Most likely if you came to this page you are already interested in Russia and the Russian market. We assume that if that were not so you would not be here in the first place.

Russia offers some unique advantages over many established and developing markets. It has some quirky idiosyncrasies such as mandatory certification for many products. It has some major nuisances as its omnipotent but usually incompetent bureaucracy. It suffers from serious drawbacks such as its high rate of violent crime. Nonetheless, none of these factors alone or all put together outweigh Russia's attractiveness as a vibrant, modern and relatively sophisticated marketplace open to new products and ideas.

To summarize Russia's advantages in an admittedly incomplete list of “pros.”

Brands are not yet established.
Consumers are receptive to new products.
Introducing new consumer products in many markets is all but impossible because most available market niches, as well as often is the case the store shelves themselves, are already occupied by long established brands. Launching a new consumer brand in Russia is easier than perhaps in any other country of comparable economy size. Russians are also very receptive to new brands and to nameless, no-brand products as long as they meet their quality expectations. Unlike Americans who are addicted to brand names (a characteristic that made operation of many subsidiaries of store-brand European discounters difficult in the US), in this particular respect Russians are more like the Germans or Italians, they would gladly buy quality, well-packaged products made by smaller and medium sized companies, often in direct preference to products produced or marketed by mega-sized multinationals. Many European and Asian producers of food products and consumer goods run thriving operations in Russia although they failed to expand in or even penetrate more established markets. The same rule generally applies to non-consumer products such as building supplies or industrial

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