MM Essay

Submitted By weiwei-nie
Words: 1859
Pages: 8

Introduction
This paper will critically review and evaluate the current positioning of IWC watches within the luxury watch market. In order to carry out this analysis, several observation have been undertaken within the watches stores which are gone with a number of assumptions. Thus, IWC target market and marketing technique on the basis of the initial observation. The imminent discussion will focus on how IWC achieves its positioning by using the marketing mix 4P’s of product, price, place and promotion. The marketing concepts which are discussed have been sourced from Brassington and Pettitt (2013).

Background of IWC
IWC watches launched in 1968, which are manufactured by Florentine A.Jones, an american engineer and watchmaker who had founded the earliest mechanical watch manufacturers on the bank of the Rhine and established his company-International Watch Co. in north-eastern
Switzerland. IWC is one of the most famous watch brand of its combination with precision engineering and unique design. As a renowned luxury watch brand which own a exclusive association with international navigation and aviation, it focuses on the R&D of mechanical watches, and never pursue the quantity but high quality, which come to be the inherent exquisite and top idea that IWC faithfully adheres until now.

Positioning of IWC
Target market
The target market of IWC is originally segmented on the basis of demographics, which refer to the customers that have certain gender and relevant level of income and occupation especially the males who earn in a higher degree of income. The main competitors who have attracted the familiar

market segmentations can be found like Tag Heuer, Omega and Rolex(See Table 1). The customers can be granted to be working in the professional and high qualified occupations who are in the ages between late twenties and early forties, in possession of considerable and disposable income, which can be used with high prices to buy the luxurious IWC watch. It further reiterated the importance of the brand premium and unique features. As both the prestigious watch companies, IWC and its main competitors set the same market position which is designed to provide refined and luxury watches to the males who are successful and wealthy. The difference that IWC distinguished itself from other luxurious watches is that IWC through providing the distinctive watch to show the time which is famous as its precision, and launching different kinds of collections to prove its functional and practicability as well. Besides, it seems that psychographic segmentation has been used for determining IWC’s target market as a secondary basis after using the demographic segmentation.
IWC full of male chauvinism, which the slogan is “only a man’s watch.” IWC mainly choses big round case and dial design as its style, shows the real and exquisite craft through the simple frame, which is perfectly suitable for the mature and steady men to wear.

Table 1
By targeting the males who are ambitious, self-motivated and striving for a brilliant and unique lifestyle, the brand creates masterpieces of top watches, which combine precision and engineering with exclusive design, and it requires highly qualified employees master every step of the production process, “IWC’s philosophy is based on a passion for watchmaking, untiring enterprise and perfect craftsmanship”, said by CEO of IWC Schaffhausen, Georges Kern(IWC website, 2015).
The Portuguese Sidérale Scafusia is the most exclusive and complex mechanical watch that
IWC Schaffhausen has ever created. It combines numbers of complex devices and new progresses with an arrange of astronomical displays which have never been featured in the last 140 years of the company history. What attractive most is that through the watch, an individual’s sidereal time can be determine by entering the latitude and longitude, which means this watch can discover one’s sidereal time when the location has been identified. The