Changing Competitive Landscape of Wristwatches
Executive Summary
The luxury watch industry dates back to the early 1900s and caters to customers who desire a premium timepiece. Consumer’s willingness to pay has traditionally been derived from a watch's quality, style, and brand status. However, technological innovation and the entrance of the smartwatch into the market have changed the competitive landscape of wristwatches. The top players in the watch industry were previously dominated by time-tested brands like Rolex and Cartier and have now expanded to include innovative technology companies like Apple and Google. This has generated new demand by customers who were not previously interested in traditional watches but would purchase a smartwatch for the additional features offered beyond simple timekeeping. The following analysis reviews key implications for luxury watchmakers, given these market changes. The goal of the research is to determine how a luxury watch brand can adapt to customers’ changing demands while maintaining elements of its traditional strategy that have made it successful to date.
The scope includes the global luxury watch industry. The initial observations are about the industry as a whole but further narrow down the scope to review TAG Heuer as a focal firm. (TAG Heuer has been a longstanding top competitor in the industry and has also recently diversified their product offerings to include smartwatches) The article also includes the sustainability of this strategy and addresses the critical threats and opportunities for TAG to consider as they grow in this space. However, with competition from both traditional watchmakers and technology companies, TAG will need to differentiate itself to sustain its market position.
Based on these conclusions, there are two strategic recommendations for TAG. First, to pursue a sustaining innovation strategy by partnering with technology companies like Google and Intel to develop unique apps that will cater to a premium customer and increase willingness to pay. A second option is to seek out opportunities to disrupt the industry by pursuing a Blue Ocean Strategy to create value in an entirely new way.
The detailed article can be found on this link
Marketing Strategy for Regional Films India to launch in the U.S. market
Introduction
Regional Films India (RFI) is an Indian regional language movie distributor based out of Mumbai, India. A lot of Indians have immigrated across the globe and especially to the U.S. RFI has been distributing movies in India for long and now wants to expand its services internationally. RFI is looking for opportunities and avenues of launching its products (movies) in the U.S. market initially and then across the globe. RFI will distribute movies in the U.S. market through its U.S. subsidiary and will be ready to launch in the Fall of 2017. RFI plans to enter the U.S. market with Indian regional language movies that will have the lowest barrier to entry. RFI will help to bring the big screen nostalgic experience of regional movies to the Indian Americans in the U.S.
Before creating the marketing plan for RFI, it was important to understand the working of the industry and business as well the U.S. market. The below figure shows the working model of RFI.
RFI deals with B2C as well as B2B clients. Regional movies are produced in India and RFI buys the movies at a fixed fee per screening. In the B2C track, RFI plans the theater screenings in different cities and markets the movie to the consumers. Consumers buy the tickets from different platforms or at the theater and enjoy the movie on the big screen. Theaters retain 40% of the total revenue generated and pass on the remainder to RFI, thus RFI makes money. Part of it is then invested to buy other regional movies as well as market them. In the B2B track, RFI re-sells the movie to different groups for a fixed price and generates revenue from the surplus margin.
Further detailed article can be found here
Apple, Inc. - Strategic Analysis in Global Context
Executive Summary
Apple Inc. is one of the most valuable companies in the world with internet sales to 39 countries and over 450 Apple retail stores across the globe (Farfan, 2016). Being near the top of the information technology and communications sector, Apple has created a prestigious brand selling to high-end customers. Apple has attained success through continuous innovation, but recently Apple has seen some key areas of worry in the international market. Competition from rival Samsung, as well as smaller smartphone producers in areas like India and China, have directly affected sales of the iconic iPhone. The failure of the “cheaper” iPhone 5c to penetrate emerging markets is also of concern. Even after being valued at well over 700 billion dollars, Apple faces issues as a multinational corporation.
This report focuses on current Apple global strategy, strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately recommendations for heading forward. To remain relevant, Apple must embrace some of its core ideas like standardization of products and distribution, while continuing to push further into the global market through FDI and localization. All of this must be driven by innovation because as Apple’s reputation falls it must provide new and revised quality products to consumers that have come to expect the best. This is not as easy on the global market where political, economic, and cultural differences with the addition to limited resources tend to limit Apple’s growth abroad…
The detailed article can be found over here.
Learnings from design and implementation of a Chatbot
Chatbots have been and will be successful.
There are five things distinctly that have driven the growth of chatbots in the recent past and will continue to push in the future.
1) Natural Language Processing/ Natural Language Understanding:
NLP/NLU is an area of computer science and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages, in particular how to program computers to process large amounts of natural language data fruitfully. The applications in this area have been on the rise recently.
2) Multiple channels:
Most of the services now have several touch-points like a website, phone calls, text conversations, instant messages, and social media.
3) Analytics:
Analytics helps to collect data, extract the information, analyze and inform to make decisions.
4) Deep understanding:
It is the outcome of NLP/U and analytics that assists in perceiving the emotions and context of the users. This technology allows providing personalized service offerings.
5) Orchestration:
It is the coordination between other meta bots and systems. As the bots get integrated with the ecosystem, the bots can perform more substantive tasks.