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

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

Environmental crisis in José Saramago`s fiction

José Saramago, the Portuguese writer winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998, was one of the fiercest critics of our time of the European economic, political, social and environmental crisis. The latter In particular, as well as its implications and consequences, was subjected to an attentive, detained and in-depth critical scrutiny in Saramago's literary and non-literary fictions, such as Os Cadernos de Lanzarote (1994) and A Caverna (2000 - English translation in 2002 - The Cave). In this article, I analyze Saramago's multifaceted perspective on the environmental crisis in his work A Caverna. Firstly, I will show how a central place of the novel, the ironically called “Green Belt”, is in fact a dirty and monotonous area, and eo ipso an oxymoronic expression. Then, I will briefly comment on the denatured configurations of the Housing Centre surrounded by the Green Belt, a space where natural phenomena and processes, such as rain and snow, are only artificially replicated. Next, I examine the significant impact of climate change on the lives of the characters in the novel. Finally, I consider the possibility that the author's opinions about the climate crisis may extend to others of his fictional and non-fictional works.José Saramago, vencedor do Prémio Nobel da Literatura em 1998, foi um dos mais acutilantes críticos da atualidade europeia nos domínios de crises económicas, políticas, sociais e ambientais. A última, a crise ambiental e as suas implicações e consequências, foi submetida a um atento e profundo escrutínio em narrativas ficcionais e não ficcionais de Saramago, tais como Os Cadernos de Lanzarote (1994) e A Caverna (2000). Neste ensaio, analiso a perspetiva multifacetada de Saramago sobre a crise ambiental em A Caverna. Em primeiro lugar, mostrarei que um espaço crucial do romance, a ironicamente chamada “Cintura Verde”, é na realidade um lugar sujo e monótono, tornando a expressão oximórica. De seguida, comentarei brevemente as configurações deturpadas do Centro circundado pela Cintura Verde enquanto lugar onde fenómenos e processos naturais, tais como a chuva e a neve, são apenas artificialmente construídos. Examino depois o impacto significativo da mudança climática nas vidas das personagens do romance. Por fim, considero a possibilidade de que os pontos de vista do autor sobre a crise climática se expandam a outras obras ficcionais e não ficcionais

Wittgenstein´s Critique of Gödel´s Incompleteness Results

It is often said that Gödel´s famous theorem of 1931 is\ud equal to the Cretian Liar, who says that everything that he\ud says is a lie. But Gödel´s result is only similar to this\ud sophism and not equivalent to it. When mathematicians\ud deal with Gödel´s theorem, then it is often the case that\ud they become poetical or even emotional: some of them\ud show a high esteem of it and others despise it. Wittgenstein\ud sees the famous Liar as a useless language game\ud which doesn´t excite anybody. Gödel´s first incompleteness\ud theorem shows us that in mathematics there are\ud puzzles which have no solution at all and therefore in\ud mathematics one should be very careful when one\ud chooses a puzzle on which one wants to work. Gödel´s\ud second imcompleteness theorem deals with hidden\ud contradictions – Wittgenstein shows a paradigmatic\ud solution: he simply shrugs his shoulders on this problem\ud and many mathematicians do so today as well. Wittgenstein\ud says than Gödel´s results should not be treated as\ud mathematical theorems, but as elements of the humanistic\ud sciences. Wittgenstein sees them as something which\ud should be worked on in a creative manner