A STUDY ON TWO TOP LEADING FIRM’S COMPETITIVE STRATEGY OF TAIWAN’S WOMEN UNDERWEAR INDUSTRY

The purpose of this thesis is to get insight analysis of Triumph and Wacoal’s competitive strategy in the area of product innovation and retailing channel development in Taiwan’s women underwear industry, which the market has developed since 1950’and reached in a mature condition with “Oligopoly” market structure. By using case study method together with searching both domestic and foreign relative references, this study wants to provide a reference for players to set-up their “winning strategy” in the 21st century.

The main conclusions of this study are as follows:

By using three principles of focus, design competency and service as the framework to elaborate this “Winning Strategy”:

First of all, both Triumph and Wacoal should focus on how to set up an integrated brand image and value system from consumer viewpoint in the area of product design, advertising, counter visual design and the uniform of sales girls. In addition, reviewing from channel management, both firms should apply 80/20 concept and should aim top 5 or top 10 customer group ( such as Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, SOGO, and so on ) for establishing a single contact point of sales management in order to leverage firm’s multi-brand strategy. Based on such contact platform, a yearly marketing plan for each top customer group can be tailor-made to address the feature of individual customer group and its consumer profile for pursuing win-win situation.

Secondly, players have to put more resources on developing design competency up to first class level in order to make the brand and product be able to reflect the fashion industry’s essence as well as to satisfy the life style requirement by consumers. Even they can evaluate and learn from Hi-tech industry by performing 24 hours non-stop designing work via design teams in Europe and Asia, which might has a break through result in terms of idea inspiring and the speed of time to market.

Lastly, looking at service aspect to consumer, only gentle service delivered by sales girls is something not possible to copy as the success formula. Thus, is it great challenge to build up a Human Resource System from recruiting, training, rewarding and motivation to manage over 1,000 sales girls scale? It seems how to run an effective CRM system becomes a crucial factor for firm who wants to be the winner in the future.