Case Analysis - Giordano: International Expansion

MARKETING MANAGEMENT

CASE ANALYSIS - GIORDANO: INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION

1. Giordano's product, business, and corporate strategies.

Product Strategy

In order to serve the needs of all age groups of customers, Giordano's product strategy is to experiment with new ideas as for example, executive women (Gio Ladies), young teenagers (Simply Khakis), budget -conscious customers (Bluestar Exchange) and men's casuals to pull up the brand image of core product line. Though it provides few core items to the customers it has embedded service quality with the product delivered.

Business Strategy

The business Strategy of Giordano is the Differentiation strategy, repositioning its brand by emphasizing differentiated, functionally value-added products and broadening its appeal by improving on visual merchandising and apparel.

Corporate Strategy

The corporate level strategy of Giordano focuses on global markets through which it can offer standardized and personalized products across country markets. They have followed horizontal integrating strategies since they have opened 1368 (as of 2003) retail stores in Asia. The corporate mission of Giordano is - To make people "feel good" and "look great". The flat organizational structure of Giordano has facilitated easy communication, efficient project management and speedy decision making and in turn shorter product development cycle.

2. Giordano's current positioning strategy.

The "value for money" positioning has been the success factor of Giordano along with its quality. It carefully selects the suppliers, keeps on strict cost control and resists the temptation to increase price unnecessarily. It provides service convenience to customers through many retail shops located in different countries. It provides "grab and go" services to serve the busy people opening kiosks in subway and train stations.

In my opinion, Giordano should not reposition itself against its competitors in the current and new market. It has a well defined and focused target - novelty being in environmental context. The current positioning strategy will help Giordano to provide the convenient services for the customers while maximizing its sales. And some of it experience of different positioning strategies for different geographical markets have failed to show significant positive results, so Giordano should maintain the current positioning in all markets it operates in and can provide value addition like offering fashion accessories.

3. Factors and sources of Competitive advantage.

The key success factors and sources of competitive advantage of Giordano can be summarized under following points:

* Jimmy Lia' management philosophy to try new ways of doing things in modern manner and learning through past experience and with mistakes.

* Focus on the HR to make each employee give high quality service positioning to customer directly or indirectly. They are the key persons to make the Giordano's philosophy of quality service.

* The flat organizational structure of Giordano which has facilitated easy communication, efficient project management and speedy decision making and in turn shorter product development cycle.

* Benchmarking Giordano against best-practice organizations in four key areas: computerization (from The Limited),