What is the competitive advantage of Italian products in world markets?

There are about 1.4 billion well-off people in the world. People with a level of personal income that enables them to purchase Italian products. Up to ten years ago, 90% of them lived in developed countries, while only 10% in emerging economies. But this proportion has changed drastically, with the latter outpacing the former in terms of economic growth, so that now just under 25% live in emerging countries, with the lion's share going to China. And this is a growing trend, with the Chinese economy becoming ever more powerful on the world stage.

What is the competitive advantage of Italian products in world markets? What is it that attracts these prosperous consumers to the Made in Italy brand? In a word: beauty.

This is not just a matter of looks, but also of content, the intrinsic properties of the product: the quality of its materials, and the care with which it is made. To the extent that Italian products can be considered the result of industrial artisanship - only apparently an oxymoron. Because our products combine the unequalled attention to detail of the artisan with the organised production and volumes of industry. To sum it up in a slogan: beautiful - and beautifully made. These products are aimed at a medium-to-high level market, what the British analysts call "affordable luxury" for the individual and the home: clothes and accessories, footwear, jewellery, furniture and furnishing accessories, food, eyeglasses, ceramic tiles, perfumes and cosmetics. In other words, products that are generally and wrongly considered the traditional products in which Italy is a manufacturing and commercial specialist.

But in reality, one can also be an innovative button-maker (as Cesare Romiti - FIAT CEO - once said during a seminar for FIAT managers: "If I invent a new way of making buttons, buttons become a hi-tech product"). The key, as Carlo Cipolla, the great historian of the Italian economy, admirably wrote, is to know how to continue "inventing new things that people like". And beautiful - and beautifully made - Italian products definitely fit the bill. The global value of these products is more than one trillion euro. This is divided into two thirds in mature markets, and one third in emerging and fast growing markets. The Italian market accounts for around 8%, which is 2.5 times the Italian share of global exports as a whole.

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Luca Paolazzi | Research Department