Large-sized Porcelain Tiles: an International Marketing plan

Abstract

It is unclear where the tile as a fired piece of clay was invented since historians differ between China, Egypt or Babylonia (Restrepo-Baena, 2011). However, it seems that the Saracen civilization was the one that introduced the handmade tile to Spain, as it could be seen in monuments like the Alhambra (Fernádez Montaña, 1924). After the Industrial Revolution handmade tiles started to disappear, its industrial production increased and tiles formats became bigger. Currently, it is possible to produce tiles of more than 3 square meters. One of the Spanish companies specialised in these huge tiles is Urbatek, one of the companies that form Porcelanosa Grupo. Urbatek is a company placed at Castelló, where there is a great competition between ceramic companies. This company focuses on big format tiles with its brand XLight and released XLight Premium in 2016, a product that tries to improve the old XLight products in terms of strength, design or thickness. Taking into account these aspects, this paper aims at preparing an international marketing plan in order to expand the XLight brand in a country. To achieve this goal, it was completed a PESTLE analysis to break down the present situation of the Spanish ceramic industry. Furthermore, in order to implement the marketing plan, this project compares the two biggest international markets for Urbatek, that is, the United Kingdom and the United States, through the use of a SWOT analysis. The United States was chosen as the best market to implement an international marketing plan for XLight. Hence, few brand, product, pricing and distribution decisions were planned.