‘I believe one should be very careful with the idea of setting up a few more Auchan supermarkets in Sverdlovsk Region; the same applies to any large supermarkets in general. The thing is, it is quite dangerous trying to catch up with the West on the number of square meters of trade areas per 1,000 citizens without taking into account any other factors,’ Alexei Podolyako of Alliance Non-Commercial Partnership said to UrBC.

The management of Auchan was reported to mention their intention of setting up four or five new supermarkets in the region in the course of a meeting with Governor Eduard Rossel.

‘We think introduction of new shopping areas should be based not only on our reaching only 50% of the average European figures per 1,000 people but also on our citizens’ lower incomes (where the figure is 5 to 7 times smaller than the European average). If one takes both factors into account, it will become obvious that we need to stop building more trade centers rather than set up some new ones,’ Mr. Podolyako said.

‘A customer comes to a store with his or her ‘Russian’ salary; therefore a dramatic increase in the number of malls and supermarkets is not going to make Russian citizens any richer but is more likely to redistribute the same number of customers among a larger number of stores, which will affect the supermarkets’ profits and can even make them lose money,’ he noted.