Online shopping

An average of 235 leva will be spent online for Christmas shopping this year by Bulgarian Internet users. That's 4 percent more than a year earlier, according to a study by Pazaruvaj.com.

China’s smartphone-wielding masses unleashed billions of dollars in e-commerce spending on Nov. 11 as they rushed to snap up bargains on “Singles Day” - billed as the world’s biggest one-day online shopping festival.

Bulgaria is approaching the average European level of shopping through the Internet. In our country, 30% of users are online oriented, compared to around 50% in Europe. This is what the Chairman of the Commission for Consumer Protection (CPC) Dimitar Margaritov commented on Bulgaria ON AIR.

Microsoft will continue to invest in retail sales operations in Turkey in order to establish direct contact with more local consumers, according to a Microsoft Turkey executive.      

Greek consumers are making more and more online purchases and tend to use or are particularly interested in new methods of payment, such as digital wallets and the special apps developed by banks for cell phones, according to Mastercard's Masterindex survey.

Price rather than quality is what consumers are mainly looking for when choosing their supermarket, the Research Institute of Retail Consumer Goods (IELKA) has found, adding that the hunt for bargains means that Greeks are no longer loyal to a particular chain.

Thanks to some exciting new technology it has developed, Amazon is testing a brick-and-mortar grocery store in downtown Seattle called Amazon Go that lets customers walk in, grab food from the shelves and walk out again, without ever standing in a checkout line, scanning their groceries or fishing for change.

Retail stores and chains that opted to offer special discounts on November 25, Black Friday, have reported up to 500 percent increases in turnover compared to a regular Friday at the end of November.

The November 1-10 midseason sales saw turnover drop 13.5 percent compared to last year's fall sales and disappointed store owners, the ESEE federation of retailers said Monday.

Several suppliers contemplating a haircut to the money owed to them by the Marinopoulos supermarket chain intend to ask for more favorable terms in their future transactions with Sklavenitis, the chain that will take over the flagging retailer. They will therefore be seeking favorable treatment in comparison to their competitors, in a form of "loss negotiation."