Managing digital marketing strategies in emerging markets: The case of China

Since Internet has been seen as global, few studies have examined the influence of the context in the digital marketing strategies. This paper wants to contribute on the debate about standardization-adaptation, focusing on the digital strategies, defining how companies adapt them to the Chinese market identifying the drivers that call for this adaptation. China is selected because it is a contradictory market: more advanced than the Western one but also with many restrictions. We carry out a qualitative research based on interviews with nine key informants operating in the digital Chinese market with different roles. Our findings suggest that there are drivers that force companies to create an online presence and drivers that impact the digital localization. The main adaptations concern international distribution strategy and communication related to contents and media as well as organization.