On the pages of FIRST online we have already dealt with China many times, its large market and the opportunities it offers, together with the many difficulties in understanding how to get there.
We, in this FIRST Export Service online, we have taken the question from afar, first trying to interpret the mentality of the Chinese who have used to open their way into the African, European and Italian markets, and only then trying to understand how our companies can direct their exports and their investments towards the largest Asian country.
Because, as Professor Donata Vianelli of the University of Trieste says in the interesting article attached, "There is no Italian company that in more or less recent years has not faced the alternative "sell or not we sell “in the Chinese market”. However, Italian companies have not always been able to answer this question successfully. Vianelli analysed, with an interview with 130 Italian companies from various economic sectors, covering the entire national territory and focusing mainly on Small and Medium Enterprises, the reasons that underlie a still marginal presence on the Chinese market: the only recent beginning of this presence (41% of the sample began to go to China after 2005); the turnover, still very limited, achieved in the Chinese market remains; a limited degree of control of the distribution channel and the final market; the difficulty in developing relationships with reliable local partners and in understanding and managing the culture of the country. But she also examines what the success factors have been for those who have managed to develop a stable presence in the territory of the Dragon. "To enter China - writes Vianelli - Italian companies must bring brands and/or know-how into play, combined however with a clear entrepreneurial vision that believes in the company's future success in that market and therefore has the courage to invest and to build relationships and a reliable and coherent distribution network step by step with its strategic choices at an international level”.
In short, to win in China, we need to think about a long-term investment: first of all in ourselves and in our company.
03.10.2011
www.gpgarioni.it
Attachments: Firstonline Selling in China Donata Vianelli 031011.pdf
