• China's economic reforms
• competitive advantage
• luxury market
• Made in Italy
• Porter
• Uppsala model

Globalization pushes more and more companies to seek for opportunities out of national boundaries. Many authors have studied this phenomenon, trying to characterizing the process by providing different theories and frameworks. Among those, the Porter’s diamond model and the Uppsala internationalization stage theory, are considered the most successful and realistic contribution to the internationalization debate. From a corporate perspective, to develop a proper internationalization strategy is the key for success in this dynamic business environment. In this work we analyze the process of internationalization of Azimut-Benetti in the emerging Chinese yacht industry. The incredible growth of the Chinese GDP in the last thirty years, as well as the shift from an exporting driven to a consumption driven economy with a strong appetite for luxury, transformed China in one of the most preferred destination of FDI. In particular, thanks to the government support and investments in infrastructure the Chinese yacht industry is expected to emerge as one of the most important market for the future. While the western economies are yet to recover from the global downturn China represents an important opportunity for shipyards to develop. In this scenario, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the Chinese emerging yacht industry, with a specific focus on the Chinese customer preferences. Then, we critically compare the steps taken by the company to entry the market and develop its strategy in the foreign market with the literature’s contributions on internationalization strategies.