Nike and International Labor Practices

The sneaker manufacturer began in 1972 by owners Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman. After their initial meeting at the University of Oregon in 1957, the two formed a lesser known shoe company that eventually evolve to Nike. The company was able to go public in 1980 after one short year of acquiring “50 percent of the U.S. running shoe market” (Parnell, 2008 p. 334). Although Nike has surpassed many of their competitors, such as Adidas, it did not come without controversy. Consequently, their strategic plan of utilizing cheap labor has cost them the reputation of being child labors in violation of human rights for their financial gains.

Nike is one of the top sports clothing industry in the world. However, for years there are fresh allegation for Nike, which dogged by sweatshops and child labour (Daily Mail Reporter, 2011). On the 13 July 2011, Nike has revealed several cases of worker abused at factory.

But, omnisciently speaking, both entities faced severe scrutiny and criticism from United States and international citizens for their capitalistic business practices. Furthermore, a vast number of American citizens, mainly teenagers, had been killed over Nike Air Jordan sneakers because of their high price tag, while the cost to produce the shoes were rapidly declining due to Nike’s unprecedented offshore production. Bill Bigelow’s, The Human Lives behind the Labels: The Global Sweatshop, Nike, and the Race to the Bottom accurately portrays this capitalistic mentality when mentioning, “children as young as 6 are ‘sold and resold like furniture, branded, beaten, blinded as punishment for wanting to go home...’ For pennies an hour, these children work in dank sheds, stitching soccer balls with the familiar Nike swoosh and logos of other transnational athletic equipment companies” (Bigelow, 113). What is most disturbing to fans of Nike and Jordan were their comments and proposed remedies on the matter. Essentially, Jordan did nothing to curtail the number of kids being killed for his shoes and, as far as his affiliation with capitalistic Nike, Jordan did not want to cause any kind of rift between himself and the corporation that made him millions

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.

Nike is an American multinational corporation that is engaged in the design, development, manufacturing and worldwide marketing and sales of sporting apparel and accessories (Sage, 2008). Nike is the world leader in the segment of athletic shoes and apparel (Iqbal, n.d.). The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges and issues faced by Nike’s management, and what factors have led to such issues. Furthermore, what theories and strategies can be used to explain the issues or deal with such problems for the future. Given the word limit of this paper, it is not possible to focus on all facets of Nike’s managerial complications, or the strategies that may be implemented to solve such issues. As such, this paper will focus on Nike’s organisational structure, motivation of their workforce and managing cross-cultural conflict effectively. Using these concepts, this paper will highlight Nike’s managerial blunders, and provide alternative strategies through the explanation of theories to assist in bettering its business practices. Finally this paper will conclude, that presently Nike’s brand is gradually recovering from its unethical pasts and on the road to regaining its consumer loyalty. Nevertheless, there are clearly management inefficiencies that need to be overcome, otherwise history may repeat itself.

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,

The Nike name and trademark Swoosh introduced to the world in 1971, was established by college student, Phil Knight, getting his MBA at Stanford in the early '60s, Knight took a class with Frank Shallenberger. The semester-long project was to devise a small business, including a marketing plan. An underlying set of principles informs the Nike

Since being founded in 1962, Nike has grown from a small fledgling shoe retailer into a world-wide corporate giant. During its first year, sales for Nike were $8000, but as of November 30th, annual sales for Nike were over 12 billion dollars. (hoover) Although Nike already dominates the sporting world, there are many opportunities for growth. According to our research, key strategic challenges facing Nike are increased competition from Adidas with their technological shoe, the Adidas One, and a potentially fatal inability to enter a new growth market such as the extreme sports market. Our recommendations to help Nike confront these challenges consist of developing a product to remain competitive with Adidas, and also an aggressive move

The athletic shoe industry stands one of the greatest and most profitable in the world. Currently, global annual athletic footwear revenues stand around $75B per year, with annual US consumers spending close to$20 billion. Unsurprisingly, the largest growth in the industry took place during the 1980’s and 1990’s, during Jordan’s career in which the popularity of athletic and sport oriented casual shoes skyrocketed. Also not alarming is who the dominant player in the athletic footwear market is – Nike. The market share of Nike and Jordan brands combined is routinely measured at close to 50% in this market, proving their sponsorship deal with Jordan in 1984 provided the springboard to which they never have looked back on.

This Capstone paper will explore the challenges inside the business arena of superpower, Nike, Inc. (Nike). Statements and references within this paper are supported with information gained through extensive research of business journals, financial reports, and various other news sources. The author will describe business and marketing challenges inherent in the world of sportswear and sporting goods manufacturing and more specifically, some that Nike has directly faced and overcome. From a very humble beginning in 1964, Nike has grown into a worldwide multi-billion-dollar company that sets the bar as leader of the sportswear and athletic shoe industry (Forbes, 2016). This paper will examine how Nike has become the industry leader and most

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.

After years of good publicity and increasing profits, Nike was hit by claims it was involved in unfair overseas labor practices. These include child labor, extreme low wages, and employee abuse. Nike has contracted with more than 700 shops around the world and has offices located in 45 countries outside the United States. Most of Nike’s are located in Indonesia, China, Taiwan, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, Philippines, and Malaysia.

1) Deepening its relationship with customers. There are some obvious ways of having a “deep relationship” with customers such as taking into consideration results of various enquiries or following current trends like many companies do. Nike does that, too. But apart from that it really has tight relations with its customers. For example, Nike was one of the first companies that introduced the opportunity to customize its products according to every client’s individual

NIKE has dominated and been the long standing leader of athletic shoes. NIKE Inc. is a company made famous for selling athletic products, for both men and women covering a range of products not limited to but including action sports, athletic training, basketball, football, soccer, running and tennis. NIKE’s current goals include becoming more connected with non-competitive and or casual runners, the brand has recently lost grips with its runners. These runners are non-competitive and enjoy running for exercise and or shear enjoyment. In 2012 sales of running and jogging shoes accounted for over 3 billion U.S. dollars, becoming leading factor for NIKE to focus the brands attention towards the fun and enjoyment behind non-competitive runners. “From 2002 to 2007 there has been a steady growth of about 2.8% per year.” SWOT analysis, current environment, current marketing

During the late 80s and early 90s Nike was faced with a series of labor strike back at home due to unethical labor practices by its independent countries in third world countries. It is well known for Nike to outsource almost all its production from third world countries at cheap prices and sell them in U.S. market at an abnormal profit. The company began outsourcing its products from Japan where labor was competent and wages were very low. The living standards were raised which prompted Nike to outsource its products from Thailand, Pakistan and Indonesia since wages in these countries were extremely low and labor for these products were competent due to rapid development of the Japanese economy. The outsourcing of footwear products from Asian countries enables Nike to earn high profits and enjoy a competitive advantage over its rivals in the footwear industry. The company invests the high profits realized in marketing its products through celebrities. For instance, Michael Jordan was used to advertise the positive image of Nike Company (Lipschutz and James, pp. 87-96).