Hublot: A Swiss Luxury Watch Brand, An Essay In Elegance.

1. Understanding of the key issues in managing marketing operations within an organisation
2. Understanding of the tools and techniques employed by marketing managers in developing and managing their strategies, plans and operations
3. Understanding of the importance of, and mechanisms for, control and evaluation within marketing management
4. Understanding key trends in marketing management

Hublot is Swiss manufacturing brand of watches that was founded by an Italian named Carlo Crocco. It was founded in the year 1980. Previously, he was scion of the Binda group synasty in Italy. In the year 1976, it was separated from it and started a new watch Company. After it, Carco moved to the Switzerland. After designing the stylish watch, it named it as Hublot. Due to this only, its watch was stated as the first rubber watch in the whole history. It is also involved in various donations and humanitarian organization. Some of the organizations are MDM foundation
(Main Dans La Main)- an Indian organization for orphans, FARE- an organization against racism in Europe. It is also being associated with Smiling Children Foundation.

It is true that Companies face several issues related to the marketing. The topmost challenge is to keep the organization updated from the changes occurring. In addition to this, ensuring proper challenge is also one such challenge faced by the organizations. In order to overcome form both the challenges, the organization has adopted several strategies of marketing. In the first section, discussion is carried on the initiative taken by the organization to respond on these challenges. Marketing strategies are also described in the report further. At the end of report, use of technology and consumer behaviour that Hublot uses in order to embrace the marketing management has been highlighted.

Marketing operation is an essential element in the organization in order to keep the organization updated with the current changes that are occurring in environment. The first challenge is the changing trends in the marketing. When any new or updated trend comes in the market, it force the organization to bring some changes in the organization. Currently, customers are moving very frequent to other social media sites. Therefore, many organizations are facing issues to market its product on the various new social media sites. By keeping this challenge in mind, Hublot’s marketing team itself updated regarding those challenges. The proper conduct of research also helps the Company in diverse ways. Through this research, the marketing team involve itself continuously in searching and implementing the new trends. This work is done by the marketing team, which helps the top management to keep itself busy in the other core activities. For keeping the customers updates from all of its activities, it has unique and strong present on the Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. Not only these, it also pays some amount to the Google for keeping its customers updated. The quick question-answer round is also done by the Company in order to solve all the queries of customers. In addition to this, properly understanding the marketing report of the Company also brings a challenge for the Company. It is seen that many marketing manager are backward in knowledge regarding the understanding of  marketing data. Without the information of marketing data, company is not able to recognize the marketing strategies that will be helpful to implement. By not exactly knowing the marketing strategies that is effective to adopt, the rate of return also continues to decrease. In order to come out from this issue, the marketing team of Hublot helps in translating as well as interpreting the data that is came from the marketing team. With the help of various softwares, it also becomes easy to configure the report (Rubio and Jimenez, 2017). This assists in advising the manager regarding how to modify the marketing strategies for getting best results from it (Wittig, Sommerrock, Beil and Slbers, 2015).

Product

In addition to this, organization also faces the problem due to lack of communication. There are various things continues such as blogs are posting, websites are updating, marketing strategy is progressing, it becomes significant to communicate these changes to the whole team. Communication plays a major role in the marketing department because according to that changes are being made. Managers who do not have appropriate system of working for collection, interpretation, organizing as well as communicating the data to whole team are required to bring the changes in their marketing strategy. Additionally, collection of poor or bad data also causes the poor communication between the marketing managers and superiors. In order to overcome form this challenge, Hublot always keep the proper communication between the team members and marketing department. In this, it first considers how the marketing strategy is giving the results. After this, it also sees how better, the marketing strategy is serving the company in market on larger scale. At last, it considers how the strategy will be effective for the customers and bring the sales and revenue in organization. Therefore, in order to continue the proper communication between the management and team members of the Company, it works together by translating, gathering the site data. It is true that marketing field has been growing well as well as becoming more complex. Due to lack of knowledge and capability, holes start appearing sometimes. It also results in getting negative results and poor performance. It also recruits the proper and competent staff members for each one of its department. It also has proper team members for creating content, tracking results, generating traffic and getting more sales (Kern, 2017).

Product: Hublot is the World leader in the luxury watches. It has unique and creative mixture of all the different designs. It has also created the new and unique element with the name Hublonium that helps it in making the watches lightweight. Rather than going with the common 18K gold, it produces its own gold that is known as magic gold. It put emphasis more on the uniqueness not only in its technology but also in the materials that it uses.   All of its watches also have different identification number that helps the company in finding out the whether the watch is made up of Hublot or not. (Bashukina, 2016). Some of the product of Hublot is Hublot masterpieces, Hublot Big Bang, Hublot King Power, and Hublot classic fusion.

Pricing

Price: Hublot keeps it prices high by targeting the high-income group people. It targets those people who always want luxury and unique products. Therefore, it does not use the competitive pricing strategy for its luxury watch brand. This is normally known as the price setter. Hublot mainly adopts “cost plus pricing strategy.” Through this strategy, it calculates the cost that has been experienced for making product (West, Ford and Ibrahim, 2015). After knowing the cost, it comes to know about the profit margin that it will receive and set the prices of its watches accordingly. This same strategy is also followed for the marketing as it is true that customers always look for customized product and quality products without even thinking for the price. Hublot is trying hard to achieve the great position by offering some innovative concept to the customers. This also helps in creating a sense of status and social class among the customers. Due to this also, it has targeted the high-class customers in its company. This type of segmentation come under the psychographic segmentation where customers are targeted based on personality traits, attitude, buying behaviour and values. Due to this, its prices are high as compare to various other brands. Last year, it has also launched the first ever World’s 18K scratch gold alloy that is called magic gold (Hublot, 2018).

Place: Hublot is Swiss luxury watch brand that has limited stores in the World around 80. As compare to other stores, it has only limited. In the Bond street of London, it also has flagship store. It also has online presence that helps the company in featuring its watches. It also has famous brand ambassadors like Pele and Jose Mourinho. Hublot is also linked with various clubs of football. In Hublot, two type of distribution strategy has been followed (Desbordes, Lorgnier, and Chanavat, 2017). The first channel that is followed by Hublot is direct channel of distribution. In this, it has best and number one class boutiques included where it sell its watches. The second channel is indirect channel for distributing the products. E-commerce sites are included in this channel where it features all the watches. Besides Switzerland, it can also put emphasis on the Europe and America from where it get huge sales (Blanckaert and Som, 2015).

Promotion: Hublot has a club with the name Hublotista. The club is devoted to the Hublot customers. From this, it tends to receive various information, previews and invitations. Whenever any customer purchases the timepiece of Hublot, it gives them a card. In order to promote its brand in the market, it takes the assistance of several well-known personalities from all over the World. Among those personalities one is the CEO of Formula One named Bernie-Ecclestone and another one is the film actor and producer of Chinese film named Jet Li. Bernie was also featured in a campaign with the tagline of “See what people will do for Hublot. It has also done very less investment for its marketing (Blanckaert, 2015). However, it is said that its adopted strategies are not brutal. It has been seen there is high level of competition in the tradition watch market. Due to this, it can also focus on the younger generation and can capture the huge market segment (Haller and Schaffmeister, 2018).

Place

Hublot has made the remarkable change in the traditional watch companies. The first ever 18K gold alloy of Hublot has created the first ever vibrant magic in the red colour. Hublot always focuses on the different and unique features in order to build competitiveness among all the other companies. Besides this, it has also introduces the “Digital Boutique” in order to minimise the distance between itself and the customers. It has also entered in the block chain technology. It also made the website in order to promote its brand effectively. It also takes the assistance of Google in order to effectively market its product in the mind of consumers. It is also one of the strongest reasons behind the success of Hublot. By using the search engine optimisation, it makes its brand visible to all the customers. In addition to this, it also pays for advertising on the video sharing website and You Tube. Mostly, short videos are uploaded from the You Tube so that customers also enjoy it for that time.  

Hublot has adopted several digital marketing strategies. It has strong presence in the online market that tends to attract as well as interact with huge customer base on the social media sites for marketing purpose. It also provides the whole information regarding the product and prices. This is also one such reason it is being successful in marketing its brand properly. (Hoffmann and Lecamp, 2015).

It is founded that Hublot is properly embracing the customer’s buying behaviour as well as technology in its marketing management. The genius of marketing named Jean Claude Biver itself has created the Hublot brand. In the feedback reviews, it is seen the displaying of Hublot amazed that one customer. Only single display of Hublot was generating all the senses. All the products of Hublot were putted in the bright light that was the major attraction basis for customers. This is the perfect example of Hublot regarding how it embraces the marketing management in promoting its brand. (Schwas, 2012). In addition to this, it has also done partnership with the Fifa for becoming the official timekeeper of 2010 World Cup in the year. These are some reasons through which Hublot embraces its technologies for marketing its brand among all the customers. Big bang referee was the first smart watch launched by Hublot in the year 2018.The innovation and update in technology helps the Hublot in tracking the ages for all the wearers. Besides this, it has been founded that the union between OSL and Hublot will provide the more secure and pleasant shopping experience to its customers (Horsch and Hundt, and 2018). Hublot also supports the customers who want some innovativeness and unique element in their shopping. Therefore, by collaborating with the OSL, it is seeking to ensure the best shopping experience to its customers. This unique feature of Hublot is satisfying its customers in best possible manner. It is true that rate of return in this condition is not easy to calculate but estimation can be made about the millions of pounds as a return. It is true that this type of invention is a process goes in long-term where the result is not possible to occur fast (Piercy, 2016). It is true whenever company invest in any project, they tends to get the profit after sometime. In addition to this, Hublot believes that innovation comes by giving it top priority among all the other things. Ad customers are also making investment of huge amount in order to purchase the luxury watch brand. Due to this reasons, it invest huge amount in bring some kind of innovation in its Company. It also adopts the differentiation in order to differentiate its brand from all other brands that are following the common approach. It is founded that Hublot has done innovation not only in its material but also in its appearance of store. Hublot mostly use to demonstrations all the innovative watches in the window side of its store. By using this concept, it mostly put focus on the marketing side of its brand (Schwab, 2015). Therefore, the display element of Hublot is effectively embracing by itself in marketing.  

Promotion

Hublot is also known for its significance in building the very strong relationship with the customers that is based on flexibility, trust and availability. By the proper identification of wants and needs of the customers, it always tends to manage the demand of customers. By properly researching regarding the needs and behaviour of customers regarding purchasing of any item, it understands the behaviour of customer in better way. After this only, it is able to target millions of customers toward its brand. In addition to this, it also uses the digital marketing strategies for attracting customers. It satisfies the customer by offering them luxury products. It is true that customers have different earning due to different profession. Due to this, it also have different product segment in which watches are offered for middle-income level customers. In the luxury market, those factors that easily satisfy the demand of customers will create the more demand for product. By keeping this thing in mind, Hublot segment the market on the basis of psychographic by distributing the market into different market segments. A limited-edition watch is also offered to the customers who require some innovative products (Séraphin, Gowreesunkar and Morrison, 2018). In order to assure this, it uses the psychographic segmentation in order to get the proper understanding of consumers demand. By using the effective marketing strategies, it becomes easy for the Company to attract more customers toward its brand. Besides this, several other factors influence the purchasing decision of consumers. These factors are personal factors, cultural influences, psychological factors and personal factors (Parguel, Delecolle and Valette-Florence, 2016). The marketing department of Hublot effectively comprehend all these factors that further assist the marketer for marketing its invention to the right kind of customers.

Conclusion 

In the limelight of above discussed things, it can be stated that Hublot is growing well in the luxury watch market. It has mainly targeted the high-class customers by using innovative technology. It prefers those customers who only require the innovative and unique products in their life. For getting more customer base, it uses several marketing technologies so that customer loves to come in their store. In order to attract customers, it displays its product well in its stores. Customers are also amazed with its displaying of watches. Besides this, research and development department also bring innovative concepts in its company. The best example of its unique marketing approach is displaying of the product in transparent mirror that helps in attracting he customers.

References 

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