Opinion on online retail among companies in Italy 2019

In 2018, 65.9 percent of Italian retailers and brand companies surveyed by MailUp had the opinion that traditional retail and e-commerce should not compete but rather integrate. Already in 2017, a multi-channel integration was an essential innovation among the leading retailers, as 57 percent of them intended to adopt it in their stores.

Relevant innovations

While most retailers rolled out multi-channel digital innovations by creating an own website (44 percent) or a marketplace (11 percent), only eight percent sold products through a mobile app. However, if online selling by traditional retailers seemed somewhat limited, communications with customers were more likely to be innovated. In 2019, 75.6 percent of companies in the consumer goods sector were implementing strategies of omnichannel communications.

How much will companies invest?

In general, the future innovations in the consumer goods sector depend on the allocated budgets. According to a poll from 2019, about 80 percent of Italian consumer goods companies planned to invest less than 500 thousand euros to roll out digital innovations. in 2019, 24.4 percent of respondents thought that traditional retail could compete with e-commerce, while 9.8 percent was convinced of the opposite.