Bringing a Finnish Company to the Russian E-Market

Abstract

The main objective of the project was to enable a small business case company that is operating in the town of Lappeenranta, Finland, to reach successfully its target segment (Russian consumers) with the help of digital technology in order to increase sales both in its physical shop and in online store. In order to reach the aim of the project and bring Russian consumers and the case company together by the means of electronic marketing, a marketing plan for the promotional campaigns of the case company in Runet was created.

The data for this project was collected through a review of secondary data. Information was gathered from the most current paper-based (research and mar-ket reports, annual reports, internal records of organizations) and electronic sources (online databases).

Theoretical and empirical parts were interwoven throughout the whole thesis work. Hence, the project was not divided into theoretical and empirical part. The framework of the project was created: the partner of the project was intro-duced, the web infrastructure and types of the advertising used by the case com-pany were analyzed, the data of Internet users worldwide and particularly in Rus-sia were examined, the significance of Internet advertising was discussed, the pro-file of Russian online consumers was determined, Runet and its leading platforms were looked at in details and the advantages of Internet marketing over traditional marketing were specified. Data, gathered on the above mentioned topics, was an-alyzed and on the basis of the results a marketing plan for the promotional cam-paigns for the case company in Runet was developed.

As a result of this project the case company is enabled to penetrate Russian E-Market, being present in the leading search engines of Runet, Russia’s biggest and leading social media website and being advertised on one of Internet plat-forms reaching Russian-speaking target audience that is living in Finland. This work also gives the recommendations on how to increase the visibility of the case company in Runet using other tools than advertising, such as Search Engine Optimization that can be done by the Webmaster.