Weighwood Case Essay Example for Free

Weighwood Case Essay When Wedgwood started his business, pottery industry is already established, comprises many small players around the country. He started with a small production facility, incorporated his experience from working in family business and many years in the industry. His passion and innovative ideas helped him expand his business and grew to become a big player in potter industry. Wedgwood was a differentiator company, specifically a late mover in the industry. Wedgwood gained competitive advantages through innovation, creativity, and strong marketing strategies. Innovation and creativity were the key to Wedgwood success, including the invention of creamware and white pottery. Josiah focused on bringing new ideas to the design of his products, finding new raw materials to help producing better products, and building/creating machines with latest technology to help with efficiency and uniformity. His wife specialized in pottery design and coloring which help their products differentiate from other plain pottery products in the market. Moreover, the sustained competitive advantage Wedgwood had, was the result of good marketing strategies with help from Josiahs partner, Bentley. Base on the reading, marketing strategies Wedgwood used were establishing showroom, inertia selling strategy, and promotion through high class people (Queen). Wedgwood was also the first one in the industry have brand name on every products. Wedgwood were so successful in England until its number of productions exceed the number of sale which cause the company to stock up a very high inventory. This opportunity caused Wedgwood to expand internationally to many countries in Europe and China. Wedgwood leverage its competitive advantage through demand side scope economy. Firstly, company needed new outlet for products that overproduced for local market. The example from class discussion would be Coke case. Coke and Pepsi competed with each other until the market were fully saturated, then Coke started to go global to exploit other markets in other countries. Wedgwood introduced its products to many countries in Europe and to China. Wedgwoods products were new to international market because of their design, coloring, uniformity. Wedgwood also used inertia selling strategies which company send products to consumer in a package with invoice and consumers can either buy or return the products at no cost to them. This strategy was to create demand for company products. Secondly, there were potential benefits to company to expand internationally because of the increasing spending on nonessential or luxury goods around European countries. Shipping methods also became more secured and convenience. As a result, Wedgwoods products were sold internationally to meet the demand in the form of luxury or nonessential goods. To better understand of how above strategies would work internationally and how Wedgwood sustained its competitive, the products were global products. All of the products were produced in home country, England, and then ship to other countries to retail store or direct sell to consumers. Wedgwood also established showroom in many countries to display its products, and make people wants its products. Wedgwood was not adapt to local market in different countries but to sell its home products and position their image just as intended. The example that relates to this idea was the discussion in class about the case which Apple open an Apple Store in Beijing. Apple products are also global products. Apples positioning strategy is uniform all around the world. Wedgwoods products were also uniform and mass produced in England and they do not need to be modified to fit to foreign market.