According to the market research by the Observatory eCommerce B2c Netcomm – Politecnico Milano, in 2015 the online food sales has grown up to 27% compared to the previous year. It estimates that the online retail in Italy has reached the record value of 460 million euros. The recent entry of Amazon is expected to fuel the development of the market accelerating its growth. Indeed, in an increasingly crowded market-place, it’s easy to miss, and dismiss, newcomers. As more product categories migrate from physical stores to online, e-commerce is attracting many new players.
“The food e-commerce is, in this year 2015, one of the most dynamic sectors in the online trade scenario”, says Alessandro Perego, scientific manager of the Observatory Digital Innovation of Politecnico Milano – “Market is developing both in the Grocery, the expenditure from supermarket ( 200 million euros in 2015) and the so-called Food&Wine gastronomy ( 260 million euros)”- and he adds that: “In the last two years, many brands have improved promotional initiatives of click&collect, providing to the customers the possibility to order online and to withdraw in the store. The entry of Amazon and aggressive online players, puts pressure on incumbents to quickly identify and assess this new competitor and to strategize accordingly”.
Roberto Liscia, president of Netcomm, explains: ” Today Amazon wins in most scorecards that show the maturity of online sales: speed, punctuality, delivery; they are all important factors for the Italian companies which want gain optimization in retail channels”. Therefore there is, in the system, a weakness that he clearly identifies -” The offer of Italian food products keeps on suffering from a geographical restriction, not only national but also regional. The Italian food must target a multichannel strategy more, in oder to be able to overcome geographical limits”.
