Consumers' behaviour & preferences
Reading habit
In 2010, only 46.8% of the population said to have bought at least one book over the past twelve month (Savioli, 2010). In addition, Italian readers are quite weak readers as illustrated in the figure here below:
Social category
One can notice that the level of study has an important impact on reading habits. Indeed, it appears that the higher is the level of study, the higher is the reading frequency.
Age
Interestingly, the higher percentage of Italian readers is to be found among the 11-17 age group (over 59%) while the lowest percentage was to be found among the 75-plus group (22.9%)
Gender
When looking at the reading frequencies by gender, it is clear that Italian women read more than men. From the data available on Istat, we gather that the situation in Italy is similar to this of the UK and Germany.
The Italian books industry (excepted electronic publishing, export and textbooks) is largely dominated by bookshops with 72,7% of the sales (see figure 3). Internet sales are quite low compared to other European countries with only 12% of the market share. However, similarly to other European markets, the book industry is largely dominated by a five big groups covering 63% of the market share (in 2009).
Distribution channels
