The importance of the Italian Market

A fresh start

With its glamorous image and interesting investment opportunities in the Italian market, even though some structural problems of the past can still be felt, some will say that one would have to navigate serious challenges to make a success of doing business in Italy. However, Italy is ranked 45th out of 189 economies in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Survey for 2016. The country came first for ease of trading across borders and also did well in resolving insolvency (23rd) and registering property (24th).

Despite what the numbers of the past have shown, Italy is an interesting market and offers many good business opportunities in sectors such as life sciences, information and communication technologies, renewable energies, high-quality consumer goods, high tech design, and engineering products just to name a few. In fact, even North American businesses look at the Italian market with great interest. That is why Italy is synonymous nowadays with the concept of a fresh and potent start. Italian culture, its business environment, and the regulatory and legal requirements are certainly very different from their American counterparts, and it can be challenging for any foreign company to understand how to achieve its business goals in Italy, but once achieved, as Sample Solutions believes it did, the opportunities are countless – and the numbers in 2016 prove it.

Fast Growth

Italy’s economy is now emerging slowly from recession. Estimates by the European Commission, Bank of Italy, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released recently indicate a moderate increase in GDP of 0.5 to 0.6% in 2015 and 1.1 to 1.4% in 2016.

Italy has undertaken a range of reforms over the past year. The Jobs Act, approved in December 2014, revises protections for new hires and has instituted the use of an open-ended contract with gradually increasing protections. A new banking law that obliges the largest cooperative banks to become joint-stock companies was passed in 2015.

How did that affect to the strength of the market? Read for yourself.

• modern infrastructure
• high level of internationalization and entrepreneurship, with fully integrated supply chains
• strong manufacturing and innovation capability in several areas
• gateway to Mediterranean and Middle-East markets, where the lifting of Iranian sanctions could increase exports by EUR €3 billion over the next four years
• hosts many trade exhibitions with global appeal
• one of the world’s highest rates of household wealth
• one of the world’s top-five tourist destinations

What makes us unique?

With all the previously mentioned factors in mind, Sample Solutions has quite the benefit in expanding its business in Italy and doing that business accompanied by italian establishments. We all know how difficult and challenging is to enter in a market that is so closed and picky, yet very worthy for the business.

The question that you should be asking is, what do we have to offer, that makes us unique and makes us the first option for sampling in Italy and beyond?

• • Inhouse B2C database.  

• • Age, gender and location have never been easier to get, for the most competitive price on the market.

• • In house B2B sample, more than 19M records for all of Europe and a online database for Italian companies.

• Automotive sample – Targeting users of different brands and models, filtering by car, KM , year or engine, any request you might have it´s feasible cost effective with us.

What is our main product of interest? Sample Solutions is a global premier sample provider who believes in the power of CATI.  The abbreviation CATI stands for Computer Assisted Telephone Interview and refers to the support of a telephone interview by a computer. Besides the obvious cost benefit there are way more important advantages of CATI:

• • Fieldwork can be controlled easier at a single location

• • Possible to collect data from outside a country

• • Faster turnaround times

• Mobile populations can be included due to high level of cell phone coverage

For the Landline RDD Sample Italy we have started to identify all different phone number blocks using the block density analysis. Since an EPSEM approach is not possible due to the unknown variable number length it is needed to setup the correct proportions for the sample distribution within Italy. A client can also choose its own weighting or use the multi-level proportion setting for Italy.This method ensures that towards the end of a survey the collected data will be representative for the entire population in terms of attributes like area, age, gender, religion and so on. Phone Format looks like this: Area Code + Exchange Code + Random Number.

Sample Solutions is able to filter RDD sample using a dialer to pulse the raw mobile sample and additionally, we can perform a provider lookup thus checking whether a phone number is actually switched on and within a certain mobile area, viz we can determine whether the phone is currently located within the country.

The Clients

Even though still in its infancy, Sample Solutions’s Solutions’ the Italian market hasn’t been without its due success. On the contrary! Only this year we have been In touch with several big players and equally important several smaller ones, and it’s the quality of the relationship and mutual desire for a great finished product that is of utter importance to us. That’s what brought in IPSOS Italy, IFF International, Apertamente ricerche and GN Research onboard. As we already saw at the ASSIRM FORUM in 2016 ( in which we will be present again this year), Our Client Service Manager for the Italian market commented: “I look forward to the next edition of The Forum. We work in a very exciting industry that is in constant movement and keeps changing, therefore we all need to keep up with the evolution of the market. This kind of events and workshops keep us up to date with all the innovations and helps us to enhance our knowledge of our client´s needs and demands.”