英语论文网

s wide market. Hence,multinational corporations suddenly found themselves standing at the doorstep to anew arena—the Chinese market. Due to globalization, some Western companiestended to assume Asian consumers have similar tastes and preferences, but realitymight have shown a different picture. The world might have become a “global
village” but the impacts of various languages and cultures should always be taken intoconsideration, especially when multinational companies design their marketingstrategies for different markets.
1.1 Research question and aim of the research
Usunier (2000) points out that in today’s increasingly interdependent world, barriersto trade and international exchanges are constantly diminishing. However, thedimension of culture remains the single most enduring feature that is necessary to beintegrated in marketing strategies and in their implementation, especially when they
focus on international markets. Inspired by the above notion, this thesis presents acase study of IKEA Shanghai in China with reference to IKEA Malmö in Sweden,examining how IKEA conducts its marketing strategies to appeal to customerscultivated in a different culture from the country of its origin and how the companycombines its global marketing strategy with local culture-based marketing activities.
Originating from a small village in the south of Sweden in 1943, IKEA has
grown into the biggest furniture retailer with 253 stores in 37 countries and territoriesaround world. The company’s attempts in the Chinese market started from Shanghaiin 1998, when its first store in Mainland China was opened. During the next 9 years,
IKEA took its time, getting to know the Chinese customers. A series of prudentexperiments have been proven effective. IKEA’s sales in China increased 500% from2000 to 2005. At the same time, price has also been paid for a lesson on how tobalance global marketing strategies and local marketing activities. Ian Duffy, IKEA’sCEO of Asia-Pacific region, admits in an interview that IKEA has made little profit
since entering the Chinese market (Song 2005 translated by the author). Therefore, formultinational companies like IKEA, who want to proceed in different markets withdistinctive cultural characteristics, the research on IKEA Shanghai’s marketingperformance provides useful information on how to think globally and act locally.
1.2 Structure of the thesis
In order to demonstrate the central topic, how IKEA integrates its global marketingstrategies with its local marketing activities taking culture differences intoconsideration when designing marketing strategies for the Chinese market, the thesisproceeds as follows. Part 1, Introduction, raises the research question and proposes
the importance of the research to multinational companies as whole. It also introducesthe thesis structure and summarizes previous research on similar topics. The secondpart discusses the research’s methodological points of departure—a case study. Thewhole process involves the interaction of qualitative and quantitative approaches as
well as hermeneutics to interpret and analyze the collected data. Part 3 accounts forthe key theoretical concepts applied in the research. Theories concerning marketingand marketing process are illustrated with IKEA’s global marketing concepts,followed by the development of the culture concept and discussion of the Chinese
culture. The interdisciplinary feature of cultural studies en