Selective quality consumption. This is the prevailing orientation manifested by the Italian population in this long period of economic difficulty. There does not seem to be only an economic component (fewer resources) that drives people to spend less, but it is also the idea of consumption that has changed, it is the value orientations that guide the acquired that are undergoing a process of transformation. But let us go in order. As is well known, our country's economy is progressing, albeit very laboriously, thanks above all to its projection onto foreign markets, where there is a growing demand for goods and services. Incidentally, we can no longer even count European economies among these, since low growth affects - some more, some less - the entire EU, which has now become our home market. Therefore, companies' eyes must increasingly turn to more geographically distant markets: not only the famous BRICS, but also the non-EU countries of Europe, those of North Africa.
However, while the more structured part of our economy has long since (and independently) embarked on these paths, the problem of domestic demand, which involves the largest share of the production system, remains as heavy as a boulder. Italy does not survive on the foreign market alone, but must also revive domestic demand.
We will not go into the merits of measures and policies to revive household consumption here, but we do want to draw attention to a little-explored aspect of the issue. That is, whether the drop in demand for goods and services - the Ministry of Economy and Finance recorded a drop of -4.3% for 2012 and forecasts for the current year that it will still be very negative (-1.7%) - is exclusively the result of the fewer resources available to households, or whether within this dynamic is not also concealed a profound change in consumption styles, in the value attributed to it. In other words, whether the (falling) demand also expresses the search for a (different) demand.
