Challenges of cross border e-commerce

A current thesis is commissioned by Oulu University of Applied Sciences as a part of preparatory project Karelia ePro Micro funded by Karelia CBC programme. The project is executed in cooperation with project partners from Petrozavodsk State University and Lapland University of Applied Sciences. The tasks given by the project includes the interview the entrepreneurs and conclude a survey as well as analysis of the data and concluding the results. The purpose of this thesis is to recognize the challenges that are concerning Finnish entrepreneurs with and without experience of selling on a Russian market. In addition, the thesis portrays possible suggestions to overcome the challenges through the results of an interview and a survey. The topic focuses especially on e-commerce ecosystem and its processes. The thesis provides the basis for discussions and suggestions related to the challenges of Finnish entrepreneurs. The survey results can be used to familiarise with the considerations of the entrepreneurs and create a social discussion and perhaps consider possible ideas of further researches. This study is based on mixed method approach. A combination of qualitative and quantitative data has been collected by interviewing Finnish entrepreneurs using open-ended questions that is guided by the questions from the online survey. The survey focuses on e-commerce topic, however, the participants without ecommerce are also regarded and surveyed about challenges and obstacles on a Russian market. The survey and the interview are used to collect experiences, and expectations of the Finnish entrepreneurs on the Russian market. The results are meant to give an overview to the reader about the main challenges that brought up by the interviewees. The research question “What are the concerns and challenges on a Russian market from the point of view of a Finnish entrepreneur?” can be concluded that there are various of different types of concerns among the survey and interview participants. Most mentioned challenges are lack of resources, lack of knowledge about selling on a Russian market, language challenges and other markets are seen to be more important than Russian market, related to different viewpoints. In addition, political aspects were also mentioned by some companies. To overcome the challenges of the Finnish entrepreneurs it is important to listen to the challenges related to the operations of the Russian market and implementing preventive actions based on the demand. The support and related training can then be provided for the entrepreneurs by the support services. The supportive involvement in the processes provides an opportunity to enable the entrepreneurs to begin selling on the Russian market independently. The other possible way to overcome the challenges is to outsource the processes to the company that provides the outsourcing services. In further research, the topic should be studied more from the point of view of a buyer, in this case, a Russian customer