Prince Sports Case Study

April 2003, marketing executives at Prince sports realized the importance of updating their website to increase more traffic, stay up to date with designs and ensure their users have a positive experience when visiting. Once these changes were made, through their website, princesports.com, they were able to communicate educational information including tennis tips, information about products and industry news. When first entering the site, a person can choose from tennis, prince squash, ektelon racquetball or viking athletics. Anyone interested in

Nike may be typically known for focusing a lot of gear solely on athletes; yet, it is not just for them. Nike’s objective

Their target market is an average golfer, but they should also target good and experienced players, who are the

2. Segmenting the tennis market: A new breakthrough technology allowed company the ability to divide a new product on three different lines: Performance, Recreational and Junior. This essential break down allowed targeting different consumer demographics by

Socially, what is working for Prince Sports is that the interest in the sport is increasing. As more and more people look to physical activities to improve their health, tennis is an affordable option. The social downside Prince Sports is facing is some of the preconceived notions regarding tennis. Some view tennis as being a challenge to learn and that is only a fad, where interest will fade and be replaced with the next newer fad. Two economic pluses for Prince Sports is the affordability when compared to other individual sports such as golf and the availability of public and club tennis courts. The economic downside is competition entering the market and recessionary spending may limit the ability to purchase more expensive tennis equipment. Technologically speaking, Prince Sports is very innovative when it comes to their equipment, the downside is that the average tennis enthusiast may not appreciate or understand the innovation and fail to make related purchases. Prince Sports, while an industry leader, faces competition from other equipment providers as well as other individual recreation sports, such as golf. The last environmental force facing Prince Sports is the regulatory impact. While Prince Sports works to protect their

How many times have you driven past your local tennis courts and seen them filled with happy kids running around and smiling? Probably more than once. Tennis is a popular sport, played all over the world and loved by many. However, more people should play this wonderful sport. It can be played at any age, and at any walk of life, be ye teenager or 65 year old lady. In fact, everyone should play tennis due to its development of physical fitness, mental health, and social skills.

Dicks has specially designed goods, making their brand be recognized as a manufacturer of high-performance goods that are very popular with athletes. This positive perception has enabled the company to be a competitive choice for both serious and casual athletes. Additionally the company offers its services to athletes of all skills and classes at negotiable price range (well, 2012). Also, the fact that most of the products of prominent companies including Nike, Adidas are only available at Dicks. The fact that these brands are very popular with customers makes Dicks a popular destination for them. Furthermore, Dicks provides assortment differentiated services that make its products stand out above those of the competitors. A good example is the teaming up agreement between Dicks and Adidas which saw the company initiate a line aimed at the production of baseball bats and gloves. Also, Dicks was an exclusive licensee of 2014 world cup soccer games and Umbro products in the United States (Dicks, 2013). Development of

The use of specific athletes in marketing campaigns really began to show promise when athletes like Jordan began wearing their own brands of shoes. The idea to consumers or fans of the NBA that they could wear the same shoes as Michael Jordan, and somehow play like him was an easy sell by Nike. Today it is now common for marketable athletes in almost all sports to wear their own style of shoes, spikes, or skates. An interesting point to make is that through Nike Michael Jordan eventually launched his own clothing line called Jumpman23 that makes everything from socks and underwear to winter coats. Even though Jordan has been retired since 1999 the Jumpman23 company has continued to release a new shoe every single year that are simply called “Jordan 24”, an increasing corresponding number to the number of years the shoes have been produced. The new Jordan shoes still retails at over $150 a pair even though Mike hasn’t stepped on the court in 11 years! After retirement and becoming the CEO of the Jumpman brand Michael Jordan has been able to court other famous athletes from a variety of sports to wear his brand. A few examples of the athletes include Derek Jeter (baseball), Dwayne Wade (basketball), Jason Taylor (football), and April Holmes (track and field). The wide range of athletes in all different sports who now market a brand for arguably the greatest athlete of all time truly shows the money, power, and influence an athlete can experience

The sportswear industry is growing and becoming more competitive so the will be new producers and entries in the market with new ‘’aces up their sleeves’’. More competition in the market

Star Athletica’s assertion is based in the belief that a cheerleader’s uniform inherently consists of utilitarian functions. Part of the alleged function of uniforms is to identify cheerleaders as members of a specific team. “Thus, a cheerleader uniform fails the “identified-separately” requirement because the uniform’s stripes, chevrons, zigzags, and color blocks cannot be recognized apart from a cheerleader uniform’s utilitarian aspects but are essential to the uniform’s use or purpose” (Fang). Star Athletica also argues that most designs are inseparable from function because designs can change the way the wearer is perceived. For example, stripes are considered a design element, but the way stripes are applied to the body can serve different functions. Horizontal

SportsMax sells sporting goods equipment at 100 stores throughout North America. Robert Manning is the manager of one SportsMax retail store in Chicago. The company is in the planning phase of establishing its operating budget for this coming year and has asked that all store managers submit their estimates of sales revenue, costs, and resulting profit. During the control phase, each store manager is evaluated by comparing budgeted profit with actual profit. Store managers who exceed budgeted profit are given a bonus equal to 10 percent of actual profit in excess of budgeted profit.

1. Cultivating Technology to meet player’s needs. Prince Sports, Inc implemented a new technology progress in order to solve the main problem that most of tennis racquets had: contradiction between racquet speed and sweet spot. This new concept became essential after a meticulous work in gathering information about general consumer’s needs. Marketing team has reached out to a younger generation though different channels of social media and social network such as Facebook, be it Twitter, MySpace and then internationally, High Five and Orchid (Video Case 9) to understand what type of technological breakthrough will satisfy potential customers’ need. Prince Sports, Inc Marketing team work directly with R&D team to combine and collaborate marketing knowledge and technological ability. Together these two teams have created an evolutionary O3 technology with a 24 percent faster swing speed than traditional frames. The explanation of why their technology works better than other brands is pretty simple: “The secret is in the holes”. Like all world-changing innovations, O3 technology is based on an ingeniously simple idea. By replacing traditional pin sized string holes with massive O-ports, Prince Sports created a class of racquets that move through the air faster for increase power and greater control. (Tennis Express, Online Store, http://www.tennisexpress.com).

One of the things that sticks out the most to me was the amount of time it took for Prince to realize its superior position in the niche market of tennis and other racket designated sports, I can’t grasp the idea that Prince was not already a major contender in the market. As the sports world is going through a makeover with sport phenoms seeking commercial backing, Prince has assured itself through social networking and sponsorship of young talented athletes is a way to snare young

Of course I had dreams of playing professional sport like every other young male in the world but, a wise man spoke to me and he asked me how much my favorite basketball player makes on average, I did the research and Lebron James makes over 300 million dollars annually. Younger me got that information and as expected I held strong on my dreams of being a professional athlete until he showed me 0.0015% of Americans make it into the NBA.”Out of every 10,000 kids playing basketball in high school only 3 will make it to the pros. Note, this doesn’t mean they’re going to stay in the pros more than 5 seconds. This doesn’t mean they’re going to get a sneaker deal and be in a Pepsi commercial This simply means they’ll get drafted.” (Odds of Playing).

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