Strategic Analysis through the General Electric/McKinsey Matrix: An Application to the Italian Fashion Industry

Introduced in the early Seventies as a specific framework for the evaluation of investment opportunities as partof product portfolio management, the General Electric/McKinsey Matrix is still widely used for the analysis ofcompetitive scenarios. In this study, this managerial tool is applied to the apparel sector and four well-knownItalian fashion companies are analyzed. The procedure for creating the matrix is described and a detailedpresentation is made, for each company over a five-year-period, of the results relative to the two typicaldimensions of the matrix: business competitiveness and industry attractiveness. Considering the current tendencyof the majority of fashion and luxury companies to internationalize and develop multi-product and multi-branddiversification strategies, this study may be useful for marketers working in these sectors who intend to developpositioning and competitiveness analyses. Additionally, given the limited amount of academic studies on theapplication of this matrix to the fashion industry, this study can help fill that gap and describe the state of the artin the field, enriching the literature on the subject and creating new points of departure for future research. Thepaper presents results that, although they are based on a limited selection of companies, provide an accuratedemonstration of the methodology applied and highlight a few differences found between the companiesexamined; in particular, between fashion brands with a very high positioning (“couture”) and those with amedium/high positioning (“diffusion” or “ready-to-wear”).