Title: Strategies of innovation applied to luxury market firms: the case of Montblanc's fountain pens

Authors: Marcos Ferasso; Thierry Salem; Ivan Antonio Pinheiro

Addresses: Academic Department of Business and Economics, Federal University of Technology of Parana, 3165, Av. Sete de Setembro, Reboucas, 80230-901, Curitiba, PR, Brazil ' Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Sociales, Université Panthéon-Assas Paris II, France 12 place Panthéon 75005 Paris, France ' School of Management, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil 855, R. Washington Luiz, Centro Historico, 90010-460, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

Abstract: The present research aims to present and discuss the use of strategies of innovation on a firm of luxury market, through a longitudinal case study of Montblanc's fountain pens. The data analysis reveals that Montblanc in its first 50 years concentrated on producing fountain pens like their competitors. From the 1960s, suffering the breakthrough caused by the appearance of the ballpoint pen, Montblanc decided to change their market position in a different way if compared with their competitors, by moving to the luxury market. Montblanc positioned their products as luxury goods or jewels, introducing luxury appeals to them as well as new production process to guarantee greater quality and an increasing care to sustainable innovations for their fountain pens. Strategies of innovation found in this case were classified as sustainable innovations reached due to the coherent, systemic and aligned integration of several types of innovations in order to obtain competitive differentiation in long-term.

Keywords: innovation strategy; technology development; luxury goods; Montblanc pens; fountain pen industry; fountain pens; sustainable innovation; case study.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIR.2017.082825

International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, 2017 Vol.12 No.4, pp.425 - 448

Received: 11 Jul 2014
Accepted: 27 Jan 2015
Published online: 13 Mar 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article