Marketing Strategy Michael E. Porter 's The Five Forces Model

Competitors in the industry can wreak havoc on the bottom line for a company. With rivals, a price competition usually ensues, which benefits the customers but hurts the competing businesses that share a common strategy. In reviewing rival sellers, many competitors exist within the sports apparel and footwear industry, but most of them are unable to compete with the industry giants, Nike and Adidas. They are well seated in the industry and their sales reveal this ultimate strength, however, Under Armour is putting pressure on these mammoths. In 2015, global sales of sports clothing and footwear equated to $250 billion, of which Nike grabbed $30.6 billion, Adidas held in its grasp $18.8 billion and Under Armour had a much smaller piece of the pie, at $3.9 billion globally. In reviewing these numbers, it looks like Under Armour is really subpar to the industry giants, but this is not exactly the case. Under Armour in the past couple of

Companies like Under Armour, Nike and Adidas/Reebok have high threats of substitute´s products. These companies share the sport apparel industry and are vulnerable to competitive pressure from the actions of buyers whenever they view that their products can be substituted for others. The availability of substitutes invites the costumer to compare performance, features, and ease of use as well as price. Under Armour’s major competitors are Nike and Adidas/Reebok because they have a similar or competing product offerings. The top sport apparel brands offer similar products and that is why each one of them needs to keep a high standard and produce good quality products in order for customers to keep buying their product.

making the power of the supplier high. 70-75 percent of Under Armour products come from only 8 suppliers that manufacture and distribute their product. Making a product such as athletic shoes is the least difficult part of being in this industry, making a product worth buying and competing at the global level is where most fail when attempting to enter the market.

ASICS's footwear and apparel products are manufactured by third-party manufacturer in various country such as China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea and Thailand. Apart from third-party manufactured, ASICS itself also have own manufacturing to produce own product. No single supplier are holds unique bargaining power for ASICS product.

Therefore it makes it hard for companies like Nike, Adidas and Under Amour etc. to be able to have power over the customers. If a buyer is dissatisfied with any company in the industry; that buyer can easily switch to another company to acquire the products that they need.

The strength of the competitive forces vary among the Under Armour, Nike, and The Adidas Group. The buyer bargaining power of Under Armour, is somewhat weak. Under Armour’s growth strategy entails, “Securing

In the sportswear industry, the two giants Nike and Adidas are crushing the competition for years. It is Difficult for a brand to come face a competition of this magnitude on land that weighs billions of dollars worldwide. but new competitors try to come to snatch market shares to Adidas and Nike without any real success with more or less success, these brands only gain few crumbs that give up the powerful German-American duo. However, the US brand Under Armour comes to undermine the dominance of Nike and Adidas.

In this industry, the Power of Buyers is low to moderate. It is considered low because athletic shoe producers have two sets of customers, direct consumers and intermediate consumers creating very low buyer concentration. Their intermediate consumers include a variety of stores from discounts stores, sporting goods stores and department stores. Due to the large size of the athletic shoe producers, the majority of intermediate consumers have very little negotiating ability and thus low power, allowing the athletic footwear firms the ability to earn an increase in profits by selling to intermediate consumers at full price. Some intermediate consumers such as large department stores and large sporting goods stores would have the size to be able to leverage some power over the athletic shoe producers giving them moderate power. The industry’s members reach direct consumers through vertically integrated self-operated brick and mortar retail stores as well as through online firms. Direct buyers have moderate power over the athletic shoe producers since there are no switching costs to go between brands. However, athletic footwear is strategically important to people if they are either athletes or people wanting to participate in high performance fitness activities, therefore giving them low power since they depend on the product to fill a

Nike places more importance on choosing the right local partners, not just the right ports. Nike doesn’t own any of its facilities, and local partners make important logistics decisions (Field, 2003a). To manage relationships, Nike has both a global and regional vendor management team – as output volume increases, Nike don’t expand the number of suppliers, but increase the volume of business they do with each supplier (Field, 2003a).

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.

The sportswear industry is very price sensitive and most competitors prices are about the same. Nike sells its products in Nike shops and the selling of its products direct to the consumers conflicts with other resellers of the brand. Most of Nike’s earnings are derived from selling into retailers.

1. What is adidas’ position in the athletic shoe market? How does the brand seem to be doing in this market? Position: the position of adidas has transferred from “leading supplier of soccer footwear worldwide” to “leading sport brand”. Adidas was founded in Germany in 1920. In 1995, it became a public company as well as the leading supplier of soccer footwear due to its great performance of footwear sales. In 1998, adidas began to move into the U.S. market. Adidas doubled its U.S. market share within only one year, so it hoped to continue to make big move in following years. In its way to U.S. market, adidas confront with the

Adidas Group, as one of the world’s retail leaders in sportswear, has as primary target the sports participants, including high performance athletes, as well as non-athletes who are inspired by those at the highest level of their sport, and those that really love sports as part of their lives.

Adidas is a major German sports apparel manufacturer, which was founded in 1948. It is the largest sportswear manufacturer in Europe and the second biggest sportswear manufacturer in the world, after Nike. The company's clothing and shoe designs typically feature three parallel bars. The company revenue for 2009 was listed at €10.38 billion. The market segmentation; targeting and position play an important role in this company. This essay will use the three factors to analyze this company.

Adidas is the second largest sportswear and apparels manufacturer (Dogiamis & Vijayashanker, 2009). By far, Adidas holds a market share of 22% (Dogiamis & Vijayashanker, 2009). Adidas had also registered the infamous ‘3 stripes’ as its trademark (Berntson, Jarnemo & Philipson, 2006). The founders of Adidas, Adolf and Rudolf Dassler had the vision of providing athletes with the best suited pair of shoes for their respective sports (Dogiamis & Vijayashanker, 2009). In efforts of achieving that, Adidas is had used the strategy of collaborating with important athletes to gain their insights on the products offered (Berntson, Jarnemo & Philipson, 2006). This contributes to the fact that Adidas had earned