Not very long ago in Russia the towns with populations of over one million were the regional equivalent of Home Depot, Tedesco, Walmart and IKEA all rolled into one. People would takes days off to travel from the outlying towns and villages to shop in the cities for just about everything that was simply unavailable to them locally.
This of course changed, and over time and throughout the first decade of this millennium the construction of hypermarkets and planned retail trade centers spread like a wildfire throughout the country. In most cases, the result was "cookie-cutter" retail. A hypermarket in Vladivostok, Ekaterinburg St. Petersburg, or Moscow contained pretty much the same retailers and stocks with prices varying to reflect shipping costs to deliver the goods to shelves.
This replication, or standardization, was seen not only cross-country, but also increasingly cross-town. Sameness and standardization allowed for reduced overheads on the one hand, but played into the strongest aspects and capabilities of e-commerce on the other hand - a conflict conundrum. Hypermarkets and malls became boring in the eyes of many Russian consumers, and increasingly seen as inconvenient.
Comment: And on the manufacturing, trade and big industry front there's this: