“Watches” : Trends and Strategies in Fashion and Luxury brand of watches-Part 2

In this second blog, I am going to pen down my observations regarding the Luxury watch store “Longines” and a Multibrand watch store which I visted in EA mall some time back.

 Let me begin with the “Longines” store. On entering the store I was welcomed by the store manager. The first thing that I noticed in the shop was a huge poster of Aishwarya Rai, flaunting the “Longines” watch on her wrist. The poster was so enticing that anybody having enough money would end up buying a longines watch in that store. Besides, there was a video of the “Longines advertisement” featuring Aishwarya Rai, being screened in the shop to captivate the customers. On conversing with store manager I inferred that “Longines” uses referral strategy of promoting their brand in India.Presently, Aishwarya Rai is brand ambassador for Longines.Through her image Longines is potraying “Elegance” as its EVP.

I also gathered from the store manager that “Longines” is positioned as a Luxury watch and their target customers are women.Moreover, I found that in India the distributor for the Longines is Swatch Group India Pvt Ltd and they are located in Delhi. In the “Longines” store at EA mall, the price started from Rs 40,000.They provide warranty of around 2 years on the watches. The ambience and the décor of the “Longines” store at EA mall emphasized class and luxury in every way. It was perfect to attract the people who like to purchase the unique and luxurious watches.

From Longines, I moved to a multiband watch store in EA mall. On entering the store, I saw that they have placed watches of different brands in a very orderly manner. There were vertical blocks on the wall; each block was having a watch of different brand. Some of the Brands which were present there included Fossil, Tissot, Armani, Casio, Citizen and Timex.

On conversing with the store manager, I inferred that since their shop is in EA mall they usually have a very good sale. As per him they are able to sell in the range of 5-10 watches in a day. But their peak sale period is Pongal and Diwali time. One striking thing which the store manager mentioned was that Indian people coming to his shop are less fussy in making purchasing decision as compared to the foreigners. He implied that Indians don’t negotiate much on the price offered in his store whereas foreigners create lot of fuss on the taxes being charged on the watches sold. He also mentioned that among all the brands present in his store Fossil and Armani are the most innovative brands. He also commented on the approach of customers from different segments of society. As per him, people coming from rural part of Chennai mostly purchase watches of Citizen and Casio. The reason behind it is, they usually follow the traditional approach and like to buy watches recommended by their father or older generation. As per the store manager they keep changing the shelves with newest and most popular watches in the market to attract customers. They give special greetings to their loyal customers.

In the end, I can say that my First blog was observations on the store of Fashion brand of watch (Tissot) and this blog is about store of Luxury watch (Longines) and multiband watch store. It was a great learning experience for me as I was doing it for the first time.

Thanks for reading this blog.


regards
Smriti Saran
FT13477