The 25th edition of Forum Retail 2025 – an event organised by iKN Italy, a leading company in the production and delivery of management training and business events – took place at Superstudio Più in Milan and was attended by over 3,500 participants, including international leaders, innovators and analysts, confirming its status as a strategic hub for the Italian business community. The meeting emphasised the growing importance of Artificial Intelligence in the near future, but also addressed the issues of global marketplaces and omnichannel retailing, which are transforming the shopping experience and redefining business strategies.
Customer care
The Ipsos Doxa survey highlighted how customer service is a key strategic lever for relationships and competitiveness, with 27% of Italians saying they were dissatisfied with their last customer service experience and, of these, 40% saying they would not buy from the brand again. Conversely, 79% of satisfied customers share positive feedback, strengthening the brand’s reputation and trust.
Changes in retail: the role of AI
During the event, it emerged that retail is entering a new phase in which the most important purchasing levers are increasingly represented by personalisation, data governance, advanced omnichannel strategies and Artificial Intelligence. With regard to the latter, Francesca Rossi, IBM’s global AI leader, stressed that AI only becomes a strategic lever if it is governed by criteria of transparency and responsibility. Companies that invest in responsible AI see a 61% increase in customer trust, a 54% increase in reputation and a measurable impact on profitability. AI also plays an important role in online sales, for example by reducing size-related returns by 10% and helping consumers with their style choices, as highlighted by Eloisa Siclari, Zalando’s General Manager for Southern Europe.
Fashion & luxury
According to KPMG’s analysis of the impact of AI on fashion and luxury, while more than half of brands already use AI in operations and logistics, 64% do not consider themselves ready to integrate it into creative processes, and only 27% use it in product development, an area considered crucial for efficiency and personalisation in order to overcome the difficulties of a sector in serious trouble.
Also interesting are some conclusions by Raimonda Rosi (Mastercard), who presented the “Mastercard Luxury Insights” research, with data on purchasing behaviour and emerging geographies in the Italian luxury sector. The research shows that for luxury goods, 84% of spending still takes place in physical stores, with average ticket prices three times higher than online. Leading the luxury shopping rankings are international tourists, who account for two-thirds of total purchases, with average spending three times higher than that of Italians. Milan and Rome confirm their role as world capitals of luxury fashion, with the Quadrilatero della Moda, and Via Montenapoleone in particular, accounting for almost half of all spending.
Pietro Comito, Head of Group Strategy & Transformation at Ferragamo, reiterated that innovation, even for a historic, high-end brand such as Ferragamo, means strengthening the brand’s identity by integrating creativity and technology. This concept also emerged during the Retail Forum 2024 in a speech by Marica Paolicchi, eCommerce Manager at René Caovilla, who emphasised how, thanks to the use of the most advanced technologies, such as generative artificial intelligence, it is possible to build authentic and tailor-made relationships with customers, provided that loyalty to the brand’s founding values is never compromised. ‘Personalisation can never sacrifice the identity and exclusivity that characterise a luxury brand such as René Caovilla,’ Paolicchi emphasised.
