Report Ecommerce in Italy 2021

Like a pot on the stove about to boil, just needing a tap on its side to start, the lockdown was the tipping point of Italian e-commerce.
Many sectors have suffered, mainly tourism which was always the driver of Italian online commerce. That is why 2020 has been a transition year. Those who were able to seize the moment have seen a significant growth in turnover (e.g., Food, because of closed restaurants) or profits (e.g., car insurance, because of the absence of accidents). For others it was a moment of survival (e.g., Tourism).
That is why the e-commerce sector’s end of year result has remained, for the first time ever in Italian history, basically the same as the previous year.
But 2020 really brought a maturation of e-commerce, it became truly mainstream. Millions of Italians have discovered the possibility of buying online and they will not forget it, even for the sectors that have suffered in recent months. That is why today e-commerce has become fundamental to the strategy of every production or distribution group in Italy.
When a sector goes through a maturation change there are many side effects. One of these is the takeovers made by companies that want to consolidate their position or that want to make up for lost time. Another changing factor are infrastructures that are becoming critical to excel in the sector. For this reason, pressures are also emerging to define the game table. For example, for some years now, network neutrality is being discussed: equal access for all companies to the same quality and speed of Network (e.g., especially for streaming companies in the United States). Today, in Italy, we must also question other infrastructures such as shipping neutrality. The presence of large operators is in fact shifting attention and quality of service towards those who contractualize very challenging SLAs (Service Level Agreements) to the detriment of small Italian e-commerce operators with much less contractual force.
For this and other reasons linked to the economies of scale of the large international giants, new forms of aggregations are being created between companies which, through federations of micro-enterprises, are increasingly positioning as valid competitors (at least in perspective).