President of Confimprese

Mario Resca President of Confimprese

shoPPing habits have been revolutionised, now retail sPaces also need to be rethought

We must start from a fundamental consideration: purchasing habits have been revolutionised. The acceleration caused by the pandemic has converted into digital consumers even the users who were previously very conservative and used to only buying in physical shops. In 2020, 46 million new online consumers were registered in Italy. Hence the need to combine digital transformation with the need to avoid forms of commercial desertification, already experienced with serious consequences in other European countries. However, the pandemic has served to accelerate the construction of a vision for the future, in which the customer experience, both online and offline, will

«in Of the near purchase future, cOnvenience and immediacy will make the difference in attracting peOple tO physical pOints Of sale»

continue to be at the heart of every retail strategy. Indeed, with the health emergency, consumers learned to favour local shops for their purchases, not delegating all their spending power to online shopping. In the near future, the convenience and immediacy of purchasing will make the difference in attracting people to physical shops. The availability of items will be crucial, as will the presence of a fast and efficient customer service, perhaps dedicated only to collection or return services. As in-store sales decrease in favour of online sales, physical store spaces will be rethought to attract consumers. Large shops are already being converted. And in some cases, surplus space is being used for warehousing. In others, the change is more profound and is seeing the spaces used as distribution centres to handle online orders, where products are prepared for click&collect: a method that is destined to become an increasingly popular option for collecting goods, thanks to the flexibility it offers customers. Only by measuring the value of the physical experience consumers have in the shop will it be possible to understand the real contribution a shop can make to a brand or retailer’s bottom line. Our members

have come through two years of pandemic and today, despite the reopenings and a situation that is normalising, they are still experiencing a sharp drop in traffic in city centres, shopping centres and outlets, while rents have not fallen and the running costs of

▲Camomilla Italia ►Mondadori Store ►Equivalenza

retail outlets are high. With business restarting with full costs, but only 70 per cent of their previous revenues and margins, now compressed even more by the rises in the prices of raw materials, transport, energy and inflation, and with little support from government and credit institutions, the scenario is still difficult. We are facing a critical situation for retail, which, after the short blaze experienced in the last quarter of 2021, is struggling to recover. And the inevitable very negative consequences of the war in Ukraine on our economy only exacerbate what is already not an easy situation. •