ROME, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- The winter sale season kicked off across Italy, with consumer hunting for bargains not only in clothing and footwear but also in traditional holiday foods and beverages such as "panettone" cakes and "spumante" sparkling wines, Coldiretti farmers' association said in a statement on Saturday.
"Typical Christmas holiday products are being offered at discounts of up to 70 percent, from 'cotechino' (slow-cooked pork sausage traditionally eaten on New Year's Eve) to 'pandoro' (Christmas cake), from 'panettone' and 'torrone' (Christmas cakes and sweets) to dried fruits" and "spumante" (sparkling wine), said Coldiretti, which has 1.5 million members and is the biggest farming federation in Italy and in Europe, according to its website.
In a report on Jan. 1, small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) federation Confesercenti said that sales season kicked off in some of Italy's 20 regions on Jan. 1, with the rest of the country following suit on Jan. 4.
At least 41 percent of Italian consumers plan to take advantage of the winter sales (down from 48 percent in the same period in 2019), spending an average of 168 euros per capita, according to a survey by market research company SWG for Confesercenti, which according to its website, represents over 350,000 SMEs in the retail, tourism, services, artisanal and industrial sectors, employing over one million people.
Forty-seven percent of consumers said shoes are at the top of their shopping list, followed by knitwear (45 percent), coats and jackets (27 percent), shirts (26 percent), t-shirts and lingerie (22 percent), and bags (15 percent).
Another 12 percent of respondents said they will be bargain-hunting for discounted accessories, such as scarves and belts, according to Confesercenti.
