This paper discusses how for thriving capitalist
economies with large commercial spaces for retail, the shuttle trade - buying
goods abroad on tourist trips to bring back and sell at kiosks or open air markets - seems like an absurd phenomenon. It looks at how for so-called transition
economies, shuttling has become a means of survival for workers who cannot find employment and for
consumers who cannot afford to buy goods at conventional retail markets. It shows how although the shuttle business has been declining in the last few years, a majority of consumers in Russia and other CIS countries still buy goods at kiosks, open-air markets, informal stores on the ground floors of apartment blocks, or street vendors because prices are much cheaper than in the newer supermarkets.