Rodion Lomivorotov
Senior Economist
Sber CIB Research

This year, the macroeconomic situation is no longer the same as it was last year. After two years of strong growth, when the economy grew by 3-4%, the pace slowed down at the end of 2024.

But the economy is a heterogeneous thing, and different sectors feel differently. In some places, the situation is really quite complicated, and there is a deterioration in terms of the financial condition of companies, and in terms of output, and in others, everything is more or less normal. For example, retail trade is doing well, there is quite a steady growth. At the same time, the situation is worse in non-food retail: people began to save money, switched to saving mode.

Today, Russia is experiencing record low unemployment, against the backdrop of which companies continued to hire staff. This has led to the fact that the number of people employed in the economy over the past two years has grown by 2 million people and reached almost 75 million. On average, wages during this time increased by 50-60% in nominal rubles, and in some sectors the growth was even greater. Household incomes will continue to grow, but not at such a high pace as it was in the previous two years.

As for lending, at the end of last year, there was a sharp halt in the issuance of loans both against the backdrop of an increase in the key rate, and against the backdrop of the fact that the Central Bank tightened standards for both banks and borrowers. It has become more difficult to get a loan. But over the past few months, we have seen a reversal of this trend, when lending began to recover little by little. This gives hope that people are ready to consume a little more.

The budget deficit is currently small. By the end of 2025, it is likely to amount to about 5 trillion rubles, which is slightly more than 2% of GDP. In fact, this is not so much if compared with other countries: for example, in India, the deficit is 6-7%, in the United States - almost 7%.

Anastasia Sidorina
Account Director
ROMIR

One of the forecasting tools for business is the consumer confidence index, which reflects how the end buyer assesses the current economic situation and how he sees the situation developing in the next six months.

In 2022-2023, the buyer strengthened the saving regime and optimized his spending as much as possible. In 2024, there was a period of adjustment, stabilization, and growth by the end of the year. In 2025, this situation continues. The mood of the population is still in the positive zone, but at the same time we see some fluctuations.

Traditionally, the eastern part of Russia has shown higher confidence metrics, especially in the Far East. And there are regions that react more acutely to certain changes. For example, the Northwest region shows the lowest index values, and sometimes goes into negative values.

The second metric that reflects how Russians assess the current economic situation is the level of stress. In 2022, a peak was recorded. The average was 52%, but in some months the stress level reached 60% or higher.

Today, the level of stress is 41% - this is a stable figure characteristic of the Russian population. One way to combat stress is through delicious food and delicious solutions that consistently maintain third place on the list. To a greater extent, this is relevant for a young audience over the age of 25, which today represents the key creditworthy core of the economy.

Male and female audiences react differently to the fight against stress. Women have a significantly larger number of ways to cope with stress, so it is easier to communicate with this audience. At the same time, it is delicious food that is a fairly significant parameter for the male audience, so from the point of view of communication that the business builds, focusing on this segment is also very important.

The red thread in consumer behavior is the trend towards rationalization. Today, the Russian is the most rational buyer who has gone through a significant number of crises and who already has an established strategy for responding to these crises. One of these first reactions is to reorient your spending from one expense to another. First of all, large items of expenditure that were covered by credit funds are subject to optimization. Also in the red zone are such segments as alcohol, entertainment, eating out. The buyer is not ready to abandon them completely, but is forced to include various rationalization tools: for example, switch between price segments, between categories within them, between private labels and branded solutions.

In the green zone, from the point of view of rationalization, there is a basic basket, and first of all, this is the product segment. The buyer will optimize spending on it at the very least. If you look in more detail, this category also includes non-essential products: for example, fruits, coffee, sweets.

Over the past year, the Russian buyer's spending on the entire FMCG sector has increased by 16%. This figure is broken down into two components: the frequency of purchases remains stable year-on-year, and the driver is the increase in the average check. 30% of the shopping basket is accounted for by non-food FMCG: household chemicals, household goods, beauty products, and child care. The remaining 70% is the grocery segment, in which 36% is fresh goods, i.e. perishable goods.

A significant part of Russians prefer domestic producers. This is the trend towards localization, and the trend towards farm products, which today are perceived by buyers as a better solution, for which they are even ready to overpay. At the same time, almost half of the population notes that the manufacturer is not a key factor in the choice, rather the buyer is guided by quality, composition and price.

As for the expectation of new products and concerns about the assortment, the non-product segment is the leader here. In the grocery segment, high expectations and levels of concern are present in categories such as coffee, cheese, and dairy products.

In addition, the number of networks and channels in the buyer's wallet is growing. The absolute leaders in the grocery segment are convenience stores. Large-format players, after the fall, which they showed for a long period, reached a kind of plateau. Hard discounters and online are also increasing their share in the buyer's wallet. The latter is already 9%, of which 6% is accounted for by marketplaces.

However, the number of buyers is not increasing as well as the number of funds. This means that an increase in the share of some players is possible due to the fact that other players will give them traffic. That is why we see an active switching of buyers between different players. At the same time, the behavior of the buyer, despite the fact that it is the same audience, is different online and offline: different missions, frequency and volume of purchases.

Svetlana Silenina
Head of Consumer Market
INFOLine Information and Consulting Agency

The economy is slowing down, and retail trade is slowing down as well. The lowest rate of decline is demonstrated by public catering: in its development, it is ahead of the dynamics of retail trade in food products. But those record figures are no longer there, because people physically cannot eat more. In these conditions, when the volume of consumption is not growing, hard discounters are growing, shelf space is decreasing, and the manufacturer is forced to change its strategy.

Today, there is an increase in consolidation. The top 200 chains account for 58% of the market, and the top 10 chains account for almost 45%, among which X5 Group and Magnit occupy a huge share, which are now continuing their consolidation. Moreover, if earlier large chains "ate up" the share of traditional retail, from small players, now they are already beginning to "eat up" those chains that are in the top ten.

The more dynamic growth of public catering is one of the reasons why retail chains are actively developing the category of "ready-to-eat food". Retailers note that there is not enough production capacity to make good, high-quality, modern ready-made food. That is why retail chains invest a lot of money in opening their own factories for the production of ready-made food. The leader in this direction is X5 Group, which already has several of its own large production facilities. In addition, X5 Group was the first in the industry to introduce a quality system for ready-to-eat food.

Competition between catering and retail is growing. At the same time, the amount of food consumed does not grow in the same way as the number of citizens. In the coming years, the number of consumers will decrease, so competition for them will only increase.

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