Free time is more precious than money. This not so ground-breaking discovery has been made by GFK and related at the last Connecthub Innovation Summit by Paolo Baruta, Retail Lead Market Insight of the German’s research institute. So: for exactly 53% of Italians free time is more important than “the money I earn”.
Can shopping be categorized as free time? If we’re talking about necessities of course: no. We presume that everything superfluous brings some kind of pleasure, so we can assume that: yes, shopping for that is free time.
Italians’ favourite way to spend their spare time is to expose themselves to some kind of “media”. Twenty years ago, that could mean standing like zombies in front a tv set. Today it means standing like zombies smartphone in hand. Fun Fact: 35% of us manages to be zombies in front of the tv and a smartphone, at the same time.
After exhausting the daily quota of likes, hearts and pan-social bile, what is left of the much-coveted free time (70% would like to have more, the rest probably doesn’t like family or being alone) is spent buying, again on a smartphone. Mobile has become the main purchase channel for about half of the Italian population. (47% vs. 33% in the rest of Europe).
Cross-channel strategies, as showrooming (see in store buy online) and webrooming (see online and buy in store) are also on a steep rise. 32% of Consumers “consumes” the channel jump at the same retailer but 21% happily betrays it, taking a peek in the store and then running to, say, mama Amazon.
Having little time off makes you love simplicity: everything that slow us down is, by its own nature, detestable. That’s why Jeff Bezos invented cashier-less supermarkets and that’s why 49% of respondents stops using a product or service if they consider it too complicated. The Concept of “complicated” being totally subjective we shouldn’t elaborate on it, least we discover that books figure among the complicated products.
Simplicity could be going to a store, as long as it offers a nice “experience” too. Or buying online with a single click, as long as we manage to avoid the frustration of a missed or late delivery. 78% of Italians say that free delivery drives them to buy more. 53%, though, say that same-day delivery drives them to buy more. Despite rampant contradictions we, at Milkman, give maximum value to our receivers’ free time, that’s why we let them choose day and hour of delivery, through a simple interface, not free but no doubt usable in front of the tv.
Once upon a time losing half a day waiting for the courier was taken for granted. Now things have changed, thanks to a generation of Users, no more simple Consumers, who chose to choose and not to suffer.
Happy to oblige.
