A few days ago the Italy-China Foundation together with the Intesa-Sanpaolo bank co-organized in Milan the 7th Forum on "Italian success stories in China".
Introducing several successful case-studies on the Chinese market, this forum aimed to share marketing and business strategies which are suitable for China in order to encourage Italian small and medium enterprises to face the Chinese challenge in a more proactive way.
According to Italy-China Foundation experts, opportunities in China for Italian operators are growing very fast. Italian investments in China increased by 28.92 per cent in 2013. This result is quite astonishing considering that in 2012 a 36.62 per cent decrease was registered. Further, Italian exports to China rose by 8.13 per cent in 2013 (which means by more than 1,3 billion dollars).
Cesare Romiti, the President of the Milan Foundation, believes that specific market and business dimensions are not that involved in strengthening Italian companies' position in China. Rather, it is their marketing strategy that matters.
No matter how big they are, to be successful in China Italian companies need to know the market they are trying to approach, and they need to invest on human resources. Further, they need to find a local partner. Although the Chinese business market changed a lot during the last few decades, it remains too complicated for small and medium sized enterprises to approach it "alone".
China is expected to develop a huge internal market, and several multinationals are strengthening their position in the country in order to be ready to exploit its opportunities. Small and medium enterprises should prepare for that, too, finding a local partner as well as a niche market to either supply Western multinationals or offer what they are not able to do.
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