Comments by "Julia P." (@juliap.5375) on "How Western brands 'left' Russia | Life in Russia after sanctions | New McDonald's & Starbucks" video.

  1. It’s you not understand how everything works, looks like your brains stuck somewhere in 1950s. 1. For any business the most important thing is access to market. Russia is one of the largest market in the world. It is sweet pie for any business. That why all companies trying to preserve own place under sun. For some companies it is even main market. 2. If you sell own goods more expensive than your competitors, then you lose market to competitors. It is fail for any business. 3. There are long queue of companies from rest world which dreaming about enter on huge Russian market. Western brands arrived in Russia not because they are good or unique, but because it was allowed. Russia said decades ago: ok, now we are friends with West, so let’s open own market for some brands. Now each day to Russia come companies from rest world, from UAE to China. 4. You just compared Cuba and Russia. One is small country, another one is country with infinity resources and which produce everything, from nuclear icebreakers to spaceships, from grain to own processors. There are no any exclusive goods in West which non exist in Russia itself or in rest world (which preserved perfect relations with Russia). From TV to shoes. So, what we will see few years later: West will lose few hundreds billions of income which got from Russia, while that money partly will left in Russia and partly will get rest world. 5. To support Russia, as example China opened own market for Russian food companies. It is almost impossibly for foreigners to sell food into China, now China removed any restrictions for Russian companies. Do you imagine what means to feed 1,5 billion nation. Produce anything, from sweets to bread, and you will be incredible successful & rich. Having access to such foreign markets it is privilege. Most of wars in history were wars for access to markets, for possibility to sell own goods. West had that privilege in Russia, for free, now lost. From Russian point of view nothing changed, from Western — they lost money, lost influence, while all of that got competitors from rest world.
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  2. Nothing changed. But also arrived a lot of Asian companies, mainly from China. You know, quality everywhere is same, but what is really important — brand. People prefers to buy what they know, even if in nearest shop something better and cheaper. Now when they lost own brands, on this clear field came asian companies with aggressive advert campaigns. Also increased amount of local brands.
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  3. 1. People. Russia got +10 million people last year. It is more than Austria or Belorussia. 2. US lost influence in whole rest world. Bunch of countries, key countries like Saudi Arabia, rapidly joined to BRICS club and launched trading without dollars & euros. International banks joined to Russian and Chinese system for inter-bank communications (before everyone used european Swift), West lost control over huge flows of money. Some countries even declared about rejection from usage of Visa and Mastercard (they rejected to work in Russia, so rest world saw in this signal — never use Western cards). It is incredible long list of things, how 85% of world, almost each day now rejecting from West.
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