Digital Marketing in China: An analysis of the social media strategy of Tod's Group

Abstract

In recent years, digital marketing has rapidly developed in China and it has attracted an extensive part of the Chinese population, especially for what concerns apparel and footwear. A lot of Italian firms and “made in Italy” brands consider the Chinese digital market as the perfect field to expand themselves into the East-Asian area. The objective of this study is to comprehend the strategies used by some Italian fashion companies in order to enter the Chinese market in terms of digital marketing and communication, with particular attention to the strategies adopted by Tod’s Group. The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter of this dissertation focuses on explaining the meaning of “digital marketing”, that is marketing of products including different channels of communications compared to the traditional ones. The big, wide and enormous channel is the internet, that contains a lot more concrete media, such as display advertising, chats, e-commerce online websites, m-commerce services and social media. As any marketing strategy, digital marketing requires an understanding of the customer behavior, in this case Chinese customers. The second chapter analyzed the Chinese market starting from a general overview of the country’s situation regarding the marketing communications and the potential implications including those related to the cultural dimension -such as brand-loyalty, gift-giving behavior- as an essential basis for the market segmentation. Hereafter, an analysis of the most used digital communication channels in China is provided with particular attention to Chinese social media, which represent a whole completely different and new world from Western social media, pointing out, in this case, not the influence of cultural values, but the political elements –communism, state control, rules- that could affect this type of communication. The third chapter carries out a review about the specific sector of Italian fashion, including clothing items, eyewear, footwear, etc., and which companies have invested in the digital marketing to China the most, in order to understand their communication strategy and how they manage to properly communicate in this country. A digression on the work of advertising agencies is given in order to understand how they help companies with the digital communication, with a closer and concrete look on the experience of the Italian communication agency “Young Digitals” and its work with Italian companies that intend to expand worldwide, but especially in the Chinese market. The fourth part of this thesis is devoted to the analysis of the social media strategy of Tod’s Group, a leading company in the apparel and footwear sector. Tod’s is an Italian company that managed to find a space in the Chinese marketing in two significant ways: by maintaining the “made in Italy” label as expression of high quality and good taste, and by entering a key social media channel (ie. Weibo) and adopting specific communication strategies, including collaborations with famous influencers to expand their audience.