Social Commerce and Marketing Strategy for "Made in Italy" Food Products

The ICTs have enabled the transformation of processes of production, access, transfer, use and, in recent years, the sharing of information (email, forums, and social networks), reducing the spatio-temporal barriers. However, despite the fact that investments in new technologies have increased in recent decades, Italian agri-food and agricultural enterprises have still not bridged the digital divide. Nevertheless there are interesting potentials for growth, with the advent of Web 2.0 (and the latest web 3.0) and with social media. The aim of this study is to provide a brief overview of the developments in the Digital Economy and of the changes that have occurred in business to consumer models. In particular, the state of the art for agri-food products in relation to the evolution from “e-commerce” to “social commerce” will be analysed, through a specific survey, consisting of two complementary phases, related both to online businesses and to the web consumers.