Coronavirus has upset the daily lives of many of us. Staying indoors has made many operations difficult, first of all the one that is most part of everyday life: go shopping. E-commerce in recent years has changed many paradigms, but going to the supermarket to supply our pantries is an essential and fundamental operation, even more so when you live in times of crisis like this.
Giving priority to everyone's health has somehow changed the rules of the game, with limited exits, distances to be respected and crowds to avoid: supermarkets are fully undergoing these rules and we all had to adapt. We have to go out as little as possible but the expense we have to keep doing it. It was the right time for online to finally do its part, for the never-used online shopping to start taking off but, as we well know, not everything went in the right direction.
A future never arrived
We believed that the internet would forever change the way we buy products: somehow it did, allowing us easier access to numerous goods, as well as greater speed and convenience in being able to manage our purchases directly from home. Ebay and Amazon have radically changed trade and many of our habits, but in Italy physical purchases continue to be the most used. If for some goods and internet services it has started to catch on, for many others we Italians continue to prefer the more traditional purchasing methods.
Shopping is one of these: going around the shelves, touching what we eat is an indirect reflection that we have been carrying out for years, the result of a care for ourselves and for the things we eat and assume very well rooted in our habits.
The online has given us infinite possibilities also in this sense, with the major chains of the large retailers who have from their complete services to buy almost everything from the comfort of their home, but it has always been more options, useful and interesting possibilities but used by a rather limited number of users.
A possible solution
Now everything has changed and we are living it day after day on our skin. There physical spending in large and small supermarkets has become problematic : controlled accesses create more and more long lines day after day and some highly purchased goods tend to be scarce. The precautions that we must all take push us, directly and indirectly, to stay at home. Avoiding exits as much as possible is sacrosanct, even when an essential operation such as shopping is involved.
The online purchasing services were immediately seen as the real solution to the problem: buying and having everything delivered to your home, without endangering yourself or others. A perfect solution but which, unfortunately, went to discount with the harsh reality of the facts. The Italian system was not at all ready to face the emergency.
An expected problem
Let's face it, to avoid misunderstandings: the online shopping services of the main Italian chains have always proven to be well structured, organized and functional. Lists of various and complete products, ample flexibility in choosing your appointment, with acceptable times and fast and almost always punctual delivery times. A accessory service which was slowly starting to catch on but was still being used by a marginal number of customers.
Coronavirus did nothing but amplify its importance, transforming it from accessory to basic. The limited chain that managed the whole therefore found itself having to accommodate a number of requests far beyond its possibilities.
Extreme questions, due to the extraordinary nature of the emergency and which, of course, would have created difficulties even for a well-structured and organized service. Yet all the chains have met unexpected difficulties and incalculable, which have underlined how much online spending has always been overshadowed by its real potential and its usefulness, at very high levels in this moment of emergency but still important also in situations of normal daily life.
What is not working
The problems of these days involve in equal measure the whole chain of management, preparation and delivery of the order. Every aspect of the online shopping management method has been put in crisis. The countless number of inquiries first congested order portals and platforms. Many sites have turned out not accessible, with even entry queues to be able to start placing items in your virtual shopping cart.
The abnormal quantity of orders also has created many difficulties for stocks, not only in terms of quantity, but precisely in the variety of goods available, with users who found themselves in the hands of a list of incomplete products, with the serious absence of many basic necessities.
The biggest problems concern, as it was easy to imagine, the forwarding of orders and the deliveries. Many chains no longer have free delivery slots within weeks or even months: by ordering today, at best, you can receive your shopping in 15 days, provided, in any case, that you have been faster in 'occupy the first available free slot.
A short circuit that threw the whole system into tilt: too many order, too many book and the appointments for deliveries are always all already taken, leading to the incredible situation, for many portals, of no longer having dates available in the system. Even the "hybrid" systems of shopping order and in-store pickup have come into crisis: on a purely practical level supermarkets do not have the necessary staff to manage them.
Structural dysfunctions
This emergency has also revealed all the limits of Italian online shopping services: no traditional chain or no online delivery service has in its ranks the number of employees needed to process, prepare and deliver orders. Even where the problems of network congestion and access were solved at a technical level, no one has employees inside who would physically be able to prepare orders, not to mention the bellboys, present in limited numbers in the area and unable to manage non-deliveries more circumscribed but distributed in large numbers and over rather large territories.
There large retailers she found herself hit by a tsunami of incalculable proportions but the feeling is that, even if the emergency had been less, the difficulties, albeit less dramatic, would still have been very present. Italy is not ready to manage online shopping as a normal and daily operation. Everyone has always seen this service as a surplus, but perhaps it is time to radically change this belief.
What to do?
Everyone is still committed to to solve the situation, in an unprecedented race for cover. At the logistical and personnel level, efforts are being made to strengthen the whole chain, many subjects are giving priority to deliveries of only basic necessities, while accessory delivery services have been converted to help in the distribution of basic necessities.
Furthermore, almost all of them are offering free delivery or giving big discounts to the elderly, the disabled and the most needy, not to mention the people who decongest the chain, personally taking care of shopping and taking it home to those who need it.
Solidarity gestures that move and show how much, at all levels, efforts are being made at any cost to solve the problem and give breath to a service that has quickly and unexpectedly become necessary. But all this must not distract us from the undeniable under development of the sector in our country.
The potential of online shopping has been underestimated by everyone: not only overshadowed, but often not taken care of as they deserve. Having a basic structure already well developed in normality would have allowed much more room for maneuver today to manage this crisis. The hope of all is that this emergency is the result of reflection to make it clear to many that online commerce and home delivery can also be a resource in the management of basic necessities and the daily purchases of citizens.
The Internet is a resource of everyday life of all of us and it can also be to give shape to a shopping service that is well-oiled and functional at all levels. Not only to ensure that the inconvenience is less in times of crisis, but also to ensure that in the future there is a possibility of choice that it is truly such, with almost no difference between online and in-store shopping. Today more than ever we understood that there is really a need.
