Amazon increasingly threatens the survival of “real” stores. The trend is now consolidated, especially in the US where the e-commerce giant has already lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in businesses of various kinds, from bookstores to sporting goods to shopping malls such as the immense mail-shops in the Midwest, where businesses have gone bankrupt since last October alone with the loss of 100 jobs.
The Amazon effect is now also arriving in Europe and Italy, where e-commerce is growing exponentially, of which Jeff Bezos' creature is the absolute ruler also in the Old Continent with almost 40 billion in revenues (+20% since 2012 to 2015) and Germany as the first market with 14,1 billion. A specific Italian data does not exist, even if we are certainly talking about a few billion euros, given that online sales here are worth 23 billion in 2017 and that Amazon has almost 20% of the market.
Overall, in Italy, out of total retail, the online share seems relatively small: 5,6%. But this year – according to Polimi-Netcomm estimates – it will reach 21% in information technology, 10% in publishing, 7% in clothing, 4% in furnishings and 0,5% in food&grocery. Can we therefore expect a massive impact on the maintenance of jobs also in Europe, as in the USA?
“In Italy we are behind more for lack of supply from economic operators than for customer demand – he explains Giuliano Noci, pro-rector and full professor of marketing at the Milan Polytechnic, interviewed by Il Sole 24 Ore -, but we are certainly heading in the direction of a strong reduction in space. Fewer and fewer large hypermarkets and sizes for large-scale distribution. But those who think that this is the death of commerce are wrong. Already today, 60% of Italians manage purchases in a multi-channel perspective (search for information on the sites, then if they don't buy online, they go to the store or go back to the web for after-sales…)”.
For Noci, however, it is not simply the victory of the virtual over the real. “Amazon – she explains – has changed the center of gravity. Instead of shelves with the same products for everyone, to win is the knowledge of the customer. He knows him, profiles him, retains him, offers products that "seduce" him. He interacts with him and offers him the most comfortable and convenient solution. Without compromises. But then in the USA he bought the grocery chain Whole Food, because he knew that, after all, human beings cannot completely disregard a physical space, where one can experience emotions (tactile, visual and olfactory), an experience of escapism or entertainment, where to look for additional services, assistance or hyper-specialization”.
“The worries are real – he emphasizes instead Giovanni Cobolli Gigli, president of Federdistribuzione, always on the pages of the Sun -. Our companies are already making a great effort to integrate the "physical" store with the "virtual" one. And there are also attempts by small retailers to band together to offer similar types of offer by building critical mass. In recent years – concludes Cobolli Gigli – we have almost tripled our investments in sales staff training, to “reconvert” cashiers, for example, where automatic tills multiply and create increasingly specialized employees”.
