Christmas has become increasingly digital. During the holidays the growth of theE-commerce has turned into a real boom involving an increasing number of Italians (9,2 million against 7,2 last year), for a total value of approximately 2,5 billion.
The latest estimates on online sales, in fact, speak of one growth around 30% compared to last year, while traditional channels continued to struggle, recording a new decline.
An impetuous growth that promises to continue for a long time, taking advantage of the long wave of the increasingly widespread diffusion of tablet and smartphone: According to a survey commissioned by eBay, in fact, 44% of Italians have made purchases online and 34% of Italians have used a mobile device to purchase at least one gift.
Christmas consumption therefore travels on the net, and the major online retailers decorate their virtual shop windows to attract the greatest number of customers with offers and promotions. Starting right from eBay, the first authentic e-commerce giant to forcefully enter the lives of Italians and which, in the month of December (especially on December 15th), recorded its annual peak of entries.
In the same way Spotify has chosen the Christmas period to launch some promotions: above all the possibility for new subscribers to subscribe to a quarterly subscription by paying only 9,99 euros, while ebooks, despite the numerous promotions also conducted by some publishing houses, are struggling to take off.
But the Christmas boom is just the tip of a much bigger iceberg. L'B2C eCommerce (business to consumer) registered, only in Italy, one growth of 17% on an annual basis for the whole of 2014, for a value of 13,3 billion euros, while sales via smartphones doubled (+100%), reaching 1,2 billion euros.
A positive trend that, however, results still late compared to the data of the large European countries, and in particular of the United Kingdom and Germany. A problem, in part, of demand (the digital divide, but also a low cultural propensity for remote purchases), but also of supply, which in some sectors and in some areas of Italy continues to be scarce.
Despite this delay, however, the growth trend remains so evident as to make it clear, once and for all, that we are increasingly living in a digital world.
