Il 62,3% of Italian families shop at discount stores, a share that has risen sharply, +9%, in the last 12 months. This was revealed by Enrico Giovannini, president of Istat, during a hearing before the special commissions of the Chamber and Senate.
The crisis, in Giovannini's words, "has profoundly changed the patterns of consumption of families“. This is a change that is crossing Italy along all its territorial bands: the peak is in the South, where 73% of families use the discount stores against 65% in the previous year. The shares are lower in the North (55,5%) and in Central Italy (62%), where, however, the highest percentage increases have been recorded, close to 10%.
