5.2 Innovation and Technology
In this section is going to be explained the role of the technology and innovation in Oakley. Since their origins, as is aforementioned in the introduction, Oakley has been implementing and improving its technology in order to be a leader in the market. Innovation is one of their principles and core values, the fact is that innovation means growth, because once the market becomes obsolete, the company that has been able to develop the next or future technology is the one that would lead the next generation of products, that is one of the reasons why Oakley focuses so much on innovation. Innovation comes from three different points; technology, market and design.
Technological innovation and market innovation
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Regarding product uniqueness, it has been aforementioned the huge investment done by the company in order to be always updated and with the capability of launching the latest technology on the market. On the other hand, the company targets a narrow market segment mainly due to the fact that many Oakley products are technical and specific for advanced athletes or users, for instance the cycling glasses, whose technology can be considered as the most advance in the market and a clear example of that is the fact that a huge percentage of the procycling athletes in the French Tour and the Italian Giro using Oakley’s eyewear. Usually, the companies using a focus differentiation strategy enjoy a high degree of customer …show more content…
SWOT
In this section, it going to be presented a whole picture of the company through the analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities of Oakley. SWOT analysis is a useful tool that allows managers to better understand the insights obtained from both the internal and external analysis. Strengths and weaknesses represent the internal part of the company, so what can be directly change via direct management, while opportunities and threats represent the external elements not controlled by the company.
• Strengths
Regarding the strengths of Oakley, it is important to highlight the fact that Oakley enjoys of a really strong brand image, which is built thanks to the consistency and coherence of their brands attitudes, values and campaigns, furthermore the reputation of Oakley among its customers is also really high due to the brand loyalty which is based on the confidence that customers have towards Oakley’s technology. It is also relevant to comment that the vertical integration model of the company allows Oakley to have larger margins as well as monitor and control all the steps of the value chain. Last strength but not least, the high quality products offered by Oakley and the continuous improvement in their technology can be considered as the best strength of the