The Hamilton Watch Company is a Swiss manufacturer of wristwatches based in Bienne, Switzerland. The Hamilton Watch Company started as an American watch design and manufacturing company, which incorporated in 1892 and produced its first watch in 1893. Hamilton watches are a worldwide brand and well established in the modern and vintage wristwatch markets.
Upon entering the Hamilton Watch Company’s official website the customer is presented with a clean and minimalist website design, this draws a parallel with the product design (also generally minimalist) in addition to allowing for an easy user experience in terms of website navigation. The main page contains an assortment of high quality images of their products and a plug-in that allows the customer to ‘share their experience’ to all relevant social media platforms.
With regards to Search engine optimisation (SEO) Hamilton’s website is not on the first page of google’s search options when searching for terms such as: “Luxury watches” “Watches” “Buy watches”, although it is worth noting that the majority of the target demographic would purchase the products through a third party jeweller or watch retail website of which Hamilton products are all featured on. In terms of website analysis from a strategic standpoint (AIPD Model), Hamilton hit all the boxes of Attracting, Informing, Positioning and Delivering; although there could be improvement in the positioning dimension (Simeon and Sayeed, 2011).
Competitors
Rolex are renowned for their high value products and have been trend-setters in the watch industry for over a century. The Swiss company have a global brand reach into target audience segments that other seem to elude other watch companies and make a fitting comparison benchmark for any watch company website. The first thing the customer witnesses when clicking on a link to Rolex’s website is an auto-playing video about the history of the company; this is a unique asset to the website, something Hamilton watches may find value in considering for their own homepage. Although forcing a customer to watch a video about the history of Rolex may be frustrating for some customers and can also be considered a demerit to ease of use, decreasing some of the initial clarity of the website(something Hamilton’s website does very well). Rolex maintains the luxurious brand theme throughout the website and does a good job of portraying the luxurious demeanour their target demographics desire, it also contains an insert promoting its sponsorship in the golfing world that informs
Vincero Watches are a new watch company from San Diego, they offer watches that look expensive at an extremely cheap price, their watches cost less than a tenth of the price of a Hamilton watch and the way in which they are able to do is the mechanism they use; a quartz powered watch (battery powered) which is considerably cheaper to manufacturer then a fully mechanical watch (like a Rolex or a Hamilton) they then spend a large amount of revenue on design and marketing.
This company is valuable in a comparison because it offers a stark contrast to Hamilton in terms of strategy, product design and demographic. although the target demographics are different; Hamilton hits a mid-range price level for a watch (roughly £300-£1200) and subsequently eliminates a large portion of society from its target market or potential customers – whereas Vincero sells their products at a low price point (£100-£250) and in doing so they gain access to a large and untapped demographic such as low-income individuals like university students. This is reflected in their website, for example: as soon as you open vincerowatches.com the screen is blocked by a promotional offer of 10% off if you make a purchase today (clearly aimed at impulse purchases – something that does not happen very often with £1000+ watches). Vincero watches also have a very strong social media campaign and frequently advertise on Instagram and Facebook (something Hamilton does not do) and this hits their target demographic of twenty-somethings very well.
One of the things Hamilton and Vincero share is the use of YouTube channels in promotion and marketing and understandably so; because Youtube generates the most social search traffic, 41.84% (SimilarWebb, 2018). Both companies send out free products to respected YouTube media outlets so they can review and advertise the products. For example:
Customer Personas
Customer Journeys
Customer journey maps allow for valuable insight into a customers expectations of the brand at each step of their journey, this can help with building a new customer experience that increases sales or brand loyalty. Customer journey maps also set a foundation for the ability to predict other customers future behaviour, which grants potential for optimising the conversation process. As you can see in the customer journey table below, ‘Reid’ enquired about the shopping of the watch via E-mail, whereas Schmitt did so using an online chat from the customer help section of the website, having this information allows for Hamilton to see where they are hitting certain demographics and where the best place to advertise to the desired demographic may be, given the correct information is correlated and used.
References:
- Rolex S.A. (2018) available: www.rolex.com
- Simeon, R., & Sayeed, L. (2011). Examining the online wine tourism experience of California
wineries: IGI Global. - The Hamilton Watch Company. (2018) available: www.hamiltonwatch.com
- The Slender Wrist YouTube channel. (2018) available: www.youtube.com/watch?v=59WTtuaHCfo
Bibliography:
- Digital Marketing Institute. (2018). The Beginner’s Guide to Defining Buyer Personas. [online] Available at: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-gb/blog/2017-4-27-the-beginners-guide-to-defining-buyer-personas [Accessed 11th Dec. 2018].
- Ordun, G. (2015). Millennial (Gen Y) consumer behavior their shopping preferences and
perceptual maps associated with brand loyalty. Canadian Social Science, 11(4), 40-55. - Revella, A., 2015. Buyer personas. How to Gain Insight Into Your Customer’s Expectations, Align Your Marketing Strategies, and Win More Business.
