Photo: Ansa
Editorial team
Seven in ten Italians will make a purchase during Black Friday week, an increase of 3% compared to 2024, with more than 50% taking advantage of discounts to buy Christmas gifts. This is revealed by Confcommercio estimates which state the average spending budget is 268 euros, a slight increase compared to last year. Electronics and household appliances remain at the top of the list of most popular goods, followed by clothing, personal care products and toys, while the population groups most likely to purchase are women, young people aged between 18 and 34 and residents of Northern Italy.
And while more than 50% of consumers will use physical stores and online portals to make purchases, digital communications play an increasingly important role: 41.5% of consumers say they are influenced by online advertising, 34.6% by artificial intelligence and 29.1% by Instagram, according to the survey. For Codacons, which Black Friday says will generate a turnover of around 4 billion euros in Italy between online purchases and in physical stores, “consumers’ attention is focused on price to the max”, with an increasingly large segment of people who “will decide at the last minute whether to make a purchase”. Assoutenti instead invites you to pay attention to the “avalanche of promotional messages” in which “fraud and attempts to steal users’ banking data” are hidden. However, there is no shortage of concerns regarding sustainability.
Sima, the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine, warns of the “major impact on the environment” of discount weeks, which “greatly increase pollution emissions”: especially due to car trips to shopping centers and points of sale, but also the consequences of packaging, shipping and delivery of online purchases. Sima estimates link purchases on the web and in physical stores during the week of Black Friday to the global release of about 500 thousand tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
