Core Competencies And Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Nike is the world’s single largest producer of sporting wear, clothing, shoes and accessories. An Oregon based company founded in 1972 by Phillip H. Knight and William J. Bowerman. Nike’s broad range of products is the key to it’s success, it’s range includes Nike Skateboarding, Nike Golf, Nike Pro, Nike +, Nike Air Jordan and owns other big names such as surf brand Hurley; shoe manufacturer Cole Haan; and two large sports companies – Converse and Umbro. Having such huge sponsorship contracts with many of the world’s biggest athletes and sports teams, these huge profiles are simply another outlet for Nike to promote their products. Nike currently employs over 31,000 people

Innovation: In such a mature and competitive industry, continuous innovation is crucial to the success of the company as it gives a unique selling point that rivals do not have. Both product and process innovation are Nike’s

Nike is the leading and yet renowned supplier of athletic apparel and shoes. The company controls close to 33% of the global athletic shoe market (Dogiamis & Vijayashanker,2009).Nike was founded by Bill Power and Phil Knight in 1962 as a Blue Ribbon Support and then was later on renamed to Nike in the year 1968 (Patrow,2003).The company supplies very high quality product in close to 100 countries with major markets being located in the U.S,U,K, Asia Pacific as well as in the Americas. The company has managed to attain its lead and legendary position via the application of innovative and yet attractive product design which is backed by quality production as well as well crafted marketing strategies.

is a growth company. Over the last 10 years, we’ve more than doubled our revenue, and they have stated “we believe we’ll deliver $30 billion in revenue by FY15 and $36 billion by FY17.” Since we published our FY10/11 Sustainable Business Performance Summary, our overall employee base grew to approximately 48,000 at the end of FY13, an increase of 10,000 employees. We expect strong growth in Running, Basketball, Football, Men’s Training, Sportswear, Women’s Training and Direct to Consumer sales. As we look forward, we believe that sustainability is one of the key drivers that will catalyze innovation and lead us toward continued growth. NIKE, seeks to deliver shareholder value through sustainable growth. One of the ways we will achieve this goal is to find avenues to reach our long-term vision of decoupling profitable growth from constrained resources. The CEO shared that they are working to integrate sustainability into every aspect of our business. Our aim is to challenge, push and explore ways that change the game entirely for materials, design and manufacturing. We don’t grow just to get bigger. We grow to be better and do

"Just Do It." Just three small words represent so much more to consumers. A growing athletic wear empire that shows no signs of slowing down, Nike is a company that strives on change and innovation. The more trends change, the more creative they become, and more successful and popular the brand gets. The Nike swoosh and the "Just Do It" slogan are globally recognized and cherished.

As the brand name of Nike continue to soar, other companies in the industry; learning from the success Nike has experienced, start focusing more on brand development to keep up with the increasing levels of competition. These companies resort to brand maintenance, which has become the main target in this industry due to product differentiation made by Nike. Nike, being market-advantaged, produces an extensive range of products, through which it gains a balanced level of profits. This has influenced rival companies to initiate a new range of products in their businesses too. Previously these companies had high risks of failing in business, if their single products did not appeal to the market. Due to the impact of Nike’s business strategy, the other companies are also enlarging their product range,

Around the world, people of all cultures are increasing their participation in fitness activities. All are motivated by the common desire for athletic and personal excellence. Nike, a simple sneaker company to many newspaper readers is transforming into an international consumer products company. The payoff from overcoming all these challenges can be seen in our 1991 international growth of 80 percent to $862 million in revenues. Nike is the famous franchises in the world that sells sportwear for all ages.nike is also one of the major manufacturers of sport equipment but it is the most famous for their athletic shoes and apparel.

Since its creation, Nike has proven itself as a popular brand and it has created niches by selling products such as footwear, apparels and various types of sports equipment. This paper will attempt to trace the product development of Nike shoes from its origins in conception and design to the manufacturing and production process located in contract factories in developing countries to advertising and marketing of Nike as a cultural commodity and finally, the retailing of the footwear around the world.

Nike’s main strategy revolves around product branding. Their brand compromises of a swoosh logo which is accompanied by a message of “just do it”. The logo was imprinted on all of their products with the message developed to express the individuality of their target group. The branding was further promoted by Nike’s relentless approach on the quality of their product as demonstrated when considering overseas business opportunities, quality must not be compromised in order to do so. This ensures consumer satisfaction and loyalty towards Nike.

Nike is known as one of the most consistently innovative companies for its technologically advanced products. As Nike stated, Innovation is the company’s heart in its business growth strategy because it helps them to become more sustainable company and to keep up with the competition and customer demands (nikeandunderarmour.com, 2015). Therefore, Nike vision innovation is a key business success of the company. It invests

Volkswagen goal is to become the ecological and economical leader in the automotive industry and to be the world’s leading automaker by 2018. Volkswagen has four main objectives through which they will achieve their goals.

Nike has seldom manufactured products own premises, except their air bladders. The shoes are manufactured through outsourcing and alliances with other companies. A successful company like Nike formed its organization on the customer values that have the MOST impact on the consumers mind – Design/R&D, Marketing and Distribution. Even though manufacturing is a vital function to perform, Nike realized that there were other ways to go about this function and thereby save both cost and maintain its focus on the critical customer value areas.

Nike’s recent decline in market share and stock can be attributed to changing trends in consumer spending habits and apparel tastes. Nike can re-establish a competitive advantage in the short-run by implementing an innovative design team and brand ambassador. Long-run competitive advantage can be achieved by fully committing to a sustainable innovative business model or by incorporating innovative technology trends into their retail structure.

Nike, Inc. has been the world’s leading innovator and provider in athletic footwear, apparel, equipment and accessories for 50 years. Their mission has been to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world; if you have a body, you are an athlete. Arguably one of the most innovative companies in the world, Nike has built its brand into an iconic world-class powerhouse that continues to dominate the market with no signs of slowing up. Nike’s marketing and advertising have been breakthrough, aspirational, and legendary over the years, featuring high-profile athletes and heroes.

Firstly Nike sold its franchise licenses in different countries expanding the market share in sports wear industry, and then the company moved towards purchasing shares in equity to reduce the risk uncertainty. Finally the company managed to bring the dealers’s corporation under one direction enabling them a better control and monitoring capabilities. Nike is making new policies, analyzing the performance of marketing and advertising with the standards they have set to make sure that the company is in line with its required its standards in addition; company is moving towards improving its advertisement in order to make it more effective in different regions. Nike has also faced different issues while internationalizing the business, such as capabilities, access, finance and business environment; unavailability of trained workers, limited information about the market, inability of contacting foreign customers and new business environments describes these issues on a vast ground.