Product adaptation strategy for the Chinese fashion luxury market: the Sergio Rossi case

Abstract

The today’s economic landscape is consistently evolving due the globalization, favoring the emergence of new global players and dynamics: the global power is shifting from West to East countries, communication is strongly increasing, social and environment concerns are becoming more important. The thinner distance between companies and their consumers had created a worldwide scenario with international consumers and companies. On the one hand, companies can easily increase their profits and the awareness of their brand image by exporting their products in countries once impossible to access; on the other hand, they have to deal with divergence local needs, preferences and consumer behaviors. The thesis aims to understand the cultural aspects that strongly affecting consumer behaviors have to be considered in the formulation of companies’ cross-cultural marketing strategy. Specifically, focusing on the product aspect, it investigates the most concerning variables that a fashion luxury company has to evaluate in the formulation of its international marketing strategy in order to implement a product adaption or standardisation strategy. Based on a review of the models created to make predictable the cultural differences and the literature on the strategies that can be adopted by companies; the cross-cultural marketing strategy adopted by an Italian shoe company in the Chinese fashion luxury market has been analyzed with a deeply focus on the product features. The results highlight the importance of the product adaptation in the fashion luxury industry by showing that the success of these companies, mostly European, is strongly related to the correct understating of the cultural dimensions and to the proposing of a perfect tailored cross-cultural marketing strategy with high attention to the product features.