December 15, 2011 will see the 7th international conference, Retail in Russia, taking place at the Swisshotel in Moscow. The participants, including Government Ministers and several CEOs of Russia's leading retailers, plan to discuss the results of the year 2011, the trends in retail and e-commerce, and the opportunities and perspectives for development of this rapidly growing field of Russian economy. The Russian newspaper Vedomosti.ru has for years been organising the conference.

      The plenary session will address the current state of the retail market in Russia. The key reports will be presented by the Ministers, suppliers, and the retail sector on the following subjects:

      
• Margin forecast: what difficulties will the market face in the nearest future and how it is prepared to respond

      
• Limitations and conditions of growth of the retail business: what has the practice of application of the trade law shown

      
• Quality liability: how to divide risks between the government, suppliers, chains and producers

      
• Tax regimes for retail trade: alteration stages up until 2014 and impact assessment

      
• Switching over to electronic document management: possible introduction problems vs economic benefit

      
• Consumer activity of Russian people: a new crisis or a lull

      

This will be followed by two afternoon sessions, focusing on offline retail and e-commerce. Among confirmed speakers for these two panels are representatives of Sportmaster, Bank VTB, Renaissance Capital Retailing Group Investment Banking, Tele2 Russia, Groupon Russia, Svyaznoy Group of Companies, Wikimart.ru, and Microsoft Russia. 

      The final session of the day is a workshop studying successful examples of implementation of efficient practices in marketing and logistics. Often these are the two areas where Russian companies fall through, due to the expanse of the country and the lack of efficient marketing strategies and practices. In particular, the participants will discuss loyalty programs and worldwide trends in shopper marketing, and their implementability in Russia. The speakers include representatives of Saatchi & Saatchi X, Detskiy Mir Group of Companies, and others.

      Source: Vedomosti.ru.