L'Italo-Americano

A new study with a v e r y o f - t h e - m o m e n t t i t l e , Made in Italy in the Social Media Age, has been mak- ing the rounds in Italy this m o n t h , r e p o r t e d b y l a Repubblica among others, a n d i t s c e n t r a l f i n d i n g i s bound to cheer anyone who c a r e s a b o u t t h e c o u n t r y : across the world's biggest markets, roughly three out of four people say they would happily pay more for some- thing Made in Italy. What gives that number its twist, a n d w h a t s e t s t h e s u r v e y apart, is where the willing- ness now comes from, since increasingly it is a feed or a video shared by a stranger, rather than a shop window or a glossy magazine spread. The research, carried out by the agency Pulse Adver- tising with the polling firm Eumetra among more than 2 , 5 0 0 c o n s u m e r s i n t h e United States, Britain, Ger- many, France, and China, found that the readiness to pay extra for Italian goods runs between 65 and 74 per- c e n t a c r o s s t h e W e s t e r n countries – seventy percent of Germans, for one – and climbs to a barely believable 93 percent in China. Even Italian food, long the "poor cousin" of Italian fashion in the matter of prestige, has n e a r l y d r a w n l e v e l , w i t h about a third of consumers w o r l d w i d e w i l l i n g t o p a y more for it, against a little over four in ten for clothing, which is a remarkable thing for something as everyday as supper to have managed. T h e g e n u i n e n o v e l t y , t h o u g h , i s t h e s c r e e n , because it is there, scrolling, that most of the world now first meets the idea of Italy: ninety-one percent of Chi- nese consumers, sixty-four p e r c e n t o f A m e r i c a n s , and well over half of Ger- mans, Britons, and French told the pollsters that social media is where they discov- er Italian brands and make up their minds about what to buy. By the way, Italian food has become the second most photographed category in those feeds, just behind fash- i o n : a p l a t e o f p a s t a , a s Pulse's chief executive Paola Nannelli put it rather neatly, has become content, and the m o m e n t i t i s f i l m e d a n d shared, it slips from tradition into aspiration. Stranger still is the rise of the creator, the influencer who has somehow become t h e g u a r a n t o r o f I t a l i a n a u t h e n t i c i t y , t h e f i g u r e whose word a shopper trusts when weighing whether a product is the real thing. The trend runs deepest in C h i n a , w h e r e p e o p l e a r e now more likely to find Ital- ian goods through an influ- e n c e r t h a n t h r o u g h t h e brand's own channels, and where their faith in online s t a r s r e a c h e s s t r i k i n g heights: more than eight in ten say they rely on a cre- ator's word (far above the f i g u r e s i n t h e W e s t ) a n d a l m o s t a l l o f t h e m a d m i t that online content affects what they end up buying. The researchers at Eumetra c a l l t h i s a n e w " l a y e r o f trust," a cast of storytellers of real Italian life who, sim- p l y b y s h o w i n g w h e r e a thing comes from and how it i s u s e d , m a k e t h e h i g h e r price feel earned. W h a t t h e w o r l d i s r e s p o n d i n g t o , t h e s t u d y s u g g e s t s , t u r n s o u t t o b e r e a s s u r i n g l y c o n s i s t e n t : style and elegance first, then a sense of old crafts- manship, then the plain promise of quality, all of i t c o n j u r e d b y a f a m i l i a r handful of images – an ele- gant room, a convivial table heavy with good food, the grain of natural materials, and the marks of the hand. A few names have come to carry the whole idea, with Barilla ranking among the most-cited Italian labels in e v e r y m a r k e t s u r v e y e d , a l o n g w i t h L a v a z z a a n d Ferrero. It is a curious inversion, when you think about it, of the way reputations used to b e m a d e , b e c a u s e a c r o s s most of the last century the prestige of Made in Italy was built in shop windows and o n c a t w a l k s , i n t h e s l o w accumulation of satisfied customers and word passed from one to the next. Today, a fifteen-second clip can do in an afternoon what once took a brand a decade, that is, carry the look and the feel of Italy to millions who may never set foot in the country. The reach is extraordi- nary then, but so is fragility, because what travels that fast can be imitated almost as fast. And imitation, sure enough, is the shadow over all this good news, because an aesthetic is far easier to copy than a tradition, and the same feeds that carry the real Italy abroad also carry, just as quickly, the Italian- sounding goods that borrow the feeling but leave out the substance. A premium like this is, in the end, a measure of trust, and trust takes far longer to build than to lose. There is something both heartening and a little comic in all of this, at least to any- one raised on the real thing, because the provenance and the craftsmanship that an algorithm now serves up to, l e t ' s s a y , a t e e n a g e r i n Shanghai or a young couple in Ohio are the very things Italian families – and the Italian-American families who carried them across the o c e a n – h a v e k n o w n f o r g e n e r a t i o n s , l o n g b e f o r e a n y o n e t h o u g h t t o f i l m them. The world, in a sense, i s p a y i n g a p r e m i u m t o enjoy something many of us simply grew up with. Grazie nonni! Jokes aside, the headline deserves to be enjoyed for what it is: a vote of confi- d e n c e i n a c o u n t r y , a t a moment when confidence is hard to come by. Whatever t h e m o n t h s a h e a d m a y bring, three out of four peo- ple across the world's rich- est markets are telling the pollsters that Italy, both the idea of it and the thing itself, is worth paying more for, and they are saying so with their own money and pur- chases. The screens may be new, but the conviction behind them is all rooted in our tra- dition. FRANCESCA BEZZONE From tradition to aspiration: why three in four still pay more for Italy THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 16 L'Italo-Americano A selection of Italian-made products reflects the craftsmanship, quality, and heritage that continue to make the Made in Italy label a global symbol of excel- lence (Image generated using Adobe Illustrator AI) LIFESTYLE WELNESS TRENDS STYLE TASTE

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