The eCommerce market in Italy
As a result of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, consumer buying behaviors and habits have changed in favor of eCommerce.
In order to manage the strong acceleration of purchases, it has been necessary to change the way the service is provided, leading to the creation of a best awareness of retailers about the role of digital. The year 2020 highlighted the importance of focusing on online in order to redesign the sales strategy and interaction with consumers.
The healthcare emergency has led to the birth of new models, the creation of new eCommerce solutions and, above all, has provoked a strong push towards digitalization.
This has led to the creation of new services, such as contactless delivery and the use of lockers and click&collect solutions, as well as new methods of contact with the consumer, such as live online sales and consultations, in order to convey the experience of the physical store into the virtual world , with the aim of building consumer loyalty.
What about the situation in Italy?
In general, concerning sales, there are contrasting trends among the main product categories: product sales have grown by +30%, while service sales have decreased by -44%.
In particular, concerning consumer products and goods, 50% of the growth was determined by three main sectors: Food & Grocery, IT and consumer electronics, and Clothing. But what are exactly Italians buying? Among the preferred purchases we count Food & Grocery (+70%), Furniture and Home living (+32%), Clothing (+22%), Computers and consumer electronics (+20%) and Publishing (+18%). Concerning the services, on the other hand, the Tourism and Transport sector has registered a significant setback (-56%), despite until 2019 it was the most mature and largest eCommerce sector in Italy.
What have we learned and what can we improve
In this year of health emergency, international merchandisers have been working to make the shopping experience more and more personalized, based on the user’s needs, finding solutions in order to simplify the search and purchase of products, to present products to the consumer in new ways and reduce delivery times, also by exploiting physical stores as eCommerce order fulfillment warehouses.
The Italian market shows some criticalities however. Because of organizational rigidities, many national companies still do not recognize the strategic value of eCommerce, which is instead essential to offer an omnichannel shopping experience, now increasingly requested by consumers. Moreover, there is and extreme difficulty in developing the appropriate skills and attracting investment capital that are critical to sustaining the entry into the eCommerce world.
Therefore, three elements will be necessary to be able to talk about a finally mature and dynamic eCommerce market in Italy: vision, courage and perseverance.
Source: https://blog.osservatori.net/it_it/mercato-ecommerce-statistiche-dati-itala