Design, Innovation and Made in Italy: Three Italian Furnishing Manufacturers in the USA and China

Abstract

The dissertation will analyze the Italian wood-furniture sector. In particular, a definition and understanding of design as a concept and its relationship with innovation will be given in the first chapter. In the second, there will be a focus on the Italian market trends, on the manufacturers of furnishing products and on the importance of internationalization as a strategy to reach foreign markets. In the third, I will expand the lenses of the analysis by trying to focus on the markets in which the Italian furniture export is stronger. Countries such as USA and China represent the two main export destinations for what concerns the furniture industry. As a consequence, those are the two markets I will mainly focus my attention to. Finally in last chapter, three different italian furniture manufacturers will be analyzed (Arflex, Cassina & Natuzzi), taking the sofa as a reference, in order to understand how the same piece of furniture (the sofa) is presented, in different countries/markets. It will be interesting to analyze the similarities or differences in the strategies that these companies use to penetrate different markets, the pricing strategies they adopt, and the behavior and tastes of the consumers that purchase them. Moreover, the interview with the operation manager of DzineNY (the exclusive distributor of Arflex for the US market), will be reported at the end of the chapter.