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhniy Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don and Yekaterinburg). The purpose of the poll was to find out how much the Russians were ready to spend buying gifts for the coming New Year holidays, what they were going to give as presents and what they would like to get as presents.
According to the survey “In the Holiday Mood 2007”, exactly one third of Russians are going to spend this year more than last year for the New Year festivities. 11% of respondents intend to cut somewhat their expenses, while the rest are going to maintain their spendings at the last year level.
The authors of the survey believe that the price increase will affect the less financially secure groups of the Russian population and they will most probably try to cut their budget for both presents and food. “However, in comparison with citizens of other countries, most Russians will cut back on food products rather than on presents,” the survey says. The Europeans, on the contrary, this year decided to save on gifts in favor of their traditional Christmas menu.
According to experts, the total amount of holiday spendings (calculated per one average Russian buyer) will reach about 480 euros this year. (This is more than, for instance, in Germany, Turkey or South Africa, but more than two times as less as in Cyprus or Ireland.) For Russia, this is a rather hefty amount, but according to the survey, in Russia it is the New Year festivities, when people spend around 95% of all their “holiday” money. All the other holidays settle for only 5%.
The major part of their “holiday” money – 258 euros out of 480 – the Russians intend to spend for gifts. Curiously enough, the Russians like presents, which are quite different from those they are going to give to their friends and relatives. The most wished for present to them is cash (28% of respondents). Nevertheless, most often they get some cosmetics, perfumes, food or drinks.
Jewelry and watches are second in the wish list (23%). For the majority these dreams will come true because 21% of male and female respondents are going to meet them.
Although Russian women are not always content with their men’s presents, taken as a whole the Russian sterner sex is anyway spending or ready to spend more for gifts than men in Europe. Thus, according to the survey, 33% of the polled Russian women dream to get jewelry as their New Year gifts and 24% of men are ready to comply.
Alexander Dorofeyev, a partner of the Delloitte&Touche CIS Auditing Department, told that Russian consumers spend for their New Year gifts a part of their annual income, which happens to be the greatest in Europe – 13% (for instance, in Britain this indicator amounts to 3.6% and in the Netherlands it is merely 1.6%). The expert predicted that this New Year season would be record high for retail vendors. There is another curious forecast: almost all the money earmarked for the New Year holidays will be spent during the last two weeks of December – the Russians are not ready to abandon their long-time habit to do everything in the last moment. “It surely means that we shall have to face an extreme shopping spree before the New Year,” Dorofeyev believes.
According to Finam, an investment company, the New Year sales account for approximately 8-12% of the total annual turnover.
This phenomenon cannot be explained by some singular Russian laziness. The point is that in Russia people prefer to buy presents with freshly earned money unlike people in Europe, who spend their savings or credits for this purpose.
The All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTSIOM is its Russian abbreviation) has furnished some data substantially different from the Delloitte survey. VTSIOM has found out that souvenirs (pens, notebooks, purses, etc.) are the most frequent presents given to friends and relatives for the New Year – every third respondent (33%) is going to make them. Not many people are ready to make expensive presents: those who intend to give jewelry and domestic appliances account for 4% correspondingly, 3% give preference to mobile phones, 1% to camcorders and TV sets and less than 1% to computers. One third of respondents are not willing to give more than 1000 roubles for the so-called “other expenses” – Christmas shows for children, holiday trips, visiting theatres and restaurants. 2% of respondents said they were not going to celebrate the New Year at all. Incidentally, according to VTSIOM, last year the New Year holidays were worth just 3,000 roubles for an average Russian. 48% of Russians assigned 1,000 roubles for presents, 16% - up to 1,500 roubles and 11% - from 1,500 to 3,000 roubles.
Muscovites would not like to give expensive presents to their friends and relatives. This is asserted by the Vector Market Research Agency, which has polled 700 respondents of all age groups.
Souvenirs like small figures symbolizing the coming year, key chains, key boxes, calendars and organizer notebooks are leading in their rating. 61% of respondents are going to give such “pleasant trifles” as their gifts. According to the poll, only 9% will make a winning stake on jewelry.
Almost one third of the polled will traditionally do everything in the last moment: 29% will buy presents a day or two before the New Year. 27% will try to be not too late and buy them in late November or early December and about 34% will be in no hurry buying presents during all December.
The traditional surge of shopping spree among the Russians on the holiday eve are confirmed by Citibank, which has analyzed the consumption behavior of more than 100,000 clients from Moscow and Saint Petersburg, who were widely using credit cards to pay for their purchases in 2006. The bank compared how credit cards were used in December and November.
“Jewelry, watches and luxury items” is one of the most popular groups of goods indicating growth. In December, men are buying more of these goods by 184% and women by 125%. “December is the only month to show an unprecedented rise in this group; even the March rise is more modest,” the analysis says. According to George Pobelyanski, CEO of the 585 Jewelry Network, the December demand doubles as compared with the year’s average. “20% of annual sales fall on December,” he says.
According to Rosstat, a statistic agency, the retail turnover in 2006 reached 8.6 trillion roubles (approximately $332 billion). “December takes up to 15% of all retail network sales” - this is the estimate given by Kirill Evstigneyev, Executive Director of the Trade-and-Purchasing Union of the TZS Retail Networks.
Psychologist Sergey Yenikalopov says that current abundance of goods has had a strong bearing on the Russians’ consumer behavior. If in the time of goods deficit, people had willy-nilly to ponder about what to buy as presents and then to make a pretty long tour of shops to get the things they wanted, now there is no such a problem. As a result, the majority of people are buying presents randomly in any shop they come across. “If we play the role of a giver, we proceed from a range of goods offered in one shop or another and we do not think much about what thing exactly would be preferred by another person,” Yenikalopov says.
Besides, the choice of a present depends on the giver’s personality. Very conventionally, all the givers may be divided into three major types. The first type includes people, who give as presents something they like themselves not bothering too much whether the other person will like it or not. The second type includes people who are pleased to make a present. According to psychologists, it is this sort of people, who are most considerate choosing a present and trying to please the other person. The third group of givers is not thinking twice about what to choose and their main aim is to make a more expensive present. They give for the sake of the gift proper, which should be of some material value a priori and, as they believe, the more the better. “Thus, you have a chance to get what you like only if your giver belongs to the second type,” sums it up psychologist Leonid Kitayev-Smyk.
In Russia, hypermarkets are the most popular place to buy presents. 49% of the Russian population is going to shop there. Another 37% will go to trade network stores. It seems that people in Europe got sick and tired of walking to shop. Market analysts say that in recent years in Europe there is a wonton growth of Internet sales. Thus, if in 2006 e-purchases were made only by 25% of the Europeans, this year the number of virtual buyers will rise up to 34%. In Russia, this kind of shopping is actually non-existent: firstly, due to absence of wide access to online resources; secondly, due to low trust of Russian citizen to such stores and, thirdly, due to their desire to see and especially to touch the goods they are buying.
The Novosibirsk jewelry marketers are confident that on the eve of the New Year holidays, despite the price rise for gold, jewelry will also be asked for. “This situation may be compared with alcohol consumption during holidays: despite any price rise the demand is enormous,” draws a parallel Irina Kuznetsova, CEO of the Almazy Yakutii jewelry stores network. “Last year, for example, on December 28-29 there was a rush at the jewelry counters: people, who were buying New Year gifts just held out a 500-rouble banknote and asked: “Please, anything worth this money!” narrates Vitaliy Vitukhin, General Director of Adalit, a Novosibirsk jewelry plant. ”I believe this year the usual amount spent for a jewelry piece will be around 1,000 roubles.”
