Grand Seiko: Embodying the Nature of Time

Hong Ming Tan, Wendy Lim, Joel Goh

Product #:W50281

Supplier:Ivey/NUS

Discipline:Marketing, Strategy

Setting:Japan, 2024

Details:Case (PDF) • 18 pages • 2026-07-27

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As the end credits to The Gift of Time rolled at a private screening in Tokyo in October 2024, Mr. Akio Naito, president of the Seiko Watch Corporation, reflected on the themes of the short film and their implications for the Grand Seiko brand of luxury watches. Originally a domestic Japanese brand, Grand Seiko had evolved into an international luxury brand that appealed to collectors and connoisseurs with its design philosophy expressing Japanese aesthetics, quality, and craftmanship—“quiet luxury”—as opposed to ostentatious status symbols. Although Grand Seiko had seen healthy growth in its sales in recent years, Naito was concerned about its future prospects. A shift in Grand Seiko’s customer base toward a younger, more international audience would eventually be necessary to sustain its growth. Could Grand Seiko compete with the established luxury watch brands and appeal to younger consumers without diluting the very philosophy that differentiated it?

Learning Objectives

This case can be used in master of business administration-level courses in marketing, strategy, operations management, or operations strategy. It can also be used in undergraduate-level courses, with appropriate modifications to the teaching plan to avoid referencing past working experience. Through this case discussion, students should be able to do the following:

Examine key elements of the luxury watchmaking business.
Evaluate how firms build on their core competencies when expanding internationally, translating them into a coherent value proposition, target customer strategy, and marketing mix that resonates across global markets.
Analyze the challenges of developing a nascent global luxury brand among a field of entrenched competitors and the importance of marketing to targeted segments.
Examine how various customer segments define value differently and how successful brands tailor their positioning to address consumers’ functional, emotional, and identity-based needs.
Explore how effective production and operations management is vital to support strategic marketing efforts, even in a luxury market.
Apply the 4Ps of marketing (product, price, place, promotion) and, importantly in this luxury context, the extended 3Ps (people, process, physical evidence).