Identifying and mapping strategic groups in the fashion industry

Abstract: Over the last two decades, scholars of management have paid increasing attention to various managerial aspects of fashion companies. Theory has mainly focused on marketing and consumption dynamics of these markets, management of supply chains and organizational forms, while very few works attempted to map and to analyze in detail strategic groups that fashion companies may constitute within their industry. This article contributes to this body of literature by applying the standard method of “critical success factors” in order to shed light on the differences in the strategies among companies in the fashion industry. Therefore, the research question of this article is: how do critical success factors identify strategic groups in the fashion industry? The article reports a case study in which emerges a taxonomy of the main strategic groups of the fashion industry in Campania, a region of Italy. The study provides relevant insights for scholars, managers and policy-makers.