It is theonline to prevail with more and more force as favorite channel for Italians to make their purchases. And this, whether it is fashion items, beauty products or simply food. For each product category, the Italians have their favorite tools to grab the desired goods: for example the smartphone is the most used tool for the purchase of ready meals, while the PC is the preferred one for home-related purchases such as furniture, furnishing accessories, appliances. Families, on the other hand, remain traditionalists in terms of spending. This is why they continue to prefer the shop, in six out of ten cases (62%). You don’t even bother doing research for information online to figure out which product is the best, or to compare prices. On the other hand, surveys are carried out above all for furniture and home accessories whether they are bought online or in a physical store. This is what emerges from theNetcomm surveyin partnership with Magnewswhich studied the shopping experience of consumers in the Bel Paese, analyzing the responses of a representative sample of the Italian population that uses the web weekly, equal to 42.5 million individuals, and which will be presented at the Netcomm Forum which opens today (May 2nd) until tomorrow in Milan.
“The purchase path of Italians has profoundly changed in the last two years – he comments Roberto Liscia, president of Netcomm – strengthening the population of those who adopt digital channels within their purchasing process “. According to the expert, consumer experiences that take place in a digital environment are characterized by being more complex than offline ones and therefore more satisfying. “In the infinite possibilities of contact between brand and customer, however, few are decisive in the purchase process – continues Liscia – All this has strong repercussions for companies that today find themselves having to design ways to offer a memorable experience”.
And already important steps forward have been made on the front of payments, making digital ones ever simpler, safer and more reliable. “But then a fundamental part of the analysis focused on the post-purchase phase – he says Florida Farrukugeneral manager of Diennea-Magnews – Measuring customer satisfaction in this area is important because it translates into brand loyalty and potential buy-back actions, allowing the establishment of a long-term value relationship “.
The pandemic has undoubtedly given the sprint to digitization. In two years of Covid there was a strong acceleration of the phenomenon. The range had been photographed precisely by a Netcomm survey of 2020 which had shown that in just one month, since the beginning of the health crisis, there had been an evolutionary leap towards digital for 10 years. With an incredible shift towards web shopping in the darkest days of the lockdown. To put it in numbers between January and May the year was horrible 2 million new online consumers in Italy (in all 29 million), 1.3 million of which are attributable to the impact of the Covid-19 health emergency. While between January and May of 2019, there were just 700 thousand new consumers. And all observers were convinced that this number would be confirmed also in the following year. Forecasts skipped due to the unforeseen health emergency.
With the number of consumers on the rise they were too splash online sales, by changing the delivery and shipping methods in record time. The click&collectthat is the possibility of ordering a product online and collecting it in the store by the customer, registered one in those months + 349% growth becoming an increasingly consolidated habit throughout that year, as it allows flexibility, adaptation to mobility needs and, above all, social distancing. And then there was the great revolution of proximity trade, which allows the integration between large e-commerce players and small retailers, who, thanks to logistics and delivery platforms, can reach customers residing in neighboring areas. It is a service that few before the lockdown imagined to use, but once you discover this convenient practice it now seems something difficult to give up.