E-commerce in the food industry: a new retail channel for Poli Distillery

Abstract

This work will illustrate the opportunities of e-commerce as a new retail channel for the agricultural and food sector. The document will firstly give a theoretical description of the agricultural and food sector, its functioning and processes. We will, later, move to the analysis of numbers and figures of this industry and the dynamics of the internationalization of agri-food products. An accent will be put on Made in Italy concept and the problems of the Italian sounding. We will then analyze the world of alcoholic beverages, highlighting, in particular, Grappa and other spirits. In the second part, the study of the world of e-commerce will play the dominant role, underlining the new dynamics of this phenomenon, the most suitable products for the online sales and the countries that are more confident with it. We will, in particular, focus on the electronic commerce of food products to see its peculiarities and differences with other goods. Finally, in the third part, a case study (Poli Distillery) will be presented. The aim of the thesis is to explain the functioning of a food (spirit) e-commerce activity, studying a company that saw good results in this field in the last years. We will have a look at the advantages, the disadvantages and the outcomes of this new type of approach to the sale of food products. Finally we will examine the performances of Poli e-commerce through sale results and the monitoring of web-analytics. Goal of the work is to demonstrate that food products belonging to the Made in Italy tradition can play a leading role in the international market.