Italians’ grocery shopping in 2023 costs 10% more, but is increasingly scarce in quantity

Perhaps, the famous “anti-inflation quarter” that began in October will improve things at the end of the year. But, in the meantime, high prices have changed the spending of Italians, who spent more, +10% year-on-year, to buy less quantities of virtually every kind of product, with few exceptions. Supermarkets remain the predominant channel with 40% of market share (+10.8% turnover over the first 6 months 2022, -2.1% in volume), ahead of hypermarkets (23% share in value, with turnover at +11.5% and -0.8% in quantity), and discount stores, with 22% (+10.9% turnover, but -3.8%). Suffering the most is small traditional retail, steady in value but at -6.8% in volume, while e-commerce (-15.6%) continues to lose important shares, after a pandemic-driven boom in past years. Among the types of buying families, it is those with teenage children (so-called maturing families) who face the greatest economic difficulties and have to introduce savings strategies aimed at containing spending increases. For these families, the shopping cart “lightens” by 10.5% and the change in spending is the smallest compared to those of other family types: only +3.3%. On the other hand, more mature households (over 55 either alone or in couples), increase the volume purchased, with an increase in spending that for the former is 15.6% and for the latter 12.6%. Evidence that emerges from the October 2023 Ismea-NielsenIQ Food Consumption Observatory.
Overall, as mentioned, spending on all food sectors is increasing. Spending on eggs (+19.3%), milk and dairy products (+17.8%) and cereal derivatives (+15.6%), including pasta (+11) and rice (+26%), rose sharply. Spending increases on meat (+9.7%) were also important. But among packaged products there is an increase in the share of private label products, which, overall, according to a NielsenIq survey, now comes to cover 31% of FMCG products, with Italy slowly coming into line in this with a European scenario that sees, in some countries, even 50% of the market share covered by private label products.
Narrowing the focus on the wine and beverage segment, which is worth 10.8% of the average receipt, spending is growing, overall, by +5.6%, half the general trend. For wine, the figure for the first half of 2023 says +3.1% in value, but -3.8% in volume. A figure to be read, in part, also in light of a good recovery in out-of-home consumption, but still negative.