Liabilities and networks in the internationalization of fashion retailing

The book is the result of a research path undertaken by the author over the last seven years. The topic being investigated is that of liabilities and networks in the internationalization of fashion retailing. The study of liabilities in internationalization is an integral part of the international business literature, starting from the first contributions on the topic between the late 1960s and the 1970s when the difficulties faced by multinational companies in their international expansion were first defined as costs of doing business abroad. The author draws on this literature to present and discuss the concepts of liability of foreignness and liability of outsidership, and how these concepts can be applied to the internationalization of retailing, with particular reference to the store openings by fashion firms. The author adopts an industrial marketing approach that focuses on networks and interactive relationships between business actors. Store openings seem to represent an increasingly important way for fashion firms to enter foreign markets, despite their being culturally and geographically distant. In this process, there is a perceptual dimension of the liability of outsidership, which involves the individual perception and the legitimization by counterparts in the relationship. There is also a factual dimension, depending on the absence or existence of episodes in the interaction process and/or on the untapped potential of interaction. However, in the internationalization of fashion retailing, elements of foreignness and outsidership coexist and cannot be analyzed separately.

Matilde Milanesi is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Florence, where she received her PhD in Economics in 2015. Her research interests lie in the area of international business and international marketing, industrial marketing and buyer-supplier relationships. Her works are published in academic journals such as Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing and Management, International Marketing Review, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing.