Facing the 21st century, the era of cultural economy, various effort has been made by today’s companies to survive in the age of limitless competition by establishing diverse marketing strategies that make the most out of their own branch characteri...
Facing the 21st century, the era of cultural economy, various effort has been made by today’s companies to survive in the age of limitless competition by establishing diverse marketing strategies that make the most out of their own branch characteristics. More and more various life-style of customers forces the company to create the brand that reflects emotional culture value and delivers its message well enough to success in the market. To be free from standardized marketing strategies, brands start to analyse the psychology of consumers. As a result, the marketing strategy which focuses on various Limited Edition comes into the world for the consumers seeking for distinguished product and scarcity. Limited edition means particular goods produced with restriction of time, quantity, and place, thus not everybody can possess them. Limited edition that applies collaboration with season & anniversary, celebrity & fashion brand, or character product can satisfy buying psychology of consumer by adding more distinguished factors to the products. With this, limited edition can satisfy the needs of consumers and communicate with them psychologically, not just as a simple differentiation strategy, but as a mean to elevate the value of its brand.
On the other hand, the research on the limited edition in fashion industry, especially on SWATCH which is the most active company developing many collaboration watches with various artists has been rarely made. Studying limited edition of watch brand is necessary to analyse differentiation strategy and develop more creative and original limited edition in the future.
This study combines both theoretical research and case analysis. After looking into the concept of limited edition and brand, case analysis focuses on SEIKO, the Japanese watch maker that went into watch industy by inventing the world’s first quartz clock and SWATCH, the Swiss company established to boost watch industry back to normal that was on the steep decline due to quarts technology. Based on this, cases of limited edition are studied on a year-on-year basis and the correlation analysis between brand identity and limited edition is added.
The results of this study are as follows.
SWATCH keeps its brand identity as a strategy tool to satisfy consumer’s needs using emotional marketing that integrates watch and artistic value upon its concept, ‘art on wrist’. It stiffens not only Concept Design and Color Design, but also Coordination Design strategy with the limited edition Art Watches that use different colors and designs along with different collaboration of anniversary and artists.
Seiko emphasizes Concept Design and Color Design with the limited editions collaborated with professional field to support its brand concept of high technology, challenge, and innovation. Also, it stiffens Culture Design with its birthday limited edition and other numerous world’s first watch limited editions with new function. The online video contest, “Tell us about YOUR Seiko” on Youtube to listen to voices of consumers also reinforces Communication Market Mix Design.
In sum, the case analysis of this study proves global watch brands are executing various limited editing strategies, and they are strongly related to brand identity. Therefore, limited edition is important marketing strategy that can create higher value-added products in different ways bringing both consumers and brand positive result.
I hope the result of this study could provide solutions about limited edition strategy to domestic watch brands.