Price Awareness of Finnish customer

Economic situation in the world is uncertain and we can read from news on daily basis mainly sad and pessimistic forecast about future of our country.  Latest news this week has been about oil barrel price decreasing dramatically, which we can see also as benefit for our economy on short term period, but for long term plans it makes our country’s export very difficult to one of our main export country – Russia.

Of course decreasing of oil barrel price and decreasing of Russian currency ruble are linked to each other, because crude oil is the most important source of income to Russia.  And low value of ruble makes business vulnerable between Finnish and Russian companies.  But this is more an export issue and effects to our economy and more to companies in first hand, not mainly to private consumers. 

For Finnish retail business ruble situation has been very bad because tourism of Russian travelers has decreased and tax free sales has fallen dramatically, for example in South Carelia almost 40 percent from last year.  But then there is one big and interesting consumer group – the Finnish. Our government makes decisions which affect the amount of money what we as private consumers can use for products and services. And yes, we are one of the most expensive countries in Europe.  

I want to point out how digitalization and global business has changed especially retail markets in Finland and how private consumer’s everyday decisions affect the Finnish economy more than we have been aware of. Everyone knows someone who has ordered consumer goods or services abroad or should I say everyone has done that at some point. Ordering abroad started growing rapidly after digitalization and when retail business went online. The whole world is on your laptop or mobile screen in few seconds and comparison of prices for products or services is fast and easy. And cheap price, who dare to defend? 

I can say from my own experience that in these uncertain times price is one key indicator what drives consumers to make decisions and yes - we are still one of the most expensive countries in Europe.

But why is it a problem to Finnish economy that we order online abroad and try to find the cheapest prices for consumer products? We export our currency abroad and that increases unemployment in Finland. Finnish trade sector is around ten percent of GDP and biggest corporate tax payer among business sector.  

And in this situation in trade sector involving high taxes in Finland (especially VAT which has an effect on prices), digitalization and global e-commerce markets, decreasing amount of travelers from Russia, rising amount of unemployment  it’s not easy to find optimistic forecast for future…. or have we seriously tried to see all opportunities? E-commerce business is growing every year  , 2015 Q3 and Q4 were very good for e-commerce business in Finland  and we have breathtaking market possibility in Russia.

Now it's our time to show the world that we are still one of the pioneer countries in the world when talking about technology development, and we can solve our economic crisis with possibilities that digitalization has given to us! Let’s conquer global markets together and show what we are made of. First let’s make changes to our tax rates - we don’t want to destroy our price competiveness with one of highest VAT in Europe!