Sales internationalization of Swiss luxury watchmakers in China and Hong Kong

The Swiss luxury watch industry has been the market leader since the 1990’s. From the beginning of the 21st century they have enjoyed a tremendous increase in exports worldwide. Recently, starting 2014, the market has been dropping. Decreasing sales in China and Hong Kong and mostly to Chinese consumers are to blame. The slowdown of the Chinese economic growth, increasing taxes imposed on luxury products are some of the few reasons for this slowdown. My first step for this research was to analyze the Chinese market in order to verify if this downward trend is lasting or if there is growth potential in the country. This meant identifying the current challenges Swiss watchmakers are facing and whether there are still potential customers in China. My findings showed that Chinese are still very eager to purchase Swiss brand name watches. They also showed that large groups of Chinese consumers have been left out by brands whose stores do not yet reach them. These groups are the new middle class and upper-middle class citizens that are rapidly growing in Tier 2 and 3 cities all across China. Watchmakers have indeed focused almost all their presence in China’s major cities but have remained absent in smaller ones. To note there are currently over 100 cities in China with over 1 million citizens. My second step was to find the most effective way for watch brands to reach this spread out population of potential customers. In the slowing watch market, investing in physical presence and stores is a risky and financially heavy decision for brands. The alternative is to develop online advertisement and sales. China is an extremely well developed ecommerce country which has embraced online purchasing. Online platforms such as Tmall and WeChat have largely surpassed the western Amazon and Facebook and user accounts often exceed half a billion. They offer companies varied services for online sales and advertising. While partnering with these companies’, Swiss watch brands will be able to access their current sales and distribution systems as well as benefiting from their vast knowledge of consumer behavior in China. I have therefore concluded that although there are threats to selling online, such as counterfeiting, there is a concrete opportunity for Swiss watchmakers to increase their sales once again. Many watch producers still argue today that the internet is no such place for sales of luxury watches. Nevertheless, the evidence is compelling that ecommerce is a very effective and promising way to reach Chinese consumers. They must decide if they want to follow this market evolution and hop on board the “E-wagon”

La médiation culturelle au sein de l’apprentissage :: une exposition, un thème = des apprentissages

Les musées sont des lieux culturels dont un grand nombre d’entrées proviennent du milieu scolaire. Ce public-là est motivé par les enseignants suite à l’intérêt porté aux apprentissages par le biais de la médiation culturelle, en accord avec le plan d’étude romand (PER). La mise à profit d’une telle institution pour favoriser les connaissances scolaires des élèves, l’apport d’un objet muséal dans l’acquisition de ces connaissances, l’intégration d’une visite au sein d’une séquence didactique et la place du médiateur culturel sont ici divers éléments questionnés, constituant la recherche de ce travail. Liant musée et apprentissages, mon cadre théorique comprend des réponses possibles à ces questionnements. Ce mémoire propose, à travers une méthodologie active, une séquence didactique conduisant les élèves à l’acquisition de nouveaux apprentissages dans la thématique donnée. Mes analyses se situent au niveau de ces derniers en proposant des pistes concernant leur influence. Finalement, l’apport d’une telle recherche dans ma future profession est exposé au terme de ce mémoire en proposant également diverses pistes pour la continuité de cette recherche dans l’intention de mettre à profit le musée, la médiation culturelle, comme outils de travail favorisant l’apprentissage

F13RS SGFB No. 5 (Decoy Laptop)

A FINANCE BILL To allocate a maximum of two thousand eight hundred dollars and zero cents($2,800.00) from the Student Government Initiatives Account to the Louisiana State University Police Department (LSUPD) to fund a decoy laptop and GPS tracker to decrease theft on campus

Comparação do teor de minerais em vinhos do Vale do Submédio São Francisco, Brasil.

Neste trabalho teve-se como objetivo analisar 28 minerais por espectrometria de emissão ótica com plasma acoplado indutivamente (ICP-OES) em 48 amostras de vinhos provenientes de três vinícolas desta região

What do connectionnist simulations tell us?

In his review, Rispoli’s main concern is that Elman et al.’s book will aggravate the degree of polarisation in developmental psycholinguistics. I cannot really comment on this worry, as developmental psycholinguistics is not my field. Instead, I will discuss some questions more related to my background--the role of computational modelling in Elman et al.’s approach