Internationalization through e-commerce. the case of multibrand luxury retailers in the fashion industry

This paper deals with the international development of firms through the online sales channel. Despite the ever-growing importance of the issues involved in such internationalization strategies, they have received limited attention in the literature. The paper presents an analysis of an expressly developed database of 20 multibrand luxury retailers in the online fashion market. The analysis highlights the international dimension of these players and sheds some light on internationalization through e-commerce of the luxury fashion retailers. In particular, the paper states that e-commerce may be related to different degrees of internationalization in multibrand luxury fashion retailers and that internationalization of multibrand luxury fashion retailers through e-commerce is unrelated to physical stores abroad. Future research should be aimed at analyzing the characteristics of a greater number of actor, such as mono-brand luxury manufacturers, also comparing the fashion system with other sectors where the online channel exhibits a similar important trend. The paper’s originality is related to a new phenomenon that has yet to receive appropriate consideration in the literature, the online international company growth with particular focus on the online channel as a new means to develop into foreign markets