In 2024 the value of online product purchases by the Italians will grow by +6% and reach 38.6 billion euros. In particular, the sectors Furniture and home living, Cars and Spare Parts and Food & Grocery they register a above-average increase (with rates between +8% and +12%), while Beauty, IT and Consumer Electronics and Clothing show growth in line with that of the sector (with rates between +7% and +5%). It slows down the progression of publishing, stationary segment. The penetration of online on total retail purchases (online+offline) of products is equal to 11%, stable compared to 2023.
These are some of the updated data on the eCommerce market in Italy, second the latest survey by the B2c eCommerce Observatory Netcomm – School of Management of the Polytechnic of Milanwhich was presented this morning on the occasion of the opening plenary of the nineteenth edition of Netcomm Forum – the reference event for the digital world on the topics of the evolution of eCommerce, digital retail and business innovation at a national and global level -, this year entitled “The Intelligence Commerce: Composable & Fluid, the continuous re-configuration of Retail and supply chains. Retail: from Metaverses to Space Commerce”.
“If the B2C eCommerce market in Italy continues to record constant growth, as does the number of digital buyers in our country, which today are 33.7 million, in this edition of Netcomm Forum we also asked ourselves where they are the Italian companies and how many companies have their own e-commerce site. To date, there are 88,000, the majority of which (18.6%) are located in Lombardy, Lazio (12.1%) and Campania. (12%). We also observed that 24.5% of companies that have their own e-commerce site record a high and medium-high degree of internationalization compared to 9.7% of others recorded at a national level. It is clear, however, that internationalization is a development lever on which a lot of work still needs to be done: almost 63% of Italian companies that have their own e-commerce site still have a low or medium-low degree of internationalisation, and the percentage rises to over 82% for Italian companies”. He declares Roberto Liscia, President of Netcomm.
“In 2024, the B2C eCommerce product market will continue to grow (+2.2 billion euros compared to 2023) albeit at a slower pace. The increase will go from +9% in the previous year to +6% in course this year. The best performing sector in 2024 will be Furnishings and home living (+12%), supported by innovations in user experience, in particular omnichannel, the use of Extended Reality and the offering of services value added logistics. Followed by Auto and Spare Parts (+10%). Of note is the recovery of Food & Grocery (+8%) after the decline recorded in 2023 (-2%)”, he states. Valentina Pontiggia, Director of the B2c Netcomm eCommerce Observatory – Polytechnic of Milan. “In Italy, eCommerce and more generally Retail, after having reacted to the numerous shocks and changes in balance in recent years, are now in the daring phase. Online is experimenting with the use of technologies (including frontier ) capable of improving consumer relationship activities and optimizing the back-end. Virtual clothing try-ons, AI-based solutions, such as advanced product recommendation, image search and chatbot support, they increase and improve access to shopping for all generations, ensuring a broadening of the customer base.”
Second the latest edition of the Delivery Index, the annual research by Netcomm in collaboration with Poste Italiane which monitors the volumes of eCommerce shipments in Italy, 186 million parcels were sent as a result of online purchases in the first quarter of 2024, an increase of 13.5% compared to the same period of 2023. The figure is driven by purchases in the Fashion & Sport sector (23.3%), followed by IT and Consumer Electronics (18.4%) and Health & Beauty (17.6%). The research also shows that 8 out of 10 online purchases take place on the platforms of one of the 10 most popular merchants: publishing appears to be the category with the highest percentage (95.4%) of purchases on the channels of the top merchants in the sector. Home Delivery, with 81.5%, is the delivery method most frequently chosen by Italian consumers, while only 18.5% used a third-party collection point. The average satisfaction values for the delivery (or collection) service for eCommerce shipments are in fact very high: consumers assigned on average 9 points out of 10 to out-of-home deliveries and 8.9 points out of 10 to home delivery deliveries. Finally, the Delivery Index photographs the impact of returns on eCommerce deliveries: the average share of returns on total eCommerce shipments in the first quarter of 2024 is equal to 5.9% of total shipments, with maximum values for the sectors Fashion (11.3%) and IT and Electronics (7.9%) and minimums for Publishing (3.1%) and Health & Beauty (2.0%).
According to theNetcomm Observatory in collaboration with Cribis, to date in Italy there are 88,000 Italian companies that have their own e-commerce site. Analyzing in particular the joint-stock companies – which generate 95.7% of the total turnover -, the majority are between 6 and 10 years old (33%) and between 11 and 25 years old (30%); while only 2.5% of the youngest companies, less than 2 years old, and 3% of those with more history behind them, over 50 years old, have their own e-commerce site. In terms of geographical distribution, the majority of companies (18.6%) with their own e-commerce site are located in Lombardy, followed by Lazio (12.1%) and Campania (12%). Rome and Milan are the cities with the most companies that have their own active e-commerce channel (almost 10%); Naples follows with almost 7% of companies.
Almost 80% of the companies analyzed have at least one social network. Facebook is the most widespread (90.8%) of these, followed by Instagram (76.2%), YouTube (21.1%), Linkedin (18.1%) and Twitter (17.3%). 78.8% of companies with their own e-commerce site offer more than one payment method: specifically, 20.8% have 2 payment methods, 28% have 3 and 30% have 4 or more. Among companies with only one payment method, 47.7% adopt PayPal, 33.54% the possibility of paying by credit card and 10.37% by bank transfer. Among the companies that offer two payment methods, once again the majority adopt PayPal (71.87%) and Credit Card (72.23%), and 38.5% offer the possibility of paying via bank transfer Banking. As regards companies that offer 3 payment methods, Credit Card and PayPal remain in the lead with, respectively, 91.66% and 91.19%, and Bank Transfer for 82.6% of cases . More than 2 out of 3 companies have had a growth in revenue in the last two years and about half have had a growth in Ebitda and, compared to the average of Italian capital companies, E-Commerce companies show a lower share of companies with high risk (17.3% vs. 21.2%).
The touchpoints that most search engines influence online purchasing (for 55.9% of Italians); the website or app of the brand of a specific product (for 50.4% of Italians); product reviews (for 48.2%) and sites or apps that sell this type of product (for 43.3%). A secondary, but still important, role is maintained by social media (for 31.7% of Italians); of push notifications (for 30.5%) and from points of sale (for 24.9%). The majority of online purchases (62.9%) pass through eRetailers, i.e. merchants born online; followed by the manufacturers’ websites (18.6%); traditional retailers (12.2%); comparison sites (5%) and followed by private sales and coupon sites which are worth 1.1% and 0.2% of online purchases respectively.
Over a third of offline purchasing decisions (38.9%) are influenced by digital touchpoints. They are mainly buyers of products such as smartphones (95.5%), electronics (76.5%), household appliances (76%), sports equipment (69.6%), food delivery (60%), physical contents (59 .7%), furniture and housewares (55%) and toys (53.3%) to have consulted at least one digital channel before making the purchase in store. The influence also applies from offline to online, albeit in a smaller percentage: the physical store, in fact, directs a quarter of online purchases (25%) and, in particular, the visit to a point of sale of the product/service is particularly relevant in influencing online purchases of household appliances (53 .6%); furniture and housewares (44.4%); footwear (43.5%); food delivery (42.6%), sports equipment (41.9%).
There Most online purchases (92%) are paid for at the time of ordering, while only in 8% of cases payment takes place upon delivery or collection, or when the service is used (for example, in a hotel). The use of cash continues to decrease, which to date is used by only 2.1% of Italians to purchase online. While the most used payment methods are the Digital Wallet (from 32.7%), the prepaid card (from 26.6%) and the credit card (from 25.2%). The bank transfer is used only in 1.4% of cases but with amounts 4 times higher than the average.
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