Nike Inc is a sportswear company that is based in Beaverton, Oregon. With a mission statement of “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world”, Nike focuses on designing and producing athletic footwear, apparel, equipment, and accessories.
Through innovative technology and brilliant marketing strategies, Nike has become a world leader in the sportswear market.
Technology has played a huge role in the rise of Nike in the global sportswear market. Nike has been able to take advantage of the rise of social media in their marketing scheme and through social media have been better able to engage with customers.
New marketing technologies allow Nike to engage and pinpoint customers much easier and do most of their advertising online. The rise of online shopping has also allowed Nike to grow globally.
Online stores allows Nike to not rely solely on their storefronts in order to sell products and show customers new products. Nike also relies on new product technologies, such as the Nike React which was released earlier this year.
Nike must pay attention to the economy of the entire world in order to ensure success of their company.
Nike has outsourced most of its labor to Asian countries as labor is typically cheaper in those countries, however, with higher standards of livings, the wages and production costs may change for Nike, which might force them to raise prices.
Economic recessions could also be bad news for Nike, as many customers may resort to buying cheaper sportswear if the economy begins to worsen. Being a global company, Nike must be aware of the currency rate of other countries to the American dollar as that might affect the prices of their products.
Politically and legally, Nike must be aware of the political unrest that is occurring in many of the Asian countries where Nike factories are located.
The political unrest of these countries may cause them to change policies in imports and exports. Being American based, Nike gets the benefits of the policies of the U.S. government, such as trade regulations and international tax agreements, allowing Nike to more easily operate on the global level.
In recent years, the threat of terrorism has increased substantially in many countries. These increased threats could cause countries to become more restrictive in Visas and who they allow to enter the country, creating more challenges for Nike to operate globally.
Developing countries may impose tariffs on Nike products in an attempt to get people to purchase homeland products. Although Nike has become much more transparent, they have run into several legal problems such as child labor and not paying minimum wage that have led to several lawsuits and could put a damper on their reputation.
Nike has benefited from today’s society becoming much more health conscious. Athletic clothes have become more fashionable for people to wear, and with more people trying to get into fitness, Nike has grown exponentially.
Nike has also benefited from the rise of women in the fitness industry as they care much more about fashion, and thus, have grown the Nike customer base.
Nikes strategy in the marketing world has evolved every year, growing and becoming stronger and more world wide known. In 1994, Nike in the football world was small and wasn’t keeping up with the big competitor of Adidas.
Nike took every chance they received to grow their brand internationally which started off with the world cup in 1994 in the United States. Nikes revenue for football started off as $40 million dollar business and grew to a 1.5 billion business in just 15 years.
The CEO put a new strategic management in place when they decided to partner up with the Brazilian National Team. They decided to market towards 13 year old football players and fans and aimed to build that culture. The change of the target segment, they believed that the target gave them a different opportunity to grow as they hoped to have exciting new products and marketing methods.
Every four years after that initial World Cup in 1994, Nike stepped up their work which reflected in more innovative products, digital campaigns, personalized strategies, engaging advertisements, and sponsorships and endorsements with top players and teams.
All of these enabled Nike to position itself on a higher level than before on each World Cup.
Today’s society is also much more brand conscious, and with Nike’s reputation of being high quality and fashionable, society views wearing Nike positively.
Similar to what was stated earlier, Nike previously had issues with unethical practices in their factories, which could have decreased their customer base because people in today’s society are conscious of ethical and environmentally friendly practices.
In the next five years, I believe the technological dimension will have the biggest impact on Nike. Nike has been the leading sportswear company because their technology was innovative compared to competitors.
Now, companies such as Adidas are utilizing the same technologies as Nike, and more people feel they get more value from Adidas. Nike was utilizing the concept of apps, online shopping, and social media for marketing and sales, but now all of their competitors are able to do the same.
Nike will need to find the next technological innovation to set themselves apart from competitors and keep people buying the swoosh.
