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Italian Luxury Goods Industry on the Move: SMEs and Global Value Chains

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Abstract

Since the end of the twentieth century, dramatic changes in global markets have affected the luxury goods industry on a worldwide scale. They have included the growing influence of emerging economies on trade, the concentration of retailing in the hands of few transnational companies, and an increasing number of mergers and acquisitions associated with the emergence of global value chains. They all called into question the traditional resources of the Italian competitiveness in fashion business and specifically in the field of personal luxury goods. This chapter analyses the specific organizational features of the Italian luxury goods industry, in order to explain how the Italian firms adapted to the new globalization and to understand whether the Italian model is still competitive at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

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Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Catia Brilli for the translation of this chapter.

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Merlo, E. (2018). Italian Luxury Goods Industry on the Move: SMEs and Global Value Chains. In: Donzé, PY., Fujioka, R. (eds) Global Luxury. Palgrave, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5236-1_3

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