Exporting Italian excellences to China: does the Chinese market consider high end Italian products as superior ones?

Abstract

In an increasingly advanced market open to innovations such as the Chinese one, the export of Italian products is increasingly becoming the focus of attention. Nowadays a lot of Italian companies make so much effort to enter this market and to make their history and traditions known to Chinese costumers. Customs, non-tariff barriers, government regulations, make it even more difficult to export Italian products to China. Beside to make these products appreciated by the costumers they need to be competitive with the local products also in terms of price and due to all these taxes sometimes this is hard to achieve. Having said that, it is also difficult for foreign companies trying to understand Chinese culture and facing the reality that the Chinese consumers are really tied to their millenary culinary tradition. Advertising, educating and organizing marketing strategies is the best tactic that Italian companies have to enter this new market. Food- alimentari, clothing- abbigliamento, cars- automobili and furniture- arredamento are the four A's behind the success of the Made in Italy in the world as well as in China. This is why I decide to include in my thesis a series of interviews in order to understand more about the reality of this market looking through the eyes of Italian successful companies and entrepreneurs to see what their experiences have been like. I had the pleasure of interviewing two of the most outstanding Italian companies available on the chinese market today, Granarolo Group and Salumifici Beretta, but I also interviewed some Italian import-export companies that have been in China for a few years now and contribute every day to promote Italian excellences in China. Nowadays the biggest issues of Italian companies in China is the presence on the market of multinational companies that have been there longer and that used their first mover advantages to educate the consumers first. The result is that sometimes the perception of Italian food is a little distort from what really is. Chinese people are becoming more and more health conscious so when it comes to choose healthy food the first choice is eating Italian that is considered to be healthy, good and glamourous. Glamourous, yes, because food is also becoming a status symbol therefore eating Italian kind of set a certain standard. At the end of this thesis there are my conclusions and the bibliographic research behind my work.