Fashion Marketing: Contemporary Issues, Second edition - Pr School

90 Fashion Marketing
Consequently, fashion retailers are now identified as amongst the most important
international companies.
Hollander (1970), in his review of the internationalization of retailers in
general, noted that fashion retailers were amongst the most prolific and successful
when it came to foreign market expansion. Dawson (1993) identified a
number of factors which he suggested serve to explain why internationalizing
fashion retailers enjoy considerable success abroad. These various factors are
listed in Table 5.1.
However, despite the international success of fashion retailers, there has
been little reference to that success within the literature, and consequently,
there has been insufficient consideration of their international strategies and
activities. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter will be to explore in depth the
pan-national expansion of fashion retailers.
Akehurst and Alexander (1996) proposed an agenda for future research in
the area of retailer internationalization in general. The details of their agenda
are provided in Table 5.2.
Table 5.1 Factors enabling the internationalization of fashion retailing
Factors
Small format requiring limited capital and management set-up costs
Ease of entry and exit compared to manufacturing
Single brand format enables internationalization
More suited to franchising than food formats
Economies of replication
Source: Dawson (1993).
Table 5.2 Future agenda for the study of the internationalization of retailing
Six questions of retailer
internationalization
What is the internationalization of retailing?
Who are internationalizing?
Why are retailers internationalizing?
Where are retailers developing international
operations?
How are retailers developing international
operations?
When does internationalization occur?
Key issues to be addressed
Development of a definition
Identification of the key determinants
which identify categories of
international retailer
Examination of the motivations for
internationalization
Identification of the direction of
international expansion
Examination of the methods of
foreign market entry
Examination of the conditions in
which internationalization occurs
Source: Akehurst and Alexander (1996).