In August shops took more money and sold less: turnover is read by separating prices from quantities
2 October 2026, 11:07
This morning Istat, Italy's national statistics office, published its retail trade figures for August. Compared with August 2025, sales rose by 0.5% in value and fell by 1% in volume. In plain terms: Italian shops took a little more money and sold less merchandise.
It is not a contradiction: they are two measures of the same thing, and neither is enough on its own.
The till receipt goes up even as the shopping bag gets lighter
Value is what customers spent, in euros. Volume tells you how much they actually bought: Istat takes the takings and strips out the effect of prices, as if everything were paid for at last year's prices. In August takings rose by 0.5 per cent and the goods sold fell by 1: which means prices rose, on average, by about 1.5 per cent. When prices rise faster than takings, more money goes into the till but fewer goods leave the shop.
Anyone who does the shopping already knows this: the total on the receipt is higher than a year ago, and the bag is lighter. Anyone who looked only at the total would swear they had bought more.
The August figures say exactly that: food up 0.9% in value and down 0.4% in volume, other products up 0.2% in value and down 1.3% in volume. In both cases the increase in takings comes from prices, not from goods.
Quantities are counted at last year's prices
The same check can be run on a company's turnover. Turnover changes for two different reasons: because the price of what is sold has changed, and because how much of it is sold has changed. They need to be separated before drawing conclusions.
The method is Istat's, brought in-house. Take the quantities sold this year, item by item, and value them at last year's prices. The result is an intermediate turnover, with today's units and yesterday's price lists. The difference between this figure and last year's turnover is the quantity effect: how much more or less was sold. The difference between actual turnover and the intermediate figure is the price effect: how much the price lists earned.
An example. A company ends the year with turnover up 3%, after raising its price lists by 5%. Units sold, valued at the old prices, turn out to have fallen by almost 2%. Turnover grows; the company sells less.
The data to do this already exist: the quantities are in the invoices, last year's prices in the old price lists. Someone just has to put them side by side, and that is the daily work of controlling.
Everyone raises prices; volumes show who is losing ground
The tables by type of shop say more. In large-scale retail, volumes grew by 0.1%; in online retail by 3.6%. In small shops, which Istat calls «businesses operating on small sales areas», they fell by 2.5%.
Prices went up for everyone, and that is why takings are holding up almost everywhere. The difference between those holding their ground and those falling back lies in the goods sold. The average shopkeeper looking at August takings sees a fall of 0.7% and thinks it was a slow month. Looking at volumes, they would see that they are selling two and a half items in a hundred fewer than a year ago, while supermarkets and online retailers are selling more.
The same applies to a manufacturing company. When raw materials go up, price lists usually rise for all competitors and each one's turnover grows a little. That growth says how prices are doing, not how the company is doing. Volumes, on the other hand, show whether customers are ordering as before, whether a competitor is taking some of them away, whether a product is on its way out.
A price increase can cover a fall in units sold for a year. If the fall continues, the following year a bigger increase is needed to hold turnover steady, and each increase risks driving away more customers. Anyone who reads only the total notices when the price lists are no longer enough.
The budget is written in quantities and prices, not as a growth percentage
The budget is built the same way: how much will be sold and at what price, not turnover growing by so many per cent. At the end of the year the variance can be read on two lines. If euros are missing because of prices, the question is about the price list and discounts; if they are missing because of quantities, it is about customers.
For August, Istat did this calculation for every shop in Italy and published it free of charge. For an individual company nobody publishes it: the data are already in the invoices, and the calculation falls to whoever issues them.
This article was prompted by a news item published in Istat on 2 October 2026.