Baleno has become one of the biggest and fastest growing brands in the casual wear market.

Lt has approximately 3,000 shops throughout mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South
East Asia and the Middle East.

Its shops are bright and clean and the company strives to offer excellent in-store customer service.
Yet visiting Baleno stores in different cities does not guarantee the same customer experience.

In advanced economies (such as Hong kong), wage rates tend to be high and so there is pressure on
retailers to minimize the number of staff employed in their stores.

In contrast, the shops with similar physical size in cities within less developed economies, more staff
are in evidence.

Typically there might be two workers acting as sellers, and two employed as cashiers. One of the
cashiers would be the shop-manager, enabling a high level of supervision over the other workers in
the shop to be achieved. These staffing arrangements support a much greater degree of labour
specialization, with workers sticking to their designated roles.

The advantage of this is that workers can very quickly be trained in a single task, and hence the
quality of service to customers can be more easily assured. Pay rates are much lower in mainland
China.

Mainland Chinese customers, especially in Northern China, prefer attentive personal service from
shop staff, whereas customers in Hong Kong display a more Westernized attitude, preferring a
higher degree of self-help.

Other casual wear retailers operating in the same markets, such as Esprit, Giordano, Bossini and U2,
also make similar adaptations in their staffing arrangements to suit local conditions.