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Commerce in Italy.

Informations regarding the commercial industry in Italy.

In our country commerce is divided into two great industries, alimentary and non alimentary, and it is made up of small and large businesses that work on a small and large scale distribution.

The small scale distribution works in a district area and offers a more "man size" service and it suffers from the aggressiveness of the large groups. Large scale distribution can offer the same merchandise with better prices because it is more powerful contract-wise thanks to the large quantities ordered directly from the production and this is forcing many small shop keepers to close their stores or to try to change their product by specializing themselves in researched services to survive.

Wholesale commerce in Italy.

Wholesale commerce is the first step for the sale of goods following production. Its job is to buy large quantities of goods at the origin and to distribute them later to those who work in retail trade. The most obvious problem of distribution in our country is that for the most part it takes place on land, therefore on lorries and HGVs , making the costs of transportation high, adding to the final merchandise price. With the raise of the cost of petrol, we have assisted to an increase of the price of gas for vehicles, with a consequential raise in the prices of retail goods and therefore for the final consumer who is always the one to pay.

Retail trade in Italy.

Retail commerce in Italy is divided into two main realities, small shopkeepers who work in little shops and large distribution that, disposing of many resources, sell tons of products for competitive prices, therefore competing without mercy with the small businesses. The problem of retail sale in Italy is mainly that there are too many steps between the origin and the consumer - if there could be less steps - we could have the same products for a better price. Another problem is the excessive cost of transportation and the scarce use of railway transportation, extremely used in other European countries. This system could be less expensive than that on wheels, or by lorries to be more precise, which have suffered enormously from the raise in the prices of petrol products that we've had in the last months. In Italy there are very large shopping centres near all the big cities, equipped with big parking lots and all services, internal restaurants, bank and post offices, to make every sale more comfortable and safe.

Import-export in Italy.

In relation to commerce with foreign countries, Italy has lost many positions compared to the emerging countries. This has happened principally for two reasons: the scarce competitiveness of Italian products due to the unfavourable exchange of the Euro with the countries in the Dollar area which use the Dollar for their commercial transactions, and the high costs of labour in our counties, creating the tendency in the Italian commercial operators to acquire their supplies from the Eastern countries which produce at lower prices and at the same rate. Our goods are penalized because they cost more for those who would like to buy them. For statistics on importations and exportations of foreign commerce, visit the Istat site: http://www.istat.it/comest/

  Commercial centres

• Centre

  Mega stores

• Store

  Official sites

• Impresa.gov
• Camera di Commercio