swatch :: essays research papers

Competitive EnvironmentOne main competitor was Timex They designed a simple secondary price cheap trace that was do up of new alloy bearings. By having this new tangible it made automated production easier. The Timex make up ones mindes were priced at a low tell and were marketed to be dispos subject. The were priced to low and they were made so that they couldnt be capable they made for not aftermarket repair or sales of parts. At the give up of the 50s one out of three watches bought in the US were a Timex.In 1970 with the introduction of the Quartz technology changed the market bug out once again. The crystallization watches had some advantages over the Swiss, they were based on electronics, it made it easier to add the date or the day to the watch. It also became significantly cheaper to manufacture, because the bell of the chips were being driven down by chip manufactures.Out of this flap and leading the way were manufacturers like Hattori-Seiko and Citizen. The t wo companies made huge investments in fully automated facilities around the world. They were soon joined by Casio, which was specializing in a low cost multifunctional, plastic watch that was incorporating features such as timers and calculators.By 1979 Hattori-Seiko had become the worlds largest watch company in terms of revenues they were producing 22 million watches annually. By the end of 1986 Citizen had become the overall global leader in both movement and finished watch production volumes. With the rise in quartz technology hastened the decline of the Swiss watch industry. The Japanese watch makes saturated the global market with the quartz watch at rock bottom prices. In the early 1980s the Swiss market place in the watches below $100. their market appropriate was 0%. Watches between $100 and $350 they had a market share of about 3%. But in the market place of $350 and above they carried a share of 97% of the market.Some of the strengths were that they were making watches that were at a low cost high volume. The factories were placed all over the world and were able to ship to all the different market places with great eases. Also by using the quartz technology they were again able to cut cost to offer a cheaper watch to the consumer. The customers like the fact that they could buy a cheap great looking watch that would take a cream and keep on ticking.