New Balance Essay

New Balance is privately owned company, which is the second largest footwear manufacture in the United States and the fourth largest footwear manufacture in the world with annual sales in 2008 of $1.61 billion (Veleva, 2010).

NIKE Inc. has been the worldwide leader of athletic shoe sales for many years now. The company’s successful brand image combined competition and enablement for the competitive, athletic user. Nike has to modify their brand to a focus of excitement and freedom and not just competitiveness. By collecting and studying an assortment of material we could be able to understand where NIKE is currently placed in the athletic shoe industry compared to their competition, and how they will be able to adjust their brand focus so it can be more effective in the future. These adjustments can help NIKE reach the more casual group of urban runners and ultimately increase the sales forecasts, while still controlling a percentage of the market for athletic shoes.

New Balance has a significant opportunity to expand its operations in the western region. While the commitment to northeastern operations may have provided an early advantage, there is certainly an opportunity to capitalize on the explosive growth within the western market (Chang, 2012). It is important to balance growth across various markets, to ensure market share is captured, in order to get ahead of the expanding market culture before brand dominance is established by the competition.

Nike started to open up manufacturing factories in countries like Indonesia, Pakistan and Vietnam. Due to the wants of Nike to increase their revenue they tried to outsource the labor of their products since labor work in the US is very high and expensive. This was a bad idea due to that Indonesia pays their workers extremely low wages. Pakistan doesn’t have an age limit for them to be able to legally to work so many children in Pakistan were making

The concept of market structures and competitive strategies are important when attempting to compete in any market. Understanding what market structure your product falls under can help companies develop better competitive strategies and identify potential for loss and gains. The athletic footwear industry in the United States is highly profitable and continuously growing. In this paper I will identify market structure of the athletic footwear industry, the major retailers, and competitive strategies that can be used to maximize profits.

Customers make purchasing decisions based on the information they have among products and the values of goods a company offers. For that reason, companies have to promote their products to increase products awareness. In order to achieve organizational goals, companies must understand the market’s needs to ensure the success of their businesses. Such information can be gained through research. The industry that will form the basis of this paper is Western Canadian Shoe Association. The three brands under study are Reebok, Adidas, and Nike.

Everyday, billions of people look down at their feet and squeeze them into a pair of shoes. For probably most of those people in America, when they look down at their feet, they see a shoe with a swoosh on it. This swoosh belongs to no other than one of the most popular sneaker companies, Nike. I decided to look further into this popular shoe company's success. It turns out Nike isn't even one of the oldest shoe companies, but it is less than 60 years old. Nike had to figure out how to become better than just an ordinary sneaker company.

Operational strategies are the core functions of an organization because these operations intensify to produce something innovative and worthy. Organizational operations are associated with the performance and work quality of an organization because these operations are practical demonstration of a project. Companies mostly use these operations to run their functions effectively in order to have a positive result.

New balance is a niche player with regards to their marketing technique. They utilised niche marketing strategies that the bigger firms overlooked.

Nike is competing in the market with Adidas, Reebok, New Balance and many other brands.

Footwear also known as shoes was invented to protect a person’s foot while doing various activities, primarily created for functional and practical use. However, shoe design has constantly evolved throughout history and from culture to culture. The notion of complementing your outfit with the perfect shoe has been the impetus of design and many styles of shoes; such as high heels, flats and sneakers. Modern footwear varies widely in design, comfortability and cost. Nike is a multinational company that offers many types of footwear and has been a leading pioneer in the retail market for decades. Air Jordan’s and Converse are notably Nike’s most proverbial brands. These two brands are a quintessential example of a price difference within the same corporation.

Competition is very fierce due to the number of companies competing for sales. Lots of money goes to marketing and promotions using various channels to reach the young demographic group of consumers who spend the most money on Nike’s products. Growth is slowing down in the athletic footwear industry. But new markets are emerging with high growth rates. These markets include extreme sports market and the corporate merchandise market.

New Balance International was founded during the early 1990s specializing in orthopedic footware to improve the fit of their shoes. Today the company continues its founding values in a highly specialized niche business of providing athletic footware in a wide range of widths and sizes which distinguishes the product from its competitors. With the philosophy of “one size did not fit all,” New Balance expanded operation from the US and currently markets its product in 160 countries in six continents. New Balance Inc. first appeared in South Africa In 1976 when a Durban based company obtained a license to distribute the brand. Under this distribution plan the company held a very small percentage of

The report is about Nike, regarding the case study. The report elaborates on the aspects including buyer behaviour, brand image, consumer decision making, and marketing research techniques applicable to Nike. 3.0 Introduction Nike is the worlds number one sports shoe company. In the US Nike dominates 35% (source: see appendices) of the sports shoe market and its products are sold in more than 140

Nike’s management understands how important a relevant strategy is in the global environment, as Don Blair, Nike’s CFO, stated “...we are refocusing our efforts, increasing our investments in innovation, using our voice for stronger advocacy and looking at how we incubate new, scalable business models that enable us to thrive in a sustainable economy.”