BM461 Global Business: Watches of Switzerland Briefing Note Analysis

This briefing note analyzes Watches of Switzerland, a FTSE-listed luxury watch retailer, focusing on macro-environmental factors impacting its business over the next 12-24 months. The analysis covers political, economic, social, and technological (PESTLE) factors. Political factors include regulatory costs and civil unrest, while economic factors involve capital availability, foreign exchange rates, and government spending. Social factors address consumer preferences and income levels, and technological factors focus on production costs. Key issues identified are coping with political changes, introducing trends economically, and boosting consumer demand. Recommendations include a robust supply chain plan, renegotiating supplier contracts, standardizing tech infrastructure, and enhancing marketing efforts. The report benchmarks the company against industry leaders like Apple Inc. and concludes by highlighting strategies for sales growth.

FTSE SWITZERLAND

Table of Contents
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

MAIN BODY
Contextual Background: Watches of Switzerland is a Britain origin retailing company
that operates with its 16 stores across the UK. It is a listed company on the London Stock
Exchange. Briefing note is referred to as a vital document that conveys information that
facilitates the process of decision making in companies. The recent trends in luxury watches
markets includes a growth of nearly 6 percent annually.
Political factor like segregation of political responsibilities results in increasing levels of
cost of running business. Lot of time and money is spent over getting certificates and clearances.
The civil unrest affects the business of Watches of Switzerland in a negative way. Economic
factors that impacts the company includes rates at which capital is available, foreign exchange
rates, fluctuations in prices, spending by government and productivity of workforce. Federal
Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing allows the company to get capital at cheaper rates.
Changes in forex rates impose the threat to incur losses. The prices of the watches have not
changed much in response to the inflation (Nandonde, 2019). Government spending and
increasing level of workforce productivity impacts the production of the firm positively. Social
factors, increasing preferences of the consumer to own luxury products is good for the company.
Higher levels of disposable consumers’ income also affect the sales of the company in a good
way. Other the hand the attitude of some customers to save their income is not desirable for the
company. Technological factors like cost of production for providing trends to the consumers
serve as an obstacle for the company to earn high revenues. The economic market for luxury
watches grows at a rate 4 percent. Apple Inc. is the global benchmark of the industry of luxury
watches (Christodoulou and Cullinane, 2019). The demand for luxury products is inelastic as
luxury products are considered as status symbol people demand for such products at constant
levels and increase in price does not affect the demand.
Three key issues for the company as highlighted by the analysis are coping up with the
political changes, introducing latest trends by keeping cost of production economical and
initiating more and more number of consumers to opt for buying luxury products. In response to
instability in political grounds company should prepare a plan B that can effectively support the
sales of the company by having a full proof plan for supply chain. Further to introduce latest
trends into the products of the company at low prices in order to have large profit margins

company should renegotiate the contracts with the suppliers, and standardization of the tech
infrastructure of the company will also help. In order to initiate buyers in making their buying
decision strong company should focus on its marketing activities and channels used for
advertising purposes. Setting leading brands in the industry like Apple as the benchmark to the
company’s processes will help the company in increasing its sales.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Christodoulou, A. and Cullinane, K., 2019. Identifying the main opportunities and challenges
from the implementation of a port energy management system: A SWOT/PESTLE
analysis. Sustainability. 11(21). p.6046.
Nandonde, F. A., 2019. A PESTLE analysis of international retailing in the East African
Community. Global Business and Organizational Excellence. 38(4). pp.54-61.
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