Russia’s Watcom Shopping index got off to a lacklustre start in 2019, repeating the lower levels of foot traffic in Moscow’s leading shopping malls that were seen last year. If the trend continues then the index suggests there is a permanent reduction in volumes of shoppers visiting big malls as other distribution channels eat into traditional organised retail’s share of the market.

The holiday shopping season gave Moscow’s leading malls a boost in December, but overall traffic in the leading malls in 2018 was the lowest since the index was established in 2014.

Malls are having to make more of an effort to attract customers, using events and targeting families with offers of childcare and entertainment to pull the punters in. Having picked up the US Thanksgiving “Black Friday” idea, in Moscow this was extended to “Black December” with a whole month of discounts and specials, that lifted traffic somewhat. But overall the Watcom Shopping Index in 2018 was down by 5.2% compared to 2017.

In the first week of this year the index, which uses malls’ security cameras to count the number of visitors in real time, was 476, slightly down from 2018 and 2017 (495, 496) but well down on the numbers of visitors in 2014 and 2015 (665, 608).

Traffic in the malls is traditionally very weak in January as Russians enjoy a holiday season that runs until January 14 when they celebrate “Old New Year” according to the Gregorian calendar, which is used to calculate religious holidays. As the Watcom index shows, shopping picks up again as Russia moves into a series of spring holidays, including Maslenitsa (“Butter/Pancake week”, or the spring rites of Shrovetide), International Woman’s Day (March 8), the long May Day holidays (May 1-8) and Orthodox Easter, a moveable feast.

The shopping Index in January ended in Moscow with a slight increase +0.7%, while the growth in St Petersburg was strong, up 2.6% in the same period.

Watcom’s CEO Roman Skorokhodov said: “The shopping index normally decreases after Christmas spending, where it rose by 3.3% in Moscow on the eve of the New Year, and by 5.9% in St Pete. But this slight growth in January that didn’t even reach 1%, does not change the whole picture of the consumer behaviour. Growth by 2.6% in St Pete is due to the touristic traffic as all significant malls are in the centre of the city. Still this growth can be explained by the fact that many Russians did not go abroad on holidays, but stayed at home and went to the shopping centres to spend leisure time instead.”

“On the whole, the decrease in traffic is dramatic since 2014 – almost 18% in Moscow and 11% in St Pete. This trend is still in force due to the continuing decline of real incomes of Russians. Besides that, the share of online shopping in 2018 grew by 32.2% according to Romir,” Skorokhodov said.

The volume of Russian e-commerce sales was RUB1.5 trillion ($22.8bn) in 2018, according to estimates by Data Insight. Sales in Russian online stores increased by 19% to RUB1.15 trillion and in foreign online stores by 29% to RUB348bn. 

Real incomes in Russia fell again slightly in 2018, down for the fifth year in a row.