Management

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|Cultural dimensions in business |
|A report on possible differences and similarities in culture between Metersbonwe and Gina Tricot |

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|Group 3|
|Maria Perez |
|Boubacar Sylla |
|Marika Trygg|
|Li Xuyan |
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|Scandinavian Management |
|Per Forsberg|
|2nd trimester 09-10 |
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Table of contents
1. Introduction 2

2. Cross-cultural management theories 3

2.1 Trompenaars and Hampden-Turners seven cultural dimensions 4

2.2 McGregor’s X and Y Theory 5

3. Analysis 6

4. Conclusions 9

References 11

Figur 1: Hofstede culturaldimensions of Sweden and China, Hofstede (2009) 7

Introduction

The company that this report is made for is called Metersbonwe, which is a clothes company founded in 1995. Today it has become a popular Chinese domestic brand loved by a large quantity of young people for its fashionable and energetic casual wear, offered at mass price (Metersbonwe, 2009). Up to 2008, there were almost 3000specialties located in hundreds of cities and the total sale, 7 billion RMB, ranked the first among all the international and local casual wear brands in China. With the growing of the old but young aged customers, “Me & City” started her life in October, 2008 to focus on a new generation aged from 22 to 35 who has just stepped in the society, while “Metersbonwe” target the young aged from 16 to 25.Every year, Metersbonwe launches more than 8000 new designs to the market to meet customers’ demands.

The Swedish company that would be interesting to acquire is Gina Tricot. The company is a family-owned business within the textile industry. The company started in 1997 in Borås. The father is the CEO, the son is the marketing manager and mother and daughter are designers (Glamour, 2009). Alldecisions are made on a monthly basis at the head office in Borås (Gina Tricot, 2009).

Today they are present in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway with approximately 140 stores. The annual turnover for 2009 was 2,3 billion SEK (Wikipedia, 2009). According to a fashion article in Glamour (2009) the clothes are manufactured in China and Turkey and it takes only five weeks before the pieces arein the stores. It also says that the great success of Gina Tricot derives partly from the logistic planning of the company. The clothes are sent straight from the factory to the stores. Therefore they have no intermediaries, small stocks and a very high movement of clothes. According to the CEO, another reason for success is that women cannot get enough of tops made out of tricot. That statement...