ECommerce and digital have played a fundamental role in containing the collapse of traditional commercial exchanges, which fell by about 10% in Italy following the Covid19 emergency, and in supporting companies in managing the increased risks of internationalization and in restart. In 2020, the Italian digital export of consumer goods reaches a value of 13.5 billion euros, with a growth of 14% and in line with the pre-pandemic trend, and an incidence of 9% on exports total consumer goods (it was 7% in 2019) and 3% of total exports (2.5% in 2019).
These are some of the results of a research carried out by the Digital Export Observatory of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano. Despite a 9% decline compared to 2019, fashion is still the most important sector, with a value of 7.1 billion euros, equal to 53% of digital exports of consumer goods and 16.5% of those online. sector. This is followed by food, the only sector “favored” by the emergency with a growth of 46% and a value of 1.9 billion euros, equal to 14% of digital exports and 4% of food exports.
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The third sector is furniture, which is worth 1.1 billion and nearly 8% of online exports and 12% of furniture exports. Electronics, cosmetics, stationery, games, sporting goods and other sectors are worth a total of 25% of digital B2c exports, but individually they have a marginal weight. The health emergency has given a strong boost to online exports but there are still ample margins for growth in the eCommerce sector for Italian companies.
56% of companies use digital channels to sell products abroad – mainly in Germany (34.7%), France (26.8%), United Kingdom (26%), USA (25.4%), Spain (18%) and China (11.4%) – and 62% of these do so in more than one market, but nearly 75% export products online for less than 20% of their turnover. One in ten companies has neither an export manager nor an eCommerce manager, almost half have only the former, 70% have included only the latter, while among companies that export online one in two presents both figures. The spread of digital technologies is positive: 80% employ more than one in various business functions, especially marketing, distribution, sales and production.