Hartmann Luggage Case Report

The Case Report of “Hartmann Luggage” With the analysis we did in class, we made the suggestion of not doing the next promotion. The first thing I did after class was adjusting our model in class from three months moving average to a five months moving average, with data from previous two months, current month, and two months after. With this adjustment, the incremental increased a little, but still, I think it’s not attractive enough when taken other factors, such as cannibalization effects, into consideration. Also, as Katz pointed out, “the April-May 1978 promotion had been announced on January 1” (page 14), the relative lower January-February 1978 sales level should not be used to forecast March-May 1978 sales without promotions. In fact, I believe it is the announcement of promotion on January 1st that led to the low sales level in January-February 1978. Retailers would order fewer units prior to the promotion but catch up with more units ordered during promotion period. This should also be considered to cut the attractiveness promotion. Other than the data analysis we did in class, there are a few more reasons I don’t recommend Hartmann to have a price promotion in the following year. First, price promotion will damage Hartmann’s brand image. One of Katz’s principles for Hartmann was to “maintain a prestigious image” (page 2). Since the price promotion itself was not very efficient, why should Hartmann risk its brand image to do it? Second, as Katz said, there are all kinds of different ways to increase total sales, and, based on luggage consumer surveys, price promotion was definitely not the best way for Hartmann to achieve higher sales. From Hartmann’s own survey, durability and style were considered the most important features in selecting luggage (page 5). Although the results itself seems like is a little misleading, since price was not an option on that questionnaire, it actually should be