2023-05-10 08:32:43
The digital acceleration of recent years has affected all product sectors. The growth of eCommerce it recorded important numbers close to the health emergency, but growth does not seem to stop: second Morgan Stanleyin the long run, the eCommerce market has a lot of room for growth and could grow from the current ones 3.3 trillion dollars to 5.4 trillion in 2026.
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The growth of digital commerce represents a permanent change in the way of shopping: those who have had to adapt to this “necessity” during the period of restrictions will hardly go back.
And this factor particularly affects that part of the older population who “discovered” the advantages of digital purchases with the lockdown. Very important demographic range in our country.
Morgan Stanley’s industry modeling, along with other data, suggests that e-commerce will continue to gain traction, even in countries where online shopping is already popular.
Even purchasing habits in the food sector have undergone a change, a real surge: according to data from the Milan Polytechnicthere are three sectors which, in absolute terms, have contributed most to the overall growth: the Food & Grocery (€1.1 billion), followed by Clothing (1 billion €) e IT and consumer electronics (0,7 mld €).
To better understand what the peculiarities of the Italian market are, we have heard Marco MazzillieCommerce Manager EMEA e Francesco Gasca Head of Digital at Venchi. With them, we explored the change in people’s purchasing habits, which has increasingly moved from physical to digital, blurring the line between touchpoints.
Here’s what they told us.
Online sales for the food sector are constantly growing: what factors contribute to this trend?
Firstly, it has had an important impact on the growth of online sales in the food sector the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With national – and international – restrictions in place, many businesses have temporarily stopped physically handling sales, finding in digital the only accessible and secure point of contact with the customer.
This has generated a ripple effect – even leading users who typically did not buy online to acquire a more digital purchasing behavior. In other words, not just the
food companies have approached digital platforms, but customers have also had to adapt in return.
Secondly, we believe that there was another important factor related to the world of online shopping with home delivery. More and more people are starting to join
this type of service, thus becoming familiar and acquiring confidence in the sale of a delicate product such as food, even online.
In other words, purchasing on eCommerce – as well as on delivery platforms – has started to be perceived as more reliable.
In short, the COVID-19 pandemic has therefore cleared through customs online sales also in the food sector, and consumers have been driven to experiment with purchasing behaviors that were previously marginal,
with a positive outcome.
Consumers and businesses were faced with an inevitable digitization where before the purchasing behavior tended to be preferred in the physical location.
It follows that, where there is a desire to initiate the population into this type of behaviour, it is necessary to work on the contents: to transmit the in-store experience also online, from an omnichannel perspective. All this to be able to guarantee that, by shopping online, nothing is lost compared to the physical experience.
Who is the person who buys online? Is it a transversal target or does it have very specific characteristics?
The user who buys online is simultaneously transversal and with well-defined characteristics. Those who buy food products on an eCommerce are becoming more and more transversal varying in age, gender, interests, etc.
Thinking instead with a Venchi focus, the target becomes very precise, since ours is primarily a segmenting brand in terms of price. The Venchi online consumer is mostly female, with the main age group 25-54 years (80%).
He can be summed up as a premium lifetaster – he frequently buys online travel, clothing and accessories (65%), is an avid reader of news (60%), foodie (47%), entertainment enthusiast (62%) and regular coffee shop visitor ( 29%).
From a macro perspective, we have two main and distinct purchasing behaviors: the purchase of chocolate for self-consumption and that for gifts.
It follows that, in order to best guide these two types of users, we are constantly working to make improvements to our navigation with a view to optimizing the UX.
What are the main challenges for a food eCommerce platform?
The main challenge is to be able to describe a product like chocolate without it being experienced through taste, smell and touch.
Compared to our stores, not having the possibility of having a particular recipe tasted, it becomes essential to visually present – with a visual merchandising capable of capturing attention – and through effective storytelling everything that makes our products truly unique, so that the online experience has nothing to envy to the physical one.
From a logistical point of view, a further challenge is to be able to deliver the freshest and most intact chocolate possible, in the shortest possible time.
Hence the need to transfer everything that makes us premium also in eCommerce shipments: at home, the opening of a Venchi order must reflect the in-store experience.
How is it possible to make the logistics of a food eCommerce sustainable?
We are working on several projects for further reduce our environmental impact.
For our packaging, we use recyclable paper materials and work to optimize the internal space. Additionally, in eCommerce packaging, we’ve removed expanded polystyrene and plastic dry ice from our summer shipments.
One of the next challenges, to become even more sustainable, is to implement the deliveries to dedicated lockers.
What are the strategies that can allow Italian Food&Beverage to compete with the big international players?
Storytelling linked to the high quality of raw materials is certainly at the top of the list. There 100% Made in Italy guarantee it is a distinctive trait symbol of a sought-after Italian spirit
international.
For example, our short chain of PGI Piedmont hazelnutgrown exclusively in Piedmont, in the heart of the Langhe and universally recognized as the best variety of hazelnut in the world, differentiates us and distinguishes us from the big international players, just like the Bronte Pistachio of our ice cream.
And Italian food eCommerce is therefore capable of bringing an innovative experience to the market: the synthesis of Italian mastery and excellence in the sale of high quality chocolate, from production to visual and textual communication.
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