Italy and Analysis Essay -- Essays Papers

Italy and Analysis COUNTRY ANALYSIS GENERAL Italy covers a land area of 301,230 sq km (116,306 sq mi). Comparatively, the area occupied by Italy is slightly larger than the state of Arizona. Italy has high unemployment and a relatively complicated and young market oriented government. To get an idea of how Italy’s culture compares to that of the Unites States, we ran a Hofstede. United States Italy Individualism 94 78 Power Distance 41 48 Uncertainty Avoidance 45 74 Masculinity 62 68 Individualism versus collectivism focuses on the relationship between the individual and his or her fellows. In individualistic societies, the ties between individuals were loose and individual achievement and freedom were highly valued. Power distance focuses on how a society deals with the fact that people are unequal in physical and intellectual capabilities. Low power distance cultures were found in societies that tried to play down such inequalities as much as possible. Uncertainty avoidance measures the extent to which different cultures socialized their members into accepting ambiguous situations and tolerating uncertainty. Members of high uncertainty avoidance cultures placed a premium on job security, career patterns, retirement benefits, and so on. Lower uncertainty avoidance cultures were characterized by a greater readiness to take risks and less emotional resistance to change. Masculinity versus femininity looks at the relationship between family and work roles. In masculine cultures, the job is as important or more important than the family. After comparing Italy with the United States the only possible problem or threat in relation to cultures that Philips should note is uncertainty avoidance. This means that Italy is not quick to adopt new ideas. If Web TV is introduced into Italy, it will take more time for it to become accepted than it did in the United States. SOCIOCULTURAL PENETRATION The Internet has just started to make an impact in Italy. A recent study by Eurisko (a very reliable research company) indicates that 1.8 million people say they use the Internet. They also found that 1.1% of Italian families (216,000) have an Internet connection at home as compared to 16.7% (40 million) in the USA. The population of Italy is around 57.3 milli... ...Italy. Therefore, out of these main competitors, Toshiba is the main threat but you can never tell what will happen with future generations of a product. The interesting thing about these competitors is that they are all licensees of WEB TV. They are also scrambling to find that ultimate next generation item that duplicates WEB TV and more. These companies are trying to gain market share in the alternate and substitute products. For instance Philips is a leading manufacturer of digital TV and if they could align with a cable company around an ISP then they will compete against their own WEB TV. Philips can compete in Italy. The question is can they do it with Web TV. The answer is no. WEB TV can not operate in conjunction with the specs of European TV. Therefore, they will need to change the WEB TV and make it work or form a partnership with a new product. This market moves fast and each of these competitors could end up on top, and win the Italian market. They need the working combinations of a product that serves the Italian community and serves the new European union. Considering all the available information we give Philips a rating of 7.375 for competitiveness.