I was wondering why, in this day and ("Internet") age, that the majority of the PRS-82 seem to end up in the UK.
I would speculate that this holds up across other Timefactors models as well, but just guessing there.
Quickly playing with some data for PRS-82 watches where the country is known....
"Multiple" is the ratio of a country's PRS-82 representation (%) vs. the country's population as a % of all countries with PRS-82 owners.
(Maybe I should have used Units per Capita, but it seems to work out the same...)
Takeaways:
The UK is quite over-represented.
The USA is massively under-represented.
Theories
Geographic preference for type/size of watches? (e.g. 40mm / diver) -> Unlikely: the PRS-82 is not an extreme size
Local marketing? Unlikely: I don't think Eddie exactly markets / advertises the brand heavily.
Media coverage? Unlikely: searching for Timefactors Precista reviews, shows the only major coverage has been by Worn & Wound, which is based in USA - would assume high % of USA readers.
Word of mouth / Hey WWRUW? -> Maybe... would give a multiplier effect for a country.
Repeat buyers -> Small effect, some owners do buy more than one, for friends / relatives.
British company -> Small effect? preference among UK (and EU?) buyers due to less (and known) costs vs. international buyers (shipping & esp. duties can be steep)
Historically British brand/military watches -> Likely: more interest among UK buyers, particularly the "Royal Navy" PRS-82 ?
I assume many UK residents could be familiar with the original PRS-82, perhaps through military service, or just general (local) watch knowledge.
Also is the non-UK representation reflecting an "ex-pat" community - or those with such a family background - vs. those with zero UK affiliation?
Language: We should assume a preference among English-speaking countries, due the website being in English only etc.
e.g. so even though say Japan has quite a large population, one would not expect it to have proportionally as many buyers.
Data Quality Improvements:
Economics:
Ideally one would account for the economics of each country, and adjust the Population to represent only the "Market" - only those with disposable income for such things.
Consider a theoretical buyer in one of the BRIC countries (to make it easy) - where a watch might be several year's wages for most people in that country.
If say China was on our list, and the population there is 1.4 Billion people, then I would suspect only some some "Millions" of people would be the market.
While I'm not really familiar with various countries economies, glancing at the list doesn't really suggest any such outliers.
It's not like 90% of the USA is working for subsistence incomes or something...
the Market population of the USA really probably IS as relatively large as the population data would suggest.
Demographics:
I guess one should probably also account for Demographics too...
but I still can't imagine that would explain anything away.
The UK and USA are probably fairly similar in terms of Gender and Age distributions.
World Population Data:
http://www.worldpopdata.org/map
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