Down in Black and White, Farmer Sleeps Tight
GEO News
“Tradition is a successful innovation”
Oscar Wilde
For people like us, studying what Gillo Dorfles defined as ‘The World of Bad Taste’, the chosen payment method for purchases has considerable importance. Despite the latest discussions around card payments in Italy, many studies have proven a change in consumers’ behaviour: the preference towards digital systems is becoming a part of everyday habits.
The most significant data point establishes that over 60% of digital transactions in shops are now contactless. Not only this percentage has grown compared to 2021, but it also confirmed contactless as the current preferred way of payment. In the first semester of 2022 the transactional value of digital payments in Italy has reached 182 billion euros – this means a +22% growth compared to the previous year. According to the Innovative Payments Observatory, by the end of the year this amount will reach the value of 400 billion – a value which is very close to the cash payments one.
Therefore, it is a given that a constantly growing number of purchases in each family passes through digital channels – such as the non-food sector, which registers a percentage increase in double digits. We can monitor these trends and changes in behaviour either by sector (catering, home care and beauty, home décor and domestic appliances) or by micro-territorial analysis, targeting individual neighbourhoods or even smaller areas – in the next few months, we will be able to increment the level of detail of our analysis up until street level.
In conclusion, we can determine that e-commerce, digital channels, and online delivery are now an essential part of Italians daily habits. The integration between the physical channel (still the preferred one) and the digital channel has now been for some time a crucial part of international marketing strategies for the retail sector – activated by companies that have learned to adapt with an ever growing flexibility to the environment. A further signal of the monumental journey towards modernity is also represented by digital cards. Truly, everything that today is part of our tradition, it was at some point in time regarded as innovation.
