Assessment of the development opportunities for a Belgian digital agency on the Italian market and in particular, in the Venetien region.

Abstract

EPIC web agency is a Belgian creative agency that crafts high quality digital projects for its clients. EPIC works with national and international clients. In the framework of a long-term development objective, this project aims to assess the opportunity that EPIC could have in Italy and in particular in Veneto, region of the north-east of the country. In order to approach the management problem, the student has divided the work into three phases. The first phase proposes a situation analysis of the company in order to gain a comprehensive view of its micro and macro environment. Among the most important emerging elements, EPIC technical & design expertise and methodology needs to be cited. The second phase approaches the Italian market by first assessing the competition landscape in the region and second, by building a four axes model with the aim of identifying promising sectors in Veneto. The four axes, the four building blocks of the model are built according to EPIC business, as resulting from the first phase: Digital inclination axis, Growth axis, Export axis and Financial & Economic axis. Secondary data about sectors meeting the criteria were collected and filled into the model. Then, by crossing the four axes, the model shows the resulting sectors that EPIC should first consider exploring: industrial goods, technology, food & beverage and more specifically, the wine industry. In the third phase, the student conducts a qualitative research on the wine industry. The objective of this phase is, from one side, to provide EPIC with a solid research structure to eventually apply it later to other sectors in the area and, from the other side, to give a concrete example on how EPIC can leverage the results of the model to further investigate its opportunities in that market. Finally, insights from the qualitative analysis allows to provide primary considerations with regard to the wine sector. In short, this latter does not offer ample opportunities, unless large enterprises are targeted and some particularities of this industry kept in mind. The conclusive part combines together the insights from the different phases to produces conclusions and recommendations in relation to the general opportunities that the wine and other sectors in Veneto might offer and some crucial positive and negative aspects to which EPIC needs to be alert of if it finally decides to enter the Italian market.