Organizational Design of Adidas
In this chapter, we have reviewed the Organizational Structure and Culture of Adidas. Though Adidas-Salomon is a company, which is in the business of manufacturing and marketing a wide range of products, the emphasis of our study is on the footwear business (core business) of Adidas.
A Review on the Organizational Structure of Adidas
The Head Quarter of Adidas-Salomon is situated in a small town named Herzogenaurach in Germany. This head office only manages the support function of Adidas such R&D, marketing sales etc. and that too of the European, African and Asian regions only.
The American region is monitored by Adidas America, which is an autonomous division and has been made to increase the market
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Adidas also has offices all over the world which work as sales centers of its product in their respective countries.
Adidas soon wants to finish manufacturing all sorts of products. It wants its products to be manufactured by subcontractors. It only wants to take care of the marketing of its brand and products.
In the past, Adidas had been following the traditional “footwear and apparel” structure which was being followed by most of the sports equipment companies. To cope with uncertain and competitive environment, most of the footwear and apparel companies shifted to flexible structures to deal with the environmental uncertainties. For example, Nike and Reebok shifted to a “Network Structure”. A network organization is a collection of independent, mostly single-function firms. The dynamic network structure describes not one organization but the web of interrelationship between many firms. The network as whole can display the technical specialization of the functional structure, the market responsiveness of the product structure and the balance and flexibility of a matrix.
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In 2000, Adidas announced revolutionary new three divisional structure. This structure had never been followed by any other organization before. In this structure, Adidas divided its products into three divisions. The divisions were named as “The Forever Sports Division”, “The Original Division” and “The Equipment Division”. The divisions are dealt as
1. Discussion: What factors drive Nike’s decision to stick with some form of network organizational structure rather than own its manufacturing operations?
Moreover, the report also consists of the timeline, which points out the efforts of the corporation over the last fifteen years of disclosure and transparency. It should be noticed that report also includes an interview with the company’s VP Global Social and Environmental Affairs. (Ethicalperformance.com, 2015) He describes the past successes of the Adidas Group, explains the sustainability communication strategy, and talks about the potential goals of the corporations' sustainability agenda. Eventually, it is essential to point out that four pillars of the Adidas Group's strategy are people, product, planet, and partnership. (Adidas-group.com, 2015) First of all, the corporation aims to influence the lives of the workers and employees positively and provide the comfortable business presence for all if its communities. To be exact, in 2014, the corporation has remade their Code of Conduct for their workers. (Ethicalperformance.com, 2015) For example, they have
Adidas is a sportswear manufacturing company started by Adolf Dassler. Adidas group has incorporated brands including Adidas, Reebok, TaylorMade-Adidas and Rockport. The wings of the company are widespread and have assimiliated other productions including handbags, shirts, spectacles, watches, balls, and sportswear. Adidas is being the largest company that sells footwear in the European market and have achieved a momentous market share at the global platform. Adidas has achieved phenomenal sale and have reached the pinnacle of success on the global scale with other international footwear companies (McDonald & Milne, 1999).
Before Adidas used to produce large number of samples for marketing purpose and we all know that samples produced where all wasteful. Now designers and marketers in Adidas are using Virtual technology which is far better and cost effective. In comparison to 2010 they have reduced the number of samples produced to 600000 in 2011/2012. It helps to save lot more of resources which would have being used in production of samples.
Nike is a well-known brand that is the top seller in athletic footwear across the globe (Nike, 2015). Nike is known for its athletic footwear but also sells top athletic gear and apparel. According to Nike, the company operates globally in as many as 155 different countries including the United Sates where its head-quarters is located. Nike is a goods based company with a target market of athletes, sports fans, and people who wear athletic apparel. Nike is broken down in to many sub divisional departments that all have similar responsibilities but in different fields of the company. For example, there are multiple “teams” that are responsible for departments such as men’s, women’s, young athletes, and eventually they are broken down by different sport categories (Nike). Also there are different departments for each region. Since 2010 when Nike’s chief executive officer announced that Nike will be operating in all seven continents, separate sub divisions would be created to track each different regions productivity. There are many ways that this has an effect on Nike’s accounting, financial, and business decisions. When there are separate reports and statements for different departments and categories, it allows Nike to see its strength and weakness as far revenue stream for each region. This allows business decisions to be implemented whether it is to eliminate a specific non profitable region or target a region with specific products
Nike‘s vertical structure includes CEO Mark Parker and a board of directors chaired by co-founder Phil Knight. Although Nike has functional divisions and divisions based on specific products it is not a matrix organization. In a matrix organization, employees report to a functional and divisional manage. At Nike, employees report to the divisional manager and the president of each division reports directly to the CEO. Nike’s continued product innovation and successful marketing are due to the combination of functional and divisional organization using an operations department to insure communication between divisions. There is division of labor but it is not clearly identified. With a more pronounced division of labor and levels of direct supervision Nike can improve its
Adidas has also been referred to as a ‘virtual enterprise’ however, it may be better characterized as a ‘strategic network’ because its
Adidas was founded by Adi Dassler on August 18, 1949 in Herzogenaurach, Germany. Adidas has been in business longer than Nike, they have had their logo since the inception; thus, the three stripes on the side of their shoes. In Spring of 2015, they came out with their new strategic business plan called, “Creating the New”. The focus was on Cities, Speed, and Open Source. According to Herbert Hainer, the CEO at that time stated, “The company is working every day to inspire and enable people to harness the power of sport in their lives (Adidas Group, n.d.). Adidas current competitive strategy is not the same as Nike’s competitive strategy. In October 2016, Kasper Rorsted became Adidas’ current CEO. He believes health and fitness will continue to become a lifestyle not a fad. Furthermore, he wants to expound the three clear strategic choices: Speed, Cities, and Open Source.” They are more focused on the broad target market, a low-cost provider strategy. In March 2017, he updated the focus for Adidas to include “Corporate Culture, Digital, One Adidas, North America and Portfolio.” (Adidas Group, n.d.).
Adidas has successfully made its brand as one of the well-known brand in world .in The Corporation always strives hard to add value to its brand in global market. Branding is an important
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
Since Adidas Group is a very large corporation; it has to structure the organization efficiently and effectively in order to
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
In 1993, the company decided to improve its distribution system, by creating a more exclusive and updated solution, aiming to gain a competitive advantage in the market. In order to achieve this, Adidas hired an IT company to create a new software. Unfortunately, the new software was not compatible with the one that the company’s vendors were using. At the same time, the IT Company ceased its operation.
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.