Case Study of Vistakon and Disposable Contact Lenses

road with a hammer. A piece of the nail-head broke off, ricocheted off the road surface and penetrated his eye. The eye had to be removed. This sad event, that took just micro-seconds, but had lifetime consequences. There are few tasks we do in the shop that do not deserve safety eyewear. I worked as an Optometrist for 47 years and have removed more foreign bodies than I can count. Even with safety eyewear, crap happens. I routinely saw patients from machine shops where protective eyewear was an OSHA requirement, but they still got metal in their eyes despite protective eyewear being used. Some guidelines to consider. If a task is under taken, that uses a high speed tool such as a drill, lathe or even a hammer, that causes the eye

Threat of entry is low because it requires large capital investments for a firm to startup and thus it can impede the entry of new firms into the industry. Lastly, it would be hard to break into the industry because the other firms already have economies to scale, are further along learning curve, and may have certain airspace leases that blocks out the new company from potential routes.

product and starting a price war with competitors that would damage margins. In addition, a low priced

In addition to ODI’s patent, ODI had signed a contract with New World that it couldn’t offer the polymer, the main material for the contact lens, for other firms who also intended to enter the market, and prevent others from using the updated products. Although this patent-protect agreement made sure that competitors in the same field had no access to duplicate the contact lens, the companies who offer the debeaking service are rivals to ODI. Farmers are so familiar with debeaking process, so they are more likely to choose this way other than lens. In conclusion, the requirement of the contact lens will be so sensitive to the price.

Low pricing eventually results in loss of customer loyalty as pricing to bottom is a risky business strategy.

Based on the market trend, it is likely the demand for the disposable lens will increase at the expense of conventional lens. Therefore, the hope to increase the sales through the distributors and the introduction of ‘frequent flyers’ scheme is unlikely to yield much result.

From the courier, it is clear that the products with the highest customer awareness have the higher market share. With that in mind, we will adjust the promotion budget for the low end products to increase our customer awareness which in turn will increase our sales if we continue to compete based on low prices. Because we are featuring our low end product, we think that this product will remain in the cash cow position, never becoming a star through an increase in market growth rate. The only way that this product will ever become a dog is if the price of the product

Sof-Optics is a small (specialty-niche) player in a $155M contact-lens market. (Three competitors occupy 75% of this market (Bausch + Lomb (51%), American Optical (14%), Continuous Curve (10%); approximately twenty players (including Sof-Optics’ ~3%) occupy the remaining 25%.) This consumer space is already appreciable in size (~5M contact-lens wearers in 1980), and promises exponential growth in future years (only 10% of ~50M prospective lens-wearers in America have even tried soft contact lenses).

price point than the big 3, the company saw this as the perfect strategy to penetrate the saturated

The global eyewear market is anticipated to continue to grow in the next six years due to an increased number of people experiencing visual deficiencies and also as the general population continues to age (Grand View Research, 2014). Eyewear consumers

The last alternative could be to create a better marketing about their products, to compare their brand with the competition so the market can understand that the differences between prices is because of the good quality, the brand name, the knowledge, and that they are the only ones, the expert ones on those kind of products.

penetration pricing strategy. All indications are that sales will continue to grow. In response to a

Finally, considering that users of CAs are divided in three purchasing buckets (greater than 10 lbs., between 1 and 9 lbs., and less than one lbs.) and the average price of Superbonder ($37.45) is far less than the price of BAM to end user ($175), for the BAM customer to make financial sense for such a purchase, he will need to buy more than a lbs. of CA a year. Hence, Loctite target companies for the BAM equipment should be firms who purchase CAs more than once a year (size of the company irrelevant based on case information).

* Despite the premium pricing, K-2 product provide more competitive overall cost trough superior performance.

Buyers in this market are not very weak and powerful. They are few in numbers and can switch to other manufacturers for product quality but number of manufacturers is few and backward integration also seems impossible.