For Italians, a life of savings, the Coop 2024 report
Even if unequally, the purchasing power in Italy he recovered the pre-pandemic levels and today more than yesterday the number of Italians who have experienced significant hardship has decreased (20 million people admitted it in 2022 compared to 12 million today). This is what emerges from the Coop Report 2024 presented today.
The key word with which Italians approach consumption, the Report highlights, is however savingsby far the first criterion of choice in purchases (75% of the sample says so). Essentially a low-impact life where the essential becomes central, the superfluous is drastically reduced and where a significant rethinking of one’s identity takes place, entrusted more to the personal dimension than to the economic one and to the signal and hedonistic value of consumption.
An indifference – sometimes a struggle – towards shopping and a creeping de-consumerism which goes hand in hand with the search for personal well-being to the point of making body care a true cult.
Coop, Italy a restless country, confidence in the future is decreasing
Italy is a country “concerned by the international scenario, anxious about the environmental emergency and tired from everyday life and for this reason increasingly restless (+8 points on 2022)”. According to the report, the share of who looks to the future with confidencewhich drops by 4 points in two years and increases fear (+11 percentage points 2024 on 2022). Especially since 55% of Italians are dealing with a life very different from the one expected, often worse (44% of the sample). A sentiment with which Italians project themselves forward that clashes precisely with today’s data.
Coop, Italians pay more attention to healthy food than EU average
If Italians are inclined towards the de-consumerism and the savingsthe exception is food, where consumption is based on healthy eating. In fact, food remains the only sector in the forecasts where cut spending It is an option only for a small minority of Italians: 21% of the sample declares that they will increase their spending versus 10% who intend to decrease it.
It is not surprising that Italians are much more attentive to a healthy diet than the rest of Europeans, the survey highlights. Those who think of strengthening this propensity outnumber those who reduce it by 36 percentage points; a higher difference than the European one, which stops at 31 percentage points.
And Italians are also the only ones, at least in words, to say they are willing to pay more to have healthy products (overall and net of those who are not willing, +15%; compared to an EU average of +1%).
Coop, less savings for wellness and beauty treatments
In the propensity to frugality of Italiansinstead, survives and even strengthens, propensity for personal well-being and a real cult of the body. On the one hand, the report highlights, this leads to a healthy attention to one’s health which among other things pushes Italians into the arms of private healthcare: 23% of healthcare spending in our country (40.6 billion euros) is directly financed by citizens.
And here also emerges a positive propensity towards an application of AI with regards to technological progress, scientific discoveries and also applications in the medical field for the protection of health.
The cult of one’s body also gives rise to the mantra of “everyone on a diet”, the survey reports, whether they are low-calorie diets, health diets or sports, now practiced in various ways by 4 out of 10 Italians (almost 17 million people). And on the other hand, the obsession for aesthetic treatments and the cosmeticswhere the parsimony previously highlighted seems to weaken and in some cases disappear.
Italians spend an average of 350 euros per year on aesthetic treatmentsthe variation in sales of cosmetic products (2024 on 2019) is double-digit (+29%), to the point of bordering on dysfunctional behaviors (8.6 million Italians who take or are interested in using diabetes drugs to lose weight).
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