Watches of Switzerland: PESTLE Analysis of Global Business Environment

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the global business environment affecting Watches of Switzerland, a British retailer of luxury Swiss watches. It begins with a contextual background, highlighting the company's operations and market position. Key issues such as declining demand, political uncertainty, e-commerce challenges, and competition are identified. A detailed PESTLE analysis examines the political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors impacting the firm. The political aspect covers the impact of Chinese crackdown on corruption and political unrest in key markets. The economic analysis discusses the effects of global recession due to the pandemic. Social factors include changing consumer preferences towards smart watches and competitive pricing from other brands. Technological considerations focus on the need for innovation and leveraging advanced technologies. Legal challenges include trademark disputes, and environmental efforts emphasize CO2 balance and battery recycling. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of PESTLE analysis for strategic decision-making. Desklib offers this and many other solved assignments for students.

BM461 GLOBAL BUSINESS
ENVIRONMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Contextual Background...............................................................................................................3
Key Issues....................................................................................................................................4
PESTLE analysis.........................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Business environment defines how companies are performing in order to increase their business
value (McLachlan and et.al 2021). This report discusses the macro environmental factor.
MAIN BODY
Contextual Background
Watches of Switzerland is a British retailer company of Swiss watches headquartered in
England, United Kingdom. It is well-known for the luxury jewellers and timepieces specialist
operating at various places and having approximately 120 showrooms and 3 online transactional
websites consisting of watches of Switzerland, Mappin & web and Goldsmiths (Tabassum and
Singh, 2020). The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and constituent of FTSE
250 Index.

The above diagram illustrates the current position of the firm within the market place.
The company share their success with the viewpoint of strong long-standing partnerships with
the most prestigious luxury watches brands supported by the impactful marketing.
Key Issues
 Exports are increasing but demand is still decreases.
 Political uncertainty
 Challenges of electronic commerce
 Mastering in social media
 Other competitors
PESTLE analysis
The Watches of Switzerland is an international British multinational company deals in
luxury watches. It has more than 36200 employees all across 50 countries. In order to identify
various factors that affects the firm within the macro environment, Pestle analysis has been
conducted in order to illustrate the concepts and issues in detailed manner below:
Current analysis of Watches of Switzerland

 Political
The raw material of the preparation of the product had been transported from China experienced
a gradual dip after the year 2011. It is because of decrease in Chinese crackdown on corruption
that impacts the exports of the company (Lee, Lee and Park, 2018). The establishment also faces
political unrest in the key market of Hong Kong which results in declining of sales due to yellow
vest protests specifically in France.
 Economic
In context of economical manner, the global recession that had been introduced within the
environment after the inclusion of pandemic situations creates huge amount of losses to the firm.
As the situation makes lots of employees rendered and hence the people are unable to spend a lot
of amounts over such kind of luxury brands.
 Social
In context of social factor, it has been identified that the consumers after introduction of various
competitive brands who offer similar kind of products at competitive prices attracts more of the
buyers of the Watches of Switzerland. Apart from this, it has been identified that the customers
are more attracted towards the latest smarty watches and the company is focusing towards the
traditional concept of watches only.
 Technological
Company have to deal with the latest technological changes by applying various latest
innovations within their products in order to sustain within the market place. The firm have an
opportunity to leverage advanced robotics and new technologies while manufacturing their
products in order to get their position back in front of their other competitors.
 Legal
The company is struggling with their legal battles with certain firms which highly affects the
position and well as brand value within the market space. Apart from this, the firm is also facing
trademark dispute which also greatly affects their image and give reason their consumers to do
doubt over the brand name (Dardanelli and Mazzoleni, 2021).
 Environmental
The firm is continuously working towards the betterment of the environment and do work
towards the better environmental practices. In order to balance CO2 balance, it makes use of
geothermal use of ground water to heat or cool their infrastructure. It runs their own energy

production plants by utilizing hydro-power production. The establishment also works towards
the battery recycling in order to reduce the impact within the external environment.
CONCLUSION
It described the pestle analysis which is used to analyse the external environment so that
organisation can proceed to design the strategies accordingly.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Dardanelli, P. and Mazzoleni, O. eds., 2021. Switzerland-EU Relations: Lessons for the UK
After Brexit?. Routledge.
Lee, M., Lee, H. and Park, S., 2018. Accuracy of swimming wearable watches for estimating
energy expenditure. International Journal of Applied Sports Sciences. 30(1).
McLachlan, R.H. and et.al 2021. Environmental gradients drive physiological variation in
Hawaiian corals. Coral Reefs. 40(5). pp.1505-1523.
Tabassum, N. and Singh, S., 2020. Corporate Governance and Organisational Performance: The
Impact of Board Structure. Springer Nature.