Strengths Of Nike

NIKE Inc. has been the worldwide leader of athletic shoe sales for many years now. The company’s successful brand image combined competition and enablement for the competitive, athletic user. Nike has to modify their brand to a focus of excitement and freedom and not just competitiveness. By collecting and studying an assortment of material we could be able to understand where NIKE is currently placed in the athletic shoe industry compared to their competition, and how they will be able to adjust their brand focus so it can be more effective in the future. These adjustments can help NIKE reach the more casual group of urban runners and ultimately increase the sales forecasts, while still controlling a percentage of the market for athletic shoes.

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

The company has launched the Nike products, which embody a love of sport, discipline, ambition, practice, and other athletic traits.

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.

By the early 2000s, sportswear companies like Adidas, Reebok, and Nike teamed up with fashion designers to make their product more appealing to women. In the beginning, Nike’s shoes for women were merely men’s shoes molded for the male foot just in women’s sizes. But as the workout sensation grew the company began to target women’s apparel and even created a website specifically for women. Nike’s expansion of its focus groups to include men and women, athletes and gym rats, and even nightlife has helped globalize the fitness movement. All over the world now people want to be fit and exercise so they can look like the people in Nike commercials.

As Nike is a multibillion dollar company, Nike has its own way of recruiting new potential employees. As the same time, there will be some weaknesses in its company’s recruitment and selection policies and procedures. Nike, Inc. has boundless chances to fuel beneficial development and further bolstering drive good fortune. Nike’s pioneers work consistently to guarantee Nike, Inc. understands its potential by rousing each one of its more than 40,000 workers to understand their potential. Human Resources experts at Nike, Inc. work as stewards of association adequacy, ability and change. The capacity attempts to guarantee that Nike, Inc. has capable, differing and comprehensive groups composed viably against Nike's greatest

6). This strategy is a major component of Nike’s business strategic level plan. In applying this strategy, Nike has attained a great deal of consumer insight, which it uses to offer uniquely designed premium products to the athletes. Still on product differentiation, Nike focuses more on research and development at a greater level. These unique features to Nike, have transformed the competition levels in this competitive industry, leading to a trend of a paradigm shift in the market. Most consumers opt for Nike branded sports products and apparels, at the expense of the other brand names.

Currently, Nike stand as a leading figure in producing high quality sports and fitness equipment and apparels. Bearing just a simple start of selling Japanese imported shoes from a station wagon has transformed

Brands use different strategies to create competitive advantages to beat with their rivals. Some companies use “Overall Cost Leadership” to increase profit by reducing costs and increase market share by lowering price. Some companies use “Focus Strategies” to select a group of market and tailor its strategy to serve that group. The others use “Product Differentiation” as a strategy to obtain a premium price by making unique products. Nike, with its differentiation strategy, the company is continuing to separate its self from the competitors by using its superior technology and innovation. This paper mainly discusses on the company’s product differentiation and analysis how the company using this strategy to build its brand image and become a market leader in sportswear industry. A brief discuss about Nike competitive advantage which related to its broad differentiation aspect and the company product life cycle are also presented on this paper.

My first recommendation is directed at Nike's push into digital sports. In my opinion the new accelerometer based Nike+ technology is the birth of a whole new generation of Nike products and an amazing innovation to motivate people to include sports into their everyday life.

Product Features: Product features is an obvious way in which Nike differentiates their products by altering the features of the products they have on the market. Product features encompass the characteristics of their equipment products provided by Nike. Nike is able to produce high quality products through focusing on design and innovation. The current President and CEO, Mark Parker stated, “At Nike, we believe it is not enough to adapt to what the future may bring - we’re creating the future we want to see through sustainable innovation.” The company has built their legacy upon continued improvement and innovation as they focus on their product features. However, Nike does offer a variety of equipment products, which will be assessed more with the VRIO breakdown. It may be difficult to have the resources available to gain a competitive advantage among all the different product lines in which they are involved.

One of Nike’s main opportunities is product development. Developing their product range makes them more competitive and because products tend to go out of fashion quickly, Nike must introduce new products relatively fast because consumer demand the newest and latest products. Increase in internet shopping will no doubt reduce the cost and improve prices making them even more competitive.

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.

There are numerous definitions of competitive strategy; whether, it was defined by a scholar, a textbook, or a dictionary source, it is not the same. A source may refer to this subject as a competitive strategy or a competitive advantage. Therefore, this subject is difficult to understand and then apply to a company. The Five Generic Competitive Strategies that Michael E. Porter developed are not really five strategies, more like five with subsets under them. Nike does not fit neatly into a specific strategy. The first factor within the competitive strategy as described in the Essentials of Strategic Management textbook is a broad target market or a narrow target market. The second factor considers

Nike began as Phil Knight’s semester-long project to develop a small business, which included a marketing plan. This project was part of Phil Knight’s MBA course at Stanford University in the early 1960s. Phil Knight had been a runner at the University of Oregon in the late 1950s. His idea for his project was to develop high quality running shoes. He thought that high quality/low cost products could be produced in Japan and then shipped to the United States to be sold at a profit. His professor thought that Knight’s idea was interesting, but not much more than a project.